About Greek music
I recently promised a couple of friends to put together some information about what I consider to be a good representation of Greek musical expressions of the 20th century. This is no expert treatise, just some incomplete reflections on my personal musical preferences. So here it goes:
Greek music has been so strongly tied to the social and political movements of the 20th century, that I couldn't explain it without making reference to them and their dynamics and impacts.In the beginning of the 20th century, Greek music was copying the songs and trends of popular music in France and Germany. It included silly tunes talking about silly love, wealth and prosperity, and in general the good bourgeois life that was the dream of the Europeans already expecting wars. It had no character of its own, to the point that many of the songs of that time were outright translations of European - and even Mexican - songs.Then the First War happened, and at its end the Greeks decided that they were ready, as part of the allies, to attack a weakened Turkey, a member of the defeated Axis, and liberate the Greek lands still at that time occupied by the Ottoman empire, including Konstantinople and the west coast of Asia Minor, where hundreds of thousands of Greeks still lived (Konstantinople, to this day, is the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch, our counterpart to the Catholic Pope). The allies, French, British and American, encouraged this stupid adventure of the Greeks, as led by an unpopular king, because they wanted to dismember the Ottoman empire and divide among themselves its oil and mineral riches. That's how Irak, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt and many other countries of the Middle-East and North Africa were defined and delineated. But once that sick empire collapsed and Kemal Atatourk successfully organised his Neo-Turks and established a modern state in Turkey, the allies withdrew their support of the Greeks, who were then summarily defeated by the Turks and experienced a humiliating withdrawal with thousands of victims. That was the time when the Turks started their infamous pogroms against the Greeks, the Armenians, the Caucasians, and anyone else within their borders who were not muslims (including the unfortunate Kurds who are still stateless a century later!).
After this disastrous war, there was a peace treaty that called for an exchange of Greek and Turkish populations. Around 1.5 million Greeks left the Turkish lands and became refugees in Greece, and another so many Turks left Greece and returned to Turkey between 1922 and 1929. That exchange of populations was a tragic decision that created "undesirables" in both countries for many years. But the Greeks who came to the mainland as refugees were educated, spoke many foreign languages, and had been prosperous and cosmopolitan people while living in Asia Minor, and they brought with them an amazing, beautiful, sensitive culture that for centuries had combined oriental and European elements to create an eclectic, rich culture that was in a way above the heads of the Greeks at the time. These refugees brought with them into Greece the music that reflected that culture, the "rebetiko", and the musical instrument that best expressed it, the bouzouki, an oriental-origin string instrument with 6 double chords.From the late 1920s to the early 1940s, that music was on the one hand despised by the Greek middle class because it reminded it of the shameful national defeat, and because it represented the culture of the refugees who were despised and kept isolated by the mainstream society of the country. Yet there were several composers/songwriters of the time who adopted the culture and the music of the refugees and wrote songs that today are considered the foundation of Greek contemporary music. Best known among them are Vassilis Tsitsanis, Manos Vamvakaris, Giorgos Zambetas and Manolis Hiotis.that is, until the end of the Second World War and the years of the Greek Civil War (1945-1949), a period during which the guerrillas fighting the Germans in the mountains of Greece made the rebetiko the music of resistance to, and liberation from the occupier.The two major composers of Greek contemporary music that emerged from that tumultuous period were Mikis Theodorakis (who composed "Zorba the Greek") and Manos Hatzidakis (who composed "Never on Sunday"). Starting in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they began to incorporate elements of Greek traditional, Byzantine, folk and Asian Minor rebetiko music and the bouzouki instrument into their compositions. By the end of the 1950s, when I was a student at the National Technical University of Athens studying architecture, they had evolved into not only major Europe-wide recognition, but also as leaders of the progressive political and social movements in Greece, especially among the students. Theodorakis was a communist promoting ideas of social democratic principles and concepts of freedom, equality, and anti-capitalism, at a time when Greece was governed by a aeries of conservative governments supported by the king and his family. Hatzidakis, who was openly gay, was promoting notions of social acceptance, equality, love, peace, and many of the messages that became mainstream and later "hippy" in 1960s Europe and the US.By the 1960s, a second generation of composers emerged, their music based on, and being spin-offs of these two greats. Most recognizable among them are Xarhakos, Yiannis Markopoulos, Leontis, and Mikroutsikos.All these composers, in addition to relying on Greek traditional and contemporary musical trends, also reached into the world of Greek progressive literature, and used the poetry of major and not-well-known Greek poets (two of whom were Nobel Laureates) in their song-writing and compositions. Plus, they made it a point, all of them, to discover, nourish and employ talented Greek singers to sing their songs. As a result, during the 1960s and 70s, we had a proliferation of amazing singers, with unique voices and musical expressions, who interpreted this progressive music. Among them major are Nana Mouskouri who eventually became a Grand Diva in France, Sotiria Bellou, Maria Farantouri, Grigoris Bithikotsis, Haris Alexiou, Giorgos Dalaras, Giorgos Gargandourakis, Kostas Xylouris and many, many others.Towards the end of the 20th C. there was a pause in the creativity and quality of Greek musical production, as new Greek composers became more interested in winning the Eurovision song-writing contests than writing songs expressing the Greek soul and concerns of the times. But then, just before the end of it, we had another surge of creative talent, led by two young women who produced magnificent, melodic and deeply emotional music. Eleni Karaindrou is a pianist who was discovered by Theo Angelopoulos, the preeminent movie director of Greece, to write the scores for his magical cinematography (Eternity and a day, Landscape in the Mist, Ulysses' Gaze, The Dust of Time). Evanthia Reboutsika is a violinist who similarly composed classical and contemporary popular music, but also wrote major movie scores (My Father and My Son, A Touch of Spice, The Messenger).Today there are many new composers and songwriters in Greece, and many Greeks who live and compose overseas, but to my knowledge, none of them is firmly established as an innovator yet. But there is a lot of talent there, so I hope that the great Greek musical traditions of the mid-20th century will continue and be capitalised upon.My apologies for this long monolog!!!! If you want to learn more about all this, here is just one of the websites that can start you in your exploration of Greek music of our times!
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