Giorgios Zacharioudakis’s opening of the first track of Rizituals, “Ilie mou,” on the Indian flute bansuri, accompanied by cello, has a rich soaring breathiness that evokes Bulgarian kaval, as indeed does the modality of the melody. But this, like all the material on this album by Greek singer Xanthoula Dakovanou, is a song from Crete.

Nearly all are from the western part of the island, from the tradition known as rizitika, in which the songs are sung in acapella unison by a male vocal group. But Dakovanou, who is originally from Athens and lived for several years in western Crete, wanted to bring a different approach to the material, to have them sung by a woman, in fact two women; she’s joined by another very fine singer, Cretan Eugenia Toli-Damavoliti. All the songs she’s chosen are about women and their various roles in what is an historically patriarchal society. And whereas the traditional way for rizitika is unaccompanied, there’s a team of top-class players of traditional and other wind, string and percussion instruments.

Her singing is highly melismatic, the songs generally in free-flowing rubato, her voice strong and reedy, occasionally soaring ecstatically to the high reaches of her register. It’s finely complemented in harmony or counterpoint by the deeper voice of Toli-Damavoliti, well exemplified by their winding duet in “Pervoli,” accompanied by the deep gutsy twang of Dimitris Sideris’s laouto (I’m guessing - it’s just identified as ‘lute’ in the booklet), percussion, cello and bansuri.

“Avgerinos,” after a legato vocal section, transforms into a powerful chunky instrumental rhythm, over which Dakovanou takes a rather show-offy, high-reaching vocal improvisation; on this album she’s at her best when she’s expressing the song rather than showcasing vocal technique, though she certainly has great mastery of that. The two voices in unison and harmony in “Mana Lougi Me” evoke comparisons with the aforementioned Bulgarian music; Cretan and Bulgarian musics both have roots in Byzantine culture. “Kori Lygeri,” about a woman untangling her braids in lamenting despair over her man’s grave, in which Toli-Damavoliti takes the first vocal and Dakovanou a higher harmony line over Sofia Efkleidou’s cello drone and clicking percussion, has a powerful dark mood, and here the latter’s improvisation suits the spirit of the song. A fast, energetic instrumental and vocal rhythm kicks in for “Syrtos At Dawn.”

“Mia Kori Roda,” the bloody ballad of a daughter murdered by her brothers for giving roses to an unapproved suitor, is a standout track. In its accompaniment a tense tremolo drone on Christina Kouki’s santouri (Greek hammered dulcimer) builds to an insistent pulse driven by Solis Barki’s frame-drums developing to manic skittering santouri with high slithering cello before the track subsides to a final slow unaccompanied vocal trio.

“Aitos Perdiki” is an acapella vocal from the five female voices of Dakovanou and the Anemi ensemble, which includes Toli-Damavoliti and the third singer on “Mia Kori Roda,” Argiro Reppa.

Traditional Cretan mandinada declamatory verses are sung to the tune of a sousta (a dance form widespread in the Aegean) in “Rizituals Sousta,” a celebratory live-party-sounding finale in which Zacharioudakis plays not only the Cretan thiampoli shepherd’s whistle he’s used earlier but switches for the first time to the squeal of Cretan bagpipes.

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