Tag: Music

After each big wave the passengers on the boat were shouting: "Well done captain, may the Seven Children bless you". The captain was a young man, smiling awkwardly, holding strongly the boat's wheel. This strong shake didn't last more than ten minutes, the calmness returned while the boat got into the arc of the volcano’s caldera.

"The songs about Kolokotronis touched my soul without me noticing it. Everyone used to sing in my village and in my home too. My mother used to say: In the evening we'll go visit your uncle and you can sing for us. I’ll pay you five cents for your performance. If my silence and embarrassment didn't go away she would tell me again: You better sing, otherwise I will have to give you ten cents".

"I don't fear the sea at all and the possibility of me drowning never crosses my mind. Whenever I can't see the sea, even from afar, I feel afraid and think I'm dying. I was once taken to Panagia Sumela church inMacedoniaa and I hardly managed not to go crazy in the mountains. I suppose that Holy Mary saved me".

Ever since he was a child, lyre player Manolis Diamantakis, from Fourfouras village of Amari, Rethymnon, had an inclination to music. The only problem was that he had neither a lyre nor a bow. In the beginning, he made a makeshift lyre out of pear tree wood, with strings made of leather straps. He used horsetail hairs for the bow and struggled to play.

“I play music many hours a day. I start in the morning with the violin and then I go on with the piano. During the summer I stop for a while to swim and then I play the violin again”. Antonis Prekas from Emporio of Santorini is the son of the famous lute player Kyriakos and the grandson of the great violinist Antonis.

"I used to be naive and romantic. I thought that through music I would be able to share the pain and the joy with my friends, but I was disappointed. Some people use music as a weapon and they fight amongst themselves. We don’t want any part of this. We close our eyes and sing, not looking at the cameras when they turn towards us".

Into the deep fir forest of Maenalus, which looks like a jungle, there's the small village called Elati. One of the ten residents left in the village, is Leonidas Zafeiropoulos, the man who has raised a flag portraying Theodoros Kolokotronis at the entrance of his shop.

"I was born the year the Turks invaded Cyprus. It was all black back then. I grew up in my father's grocery store on Imvros, among spices, dried red peppers and okras threaded on small ropes. I kept my Greek nationality". Musician Stelios Berberis came to Greece in order to study economics and learn traditional music under Domna Samiou. When he finished his studies he came back to Constantinople.