I was born in Russia, in Tashkent, which now belongs to Uzbekistan. My parents, along with about 20,000 young people, were there as political refugees, were in the Democratic Army, from children in the mountains, and left after the defeat of the left. All this today seems both far and near, it is a strange feeling, because stories are repeated. My brother and I grew up there with the dream of returning to Greece.
• Our father, who came from the Small Village of Roumeli, did not stop talking about Greece and our mother insisted that we learn Greek, read and speak Greek at home. The whole scenario was “do not forget that our homeland is elsewhere and we will return one day”. It was never a question of staying there forever.
• My parents were very friendly with Mikis and every time he came to visit Russia, he also came to our house. I knew Miki since I was a child. I remember him coming into our house, but he heard me sing when I was seventeen. My mother was an actress and she sang, and she had made a band, Romiosini, with which they sang only Greek in concert halls and very nice, theatrical halls. I grew up next to this band and at the age of fourteen I also went on stage. There were no music scenes, you were not used to singing and people eating. I came across this here and I was very impressed when I first saw it.
The tracks were definitely not my place, but I was hardened there, because I had to put strength and energy, as the eye and the ear of the world “leave”, they are engaged in other things, and I always bet “I will make you you look “.
• Mikis heard my paternal grandfather at my house, at a family reunion, and told me “not only the mother sings in this house, the daughter also sings”. I had learned a song by Mikis, grabbed the accordion in my hands and said “The train leaves at eight”. This was the passport, an informal audition, because as soon as I finished he told me “I have a cycle of songs, I have been looking for a female voice for a long time and today I found it. You will say the ballads in poetry by Manolis Anagnostakis “. I did not believe anything, because we were there, we did not even have papers to return, we were not allowed to return then. These were resolved very quickly, first my parents returned and then my brother and I came. We met in Vrachati with Mikis – it was the first meeting – and we rehearsed in 1975.
In the beginning there was a rumor about me that I was a snob because I did not speak, something that happened because I was ashamed. Photo: Paris Tavitian/LIFO
• The music of Theodorakis, which my generation heard in Greece, mainly in the Metapolitism, for us was the musical environment in which we grew up. At home we listened mainly to Theodoraki and a little Hadjidaki and Xarchako. In fact, he sent us scores with his songs learned by my mother's band, which had Russian musicians playing Greek songs and touring the entire Soviet Union with them – it was a dictatorship in Greece at the time and there was the spirit of the anti-dictatorship struggle. >
Mikis Theodorakis (1925 & # 8211; 2021): The stations of a legendary life
• I remember that when we arrived in Athens, her image was not very nice. We went up from the old Syggrou, which was lousy, like a dirt road, the street cleaners went on strike and the garbage was mountains. A song was heard then, “I will not sit down to run”, which I did not understand. I had never heard such songs before. In Athens we stayed in Gyzi, in a small apartment, but very quickly we started to go out of Athens and there I loved Greece. We went to my mother's village, Almyros, Volos, and to my father. Then I said that my parents were right, it is a very beautiful country.
• We recorded the album and returned to Moscow with my mother, because my brother had to finish high school and it was a bit wild to change school last year and go to one in Athens. I went to the University of Lomonosov to study Spanish literature. I liked Spanish, Spanish-language literature, I was crazy then with Lorca, the poems, the music, the whole package. So they sent me the record and I listened to it there. I did not finish my studies, we returned to Greece again. I was eighteen years old and Mikis and I went on a world tour that lasted two years.
• At that age you think of nothing, you are the ruler of the world. You are carefree, you have youth, the whole future is in front of you. I realized that something big was happening, but I forgot, I was a child I think. I realized this later, when we returned from this tour, because adjusting was difficult. These years have strengthened me. I think I was not very well known, I always believed that, not because I was not a commercial singer but because what I did was my choice. It was a difficult period because I was cut off from my friends, my environment, my age, I had to grow up fast and in a different environment and that was even harder. Eventually, my involvement with singing, records, touring, was my mental salvation, they gave me strength and confidence, I was able to stand on my own two feet, make friends, improve my Greek, because I was ashamed that I did not speak it. Well, that's why I did not open. In fact, in the beginning there was a rumor about me that I was a snob because I did not speak, something that happened because I was ashamed.
I made some pop records that I enjoyed a lot, because through them I was with some people like Lakis Papadopoulos and Marianina Kriezi who were close in age and I was asking for that, I wanted it. Photo: Paris Tavitian/LIFO
• In fact, for this reason I went to the drama school of Ethnikos, at the urging of Eleni Zafeiriou and Notis Pergialis, of course. We were together in Athinaion, the summer theater, and we played in the song of the dead brother. We were sitting in the heat and Pergialis says in Zafiriou “aren't you preparing it for the National?”. He said to me “you are very good, you have a theatricality, it is a pity not to study”. I was forcibly pulled and made my papers.
• There is a story about this, I have not told it anywhere. When I gave to Ethniko, I was in Lyra, the record label. The director was Alekos Patsifas, who loved me and supported me a lot. He also loved the theater, and even wrote plays. He learned that I took an exam – I did not say anything because I had a contract, appearances and I did not know what he would look like. He called me one day and I thought I would eat a scolding. But he turns around and says to me, “I've learned, did you take the exams?” You passed first, you got a scholarship “. I was speechless, I did not even know it, I shouted something, “how will I live?”. And he told me “do not worry, I will give you an advance and go study, I do not want records or anything”. So I went to the National, again for the song, I did not expect that I would play in the theater, to learn the language, vocabulary through the texts, to make sure that I press correctly and orthophonically and to be released kinesiologically, not to be in front of a microphone immobile.
• Let's go like before and the Excellent Mr. Giannidis was an idea of George Papastefanos. When he told me I reacted, I said I was young and I have nothing to do with these songs, I could not say them, I did not know them, we did not listen to them where I grew up. But he was right, he saw something and this marriage was done correctly. I consider Giorgos my teacher, as well as the teachers I met at Ethniko, Hatziargyri, Vokovic, Tzogias, Aroni, who helped me a lot.
Let's go like before
• Hadjidakis was a great teacher and another chapter of my life. Mikis introduced me to him, called me to Zonars to give me a cassette of new songs. I went in and it was at a table with Manos Hadjidakis and Nikos Gatsos. I was sitting and looking like a fool. There were three mythical people in front of me, together, at the same time, talking, saying funny things and some very serious issues. I remember sitting speechless and looking at these beasts around me. Then Hadjidakis asked me, I had not even understood if he liked me. He was strict, but we worked amazingly on the recording that was live in the studio, “Drunk Girl”. Recently I discovered a recording of Hadjidaki in the Third Program that speaks for me in nice words, I did not know, I had no idea.
• I made some pop records that I enjoyed a lot, because through them I was with some people like Lakis Papadopoulos and Marianina Kriezi who were close in age and I asked for that, I wanted it. For a while at that time I resisted. Let's say we did very big tours in the summer and in the winter I took it out with some appearances in various places with a piano, in the province and in Thessaloniki. At some point I started to not be able to afford it and I went with Marinella to Neraida, who had set up a very nice program, which was not bouzouki, it was a track, it had a splendor. This was a school for me, I learned how you can catch the eye, the attention of the people. I learned a lot from Marinella, she is an incredible professional and it is nothing accidental.
• The tracks were definitely not my place, but I was hardened there, because I had to put strength and energy, as the eye and the ear of the world “leave”, they are engaged in other things, and I always bet “I will make you you are looking at me “. From there I learned to transfer this to every scene and in places where this atmosphere does not exist. I may not have liked it, the night is a bit wild, but I trained. Like I did theater for a few seasons and then I left.
• I consciously chose to leave both the country and the song at an age when my career was on the rise. The thing was, I started to feel like I was not expressing myself, that I was not right, that most of the time I was on stage and I was a robot. I was creative and shrinking, I felt that I betrayed both the audience and what I loved and I love, the song.
Από που τηλεφωνάς
• I fell in love with a man from Cyprus – this year we are closing thirty years together – and he tied the whole thing, so I decided to follow him. I have been singing non-stop in Cyprus all these years, the Cypriots know my course better than the Greeks and I believe that I have evolved a lot there, without going into details. When I come to Greece they are surprised, although my audience shows great love.
• In Cyprus I paused, made new friends, read, listened to other music in a much more collected and calm environment. I met people who had nothing to do with art, nice groups who sang, literate people who had nothing to do with worldly life, publicity. And through these groups, which are eloquent ‒because Limassol is the city of chanting, after the Ionian Islands there you hear the chant full, amazing quatrains‒, I also started singing with them. This was my medicine, so I was healed, so I started to have an appetite for singing, they cleared my soul and my mind and I want it. From there I started to do what I wanted, to be an amateur in every sense of the word, to do the productions myself and to set up the thing the way I wanted it and the way I believed it from beginning to end. I started presenting these in Cyprus and I am developing them until today.
• I have not done much discography in recent years, but in Cyprus I do many programs with Greek musicians and foreigners. Along the way I started doing my own thing, adding prose as well, such as Stories and Songs , a musical-theatrical monologue where words and music are shared. I was not the character who wanted everything to go his way, but I think I had to do it because in the end I did not feel complete with what they suggested. I felt that my speech was not passing and fortunately the result justified me.
• I had never thought of teaching even though I was told I would be a good teacher. There are amazing music schools in Cyprus, so in the summer I will do a job in which I will collaborate with a hundred and more children from the high school and lyceum of Paphos. What I feel now is that I want to pass on to the new generations what I learned and what I experienced, to tell them the stories. We will sing Theodorakis and then, with the orchestra and the choir, we will do a tour all over Cyprus. The new generation, who are very good musicians, has amazing voices coming from the music schools of Cyprus and Greece, which are great.
I consciously chose to leave both the country and the song at an age when my career was on the rise. The thing was, I started to feel like I was not expressing myself, that I was not right, that most of the time I was on stage and I was a robot. Photo: Paris Tavitian/LIFO
• I think if you want to get serious about music, you enter a path that you do not stop looking and researching. I had never sung Loizo, but I decided to meet this amazing composer and when I became seriously concerned with his songs, with him, I believe in his sound, which was far ahead, with the lyrics he chose and wrote himself, opened a whole world. We did an excellent show with Neoklis Neophytidis, in which amazing musicians played, all from music schools. So, now, in my luggage I have another great composer and this program with Apostolos Rizos who gave me a lot of energy, because I was dealing with much younger people, who gave me energy. With this work I changed my mind about the covers of the songs, which I did not prefer before. But I realized that if the arrangement is done correctly, with love, nice way, humility, when all the notes are there – if not, write your own song – it is worth it and renews the genre.
You know, young people are often accused of paraphrasing songs – this is one way, the way of young people. Mikis taught me something I never forget, that songs, in order to live, must be sung. We, our generation, will slowly leave and the songs must go into the hands of the next ones a little differently, so the younger ones can return to them, listen to them again. They will continue to live though. If we do not, the song will become a museum genre and will be lost, as many songs have been lost, forgotten over the years, many of them great. I really appreciate people who fight for music, not to betray their beliefs, at the risk of often being out of work.
• In Greece I like to return in the summer, my place is Cyprus. I like to come back to sing, like now, with Manolis Mitsias, who we will meet after thirty years on Mount Parnassos with a program that is fascinating, if anyone thinks about the songs we performed, these mythical collaborations with Mikis and how much they motivate even today the collective memory.
• Today, if you ask me, I say I'm out of work and I mean the commitment to show up regularly or do discography regularly. I am at an age where I have the maturity to do what I believe and projects in which I bend with dedication, with love, without feeling that I am spending, making the choices I have dreamed of. I like to listen to new composers, new voices, but I feel like a full person, I do not miss being in things as we understand it today. But I would like to note, as far as I can watch things, that in recent years the female music scene has been very interesting. My feeling is that the girls, with their voices and their synthetic work, have come forward with strength, they have a lot of ideas and tea and I am happy for my gender. It's an important moment, I think, and it's no coincidence that MeToo was the time – I wish it had happened sooner and all this terrible thing had not happened. From now on women will have the power to express themselves fearlessly.
Drunk Girl
Manolis Mitsias – Margarita Zorbala
“If you remember my dream” & # 8211; Four recitals dedicated to the work of Mikis Theodorakis
Parnassos Philological Association
April 8-9, 20:30
The article was published in the printed LiFO .
