Thursday, December 31, 2009

A Rubaiyat For The Year To Come

Alike for those who for Today prepare,
And those that after a Tomorrow stare,
A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries
"Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There!"

by the Persian mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, physician, and poet Omar Khayyám.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Greek Christmas Carols (& Their Crazy Parody)

hristmas Eve today and the tradition brings small groups of kids from door to door singing the Christmas Carols and expecting a small tip. So we certainly expect our door bell to ring many times today...(hope this won't be too early).
The Greek Christmas Carols are very old folk songs that originate from the Byzantine Calends. The kids are singing wishes for each family they visit also "announcing" that Jesus is born. That is the content of the song, no need to get into so much trouble to translate it (old folk songs are impossible to translate).

A late 90s TV broadcast made a parody sketch of these Carols, depending on the family's favorite music. Crazy guys... Enjoy!

Part 1: Pop Bouzouki Songs
Part 2: How Greeks imagine music in Hawaii
Part 3: Disco
Part 4: Rembetiko!
Part 5: Opera
Part 6: Metal

Monday, December 21, 2009

A Party or How Parties Should Look Like (in Vouliagmeni, July 1983)


ighties summers in Athens were slow, lazy and innocent. Beach-party was a term unknown and large-scale concerts had only taken place in football stadiums.

Vouliagmeni (which means "sunk"), is a coastal suburb of Athens, south and east. Supposed to be an expensive one, although it is quite densely built and surrounded. Being coastal was always a privilege. Especially in 1983.

One evening with a full moon, the 25th of July 1983, there was a concert named "Party in Vouliagmeni" performed by Loukianos Kilaidonis.

Loukianos Kilaidonis

Many surprise guests showed up. Dionysis Savvopoulos, Vaggelis Germanos, Giorgos Dalaras, Margarita Zorbala, Afroditi Manou were just some of them. The band was on a floating stage 12 meters away from the beach. A radio broadcast was covering the concert and its exceptional energy live. All of a sudden, people from all around the city started joining... Of course it was impossible to hold these people out of it, so the concert doors opened soon to everyone - no ticket needed. The concert turned to a vast beach party with more than 70,000 people (some say 100,000)!

So there we are, and Vaggelis Germanos just showed up... would you swim?


Cruise [Κρουαζιέρα / Kruaziera]
Vaggelis Germanos

The ship will take off in late evening
Take the metro to Piraeus*
In sweet little summer
to go on cruise to the islands

With the waves will the boat sail
the wind will blow our hair away
We'll become skilled to love
and the thoughts will fly away like birds

Oh, oh, I'll take you on cruise
Oh, oh, because I care about you and I love you
Oh, oh, to Mykonos and Santorini
Oh, oh, like penguins in love

Leave bad people shouting
at beaches, restaurants, pensions
We, with sleeping bags and water-melon,
will go around the islands

Naked we will swim at the beaches
The sun we will face "en face"
I'll treat you like a chinese fan
and you'll never go to the office again...

*Athens' port

Ps1. This is only the first song he is playing. No need to translate the second one, I guess you get the feeling...

Ps2. The translation of the lyrics is based on the one found at stixoi.info

The Inspirer Of Two Generations (Manos Hadjidakis at Kemal, 1969 & 1993)


he head-corner stone of Greek music. Manos Hadjidakis is without a doubt, the most important composer and conductor in Greece's modern history. We simply can't compress this man's life and works in a few lines and we will certainly refer to him repeatedly on the posts to come. Regarding his life and works you can take a look to the wiki article. What we will post here is what he responded when he was asked so:

I was born on 23rd October, 1925, in Xanthi, that quaint old town and not the eyesore that was later developed by migrants from rural areas. The blending, in those days, of a belle époque decorative style with Ottoman minarets gave colour and substance to a community hailing from all corners of the land, and which, incidentally, found itself living in an outlying region, dancing the Charleston in public squares. When I first saw the light of day, I was amazed to notice the number of people that awaited my arrival. (Even later on I never ceased to be amazed, as if they were waiting for me to make a late appearance.) My mother was from Adrianople, the daughter or Konstantinos Arvanitidis, and my father from Myrthio, the prefecture of Rethymnon, Crete. I am the offspring of two people who, as far as I know, never cooperated except when they decided to produce me. That is why I have in me thousands of conflicting elements and every kind of mixed blessing. However, my bourgeois conscience, along with my "European tutelage," so to speak, yielded an impressive result.
Manos Hadjidakis and Nikos Gatsos drinking coffee at "Zonar's", Athens.
Throughout the time we lived in Xanthi, I tried to get to know my parents really well and to do away with my sister! I failed in both instances. In 1932 we moved to Athens, where I could never get over my failure.

In the capital I began living and studying, while, at the same time, I became initiated into the erotic and poetic functions of the times. But I received an "Attic education,” when there was still an “Attica” and "Education" in the country. I was deeply influenced by Erotokritos, General Makriyannis, the Fix Brewery, Haralambos, the waiter at Vyzantion, the damp climate of Thessaloniki, and chance encounters with strange people who remained strangers in after years. During the period of German occupation, I decided that music lessons were useless, for they had a way of diverting me from my initial objectives, which were to communicate, to convey, and to disappear. That is why I stopped them right after the war. Thus, I never attended a conservatory, and was saved from becoming like those members of the Panhellenic Musical Society. I wrote poems and many songs, and I made every effort to carry my point democratically, something that proved highly beneficial to me when later on I became an official. I avoided at all costs whatever hurt my feeling of love and sensibility.

I travelled extensively, and this helped me realize that stupidity is not a Greek exclusivity, as local chauvinists and votaries of nationalism proudly claim and go out of their way to prove. In parallel, I found it absolutely essential that people who interested me should speak Greek, because communication in a foreign language proved onerous and tended to negate half of my personality.

In 1966 I found myself in America. I lived there for about six years (the years of dictatorship in Greece), purely for tax reasons. It was discovered that I owed the Inland Revenue something like Drs.3.5 million. Having settled my debt, I returned in 1972, and opened a café-theatre, which I named Polytropon. It functioned until the political changeover in 1974, which marked the advent of football mania and the political defusion of the masses. I kept my cool, and refrained from partaking in national and anti-dictatorial dances in gymnasiums and football grounds packed with youths. When I shut up shop, my liabilities were in the region of Drs.3.5 million - a fatal number as far as I was concerned.
In 1975 began for me a period in the limelight, which, for the purpose of distinguishing it, I shall call “clerical,” and which made me famous among a large and ignorant public - Greek, of course - as an implacable enemy of Greek music, Greek musicians, as well as Greek culture. During this time, and after an abortive heart attack, I strove once again, albeit unsuccessfully, to implement my costly café-theatre ideas on Greek Radio and through the Ministry of Culture by democratic means. Both these organizations, rotten to the core, made a successful stand against me - beat me hollow, as they say. Be that as it may, this period marked the nascence and commanding presence of the Third Programme.

The résumé of my life to date is as follows:
I shun at fame. It restricts me within its confines and not mine.
I believe in the song that reveals us and express us deeply, and not the one that humours our naive and forcibly acquired habits.
I feel contempt for those whose object is not to receive their ideas and intellectual pursuits; complacent contemporaries; dark and shady journalism; and every form of vulgarity.

Thus, I managed to put the finishing touches to my personality, one traumatized in childhood, ending up by selling "lottery tickets in the sky" and inviting the respect of younger people, since I have remained a genuine Greek and a Magnus Eroticus.

The album "Reflections" was released in 1969 in New York, composed by Manos Hadjidakis and perfomed by New York Rock and Roll Ensemble. In 1993, it was released again with Greek lyrics written by Nikos Gatsos in Athens. The most famous song of the album is given below, Kemal. The translation from Greek is credited to Sinistro. Hadjidakis himself prologues the song, and Aliki Kagialoglou is singing. Masterpiece.


Kemal
music: Manos Hadjidakis, lyrics: Nikos Gatsos
vocals: Aliki Kagialoglou

"Hark to the story of Kemal
a young prince of the East
descendant of Sinbad the Sailor
who thought he could change the world.
But bitter is the will of Allah
and dark the souls of men."


In the lands of the East once upon a time
the purse was empty and the water stale.
In Mosul* and Basra* on the old coconut tree
the children of the desert now cry bitter tears.

And a young man of an old and royal line
hears the lament and grows near.
the Bedouins look at him sadly
and he gives them an oath in Allah's name, that times will change.

When the lords heard of the lad's fearlessness
they set out with wolf's teeth and lion's skin
from Tigris** to Euphrates**, from the earth to the heavens
they hunt for the deserter, to capture him alive.

The horde descends upon him like rabid dogs
and takes him to the Caliph to place the noose [on his neck]
black honey and black milk he drank that morning
before he breathed his last on the gallows.

The Prophet*** awaits before the Gates of Heaven
with two elderly camels and a red horse.
They now go hand in hand and it's cloudy
but the star of Damascus kept them company.

In a month and a year they see Allah before them
and from his high throne he says to the simple Sinbad:
"my beaten smart-aleck, times do not change,
the world always moves on by fire and blades"

Goodnight Kemal, this world will never change.
Goodnight...

*Cities in Iraq.
**Rivers in the region of Mesopotamia.
***Muhammad.

(Translations also available in Italian, Hebrew, Polish, German)

Thursday, December 17, 2009

An Album Reflecting Three Decades (Dionysis Savvopoulos at "A Little Sea", 1975)


ionysis Savvopoulos (a song of whom has already been presented at the first post of this blog) right after the dictatorship fell in 1974, released an album with several recordings that took place between 1965 and 1975, named "10 Years' Songs". Censorship had officially stopped, so the album could be released. The live concerts that followed in club Kyttaro in Athens are still famous for their energy and influence. One of these songs, named "A Little Sea" is given below. This was not the first recording of the song that initially was played with a guitar, but the one of the 1975 album that piano is leading. A great and quite popular song of 70s. Below the home grown translation, I embed one more video dated a couple of years ago that Dionyssis himself in a TV show is performing this specific song. Enjoy.


A Little Sea
music, lyrics: Dionysis Savvopoulos

A little sea,
a little sea
is what my summer is,
what my love is and my pain.

A little sea
shines in your eyes
every morning

A little sea
it's in your tear, it's in the song,
in every kiss of yours
there is a little sea.

A little sea,
a little sea
and my cup in the corner
for one summer
it was you.

I was singing about you,
like the strings of wind do
on your black hair.

I was following you,
like the tall grass does
the wind.
I was singing you.

A little sea,
a little sea
that told you a bitter goodbye,
is waiting for you.
A little sea.

(Available also in Spanish and Russian)

Sunday, December 13, 2009

The Movie named "Rembetiko" (1983) & its Soundtrack



t last some action. We had been presenting and translating all these songs without a word about the instruments or the conditions under which they were originally performed. This is mainly because most videos we can find are either of low quality (like the recordings) or aestheticly bad (you know, these youtube videos with silly photostreams) and our description skills in stuff you have never seen are not good enough.

The video below is dragged from the movie "Rembetiko"(1983) written and directed by Costas Ferris. The movie was awarded in 1984 with the "Berlin Silver Bear" but the soundtrack was proven to be much more popular than the movie itself. Its composers were the poet Nikos Gatsos (Νίκος Γκάτσος) and the conductor Stavros Xarchakos (Σταύρος Ξαρχάκος).

Skip the Greek of the first dialogues, there's nothing important with that, and focus on how this woman (Sotiria Leonardou/ Σωτηρία Λεονάρδου) gains people's attention as she sings with her soul. The theme of the song is the vainess of human nature. And this is a proof that you can better discribe such stuff with that sort of music. Rembetiko is like the imaginary part of complex numbers. A shortcut to simple truths.


I'm on fire, I'm on fire
lyrics: Nikos Gatsos
Music: Stavros Xarchakos
vocals: Sotiria Leonardou

When the man is born
a pain is born too
and when the war flares
you are incapable of counting the blood

I'm on fire I'm on fire
add more oil into the flames
I am drowning I am drowning
throw me in a deep sea

I swore to your eyes
which was like a Gospel's truth to me
the stab you gave me
to turn it into laughter

I am on fire I am on fire
add more oil into the flames
I am drowning I am drowning
throw me in a deep sea

But you deep inside Hell
brake the chains
and if you drag me next to you
bless you to be

I am on fire I am on fire
add more oil into the flames
I am drownig I am drowning
throw me in a deep sea

(translation dragged from stixoi.info - English version credited to dimitris2, available also in Italian)

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

When That Great Composer Met That Woman's Voice (Thanasis Papakonstantinou & Melina Kana at the "Seducing Foreign Land", 1995)


Thanasis Papakonstantinou

ust the word "influenced", could not really describe the relation between rembetiko and modern Greek composers. Rembetiko is considered dead. Some might still experience it quite emotionally but it's gone long time ago (around mid 50's) turning to a show piece. However, it certainly is a reference point for a numerous trends and paths in modern Greek music as well as something more than that: identity.

Today, a stunning song of a famous Greek composer is presented. It is a love song, written in mid 90s by Thanasis Papakonstantinou (Θανάσης Παπακωνσταντίνου). That strange guy has started recording in 1992 with an album named "Saint Nostalgia" (Αγία Νοσταλγία) which was directly referced to Rembetiko with sophisticated lyrics. His second recording took place in 1995 named "On Andromeda and on Earth" (Στην Ανδρομέδα και στην Γη) and most songs were performed by Melina Kana (Μελίνα Κανά), a woman's voice that matched perfectly with the spirit of the album. The composer continued releasing albums until today with many changes along the way on the music style, the forms etc. We will certainly come back to him later on.

This song (dragged from his 2nd album) is what a woman says to her beloved one, that he had left for another country and he stayed quite long as it appears. Notice the balanced way that all these instruments come together with her mature and tricky voice.

Melina Kana


Seducing Foreign Land [Πλάνα Ξενιτιά]
music, lyrics: Thanasis Papakonstantinou
vocals: Melina Kana

I cut the sea in two
and there I am opening a path
for you to come into my arms again
straight from the depths of the map

You ‘d better stop chatting me up
that all you want is to return
and supposingly the Cyclops
are raising objections

I turn my face upwards
towards the vaulted sky
for you to see the grief in my eyes
by way of a satellite

But I am waiting in vain
and the memory has faded
In seducing foreign lands
how many has been swallowed...

Thursday, December 3, 2009

One 1936 Afternoon (Anestis Delias, "The Poser")

Anestis Delias (the light jacket man sitting on the left) and a bunch of musicians
"
ne afternoon, I was with Anestis Delias and Mpatis, here - around Keratsini - up to the hill. Anestis and Batis had their instruments with them, as well as something to get ourselves high on later. On the way, we found Karydakias that was playing bouzouki. Nice guy, he was killed later on -during the war. Anestis had written the music, but he had no lyrics. It was... a zeibekiko. We stood there, on the hill, Anestis were teaching the others the music and all three of them started playing. I was listening. Batis said: [Hey magka, your knife, to handle it right...] and there he stopped. We all got what the song was about, so we started helping out with the lyrics.[...] Karydakias continues: [...You need to have the guts, you poser, (you need to have) the heart to pull it out...]. The first part was ready. The second and the third was Batis’ and the last one is Karydakias’ and mine. That’s how we wrote that one.”, Nikos Mathesis (nicknamed : Nikos the nuts) remembers.

Anestis Delias

It is not only the evolution of music forms and trends. It is a whole mindset mirrored in these songs. A deeply familiar way of life, no matter how many years have passed.
The song is titled Poser and it is attributed to the Smyrne -born (Izmir) Anestis Delias. The picture given above is a croped part of the one given in previous post (the man standing on the right). He died 31 years old because of heroine. A woman destroyed him, trying to possess and control him, they say. An amateur home grown translation is given below.


The Poser [Το κουτσαβάκι / Ο Φιγουρατζής]
Anestis Delias [Ανέστης Δελιάς]
1936

Hey magka*, your knife
to handle it right
You need to have the guts you poser,
a heart (you need to have), to pull it out
You need to have the guts you poser,
a heart, to pull it out

Don’t you try these on me
You‘d better hide your “sword”
Cause I’ll get high one day, you poser
and I‘ll come along your crib
Cause I’ll get high one day, you poser
and I‘ll come along your crib

(Long live Artemi with your nice plectrumings**!)

You‘d better go to someone else, you poser
To show off that way
Cause I have smoked as well, you poser
And I got dangerously high
Cause I have smoked as well, you poser
And I got dangerously high

I told you once, behave wisely
Or else I’ll bash you straight away
I’ll bring my “gat”, you poser
And there I’ll humble you
I’ll bring my “gat”, you poser
And there I’ll humble you

(Long live Babi with your Baglama.... bravooo!)

*magkas {μάγκας} = tough guy / buster / hep.
**plectrumings = the ups and downs of the bouzouki plectrum

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