A true legend of Greek music, Kyria Koula, known as the “Canary of America,” was born in Constantinople in 1878. After falling in love and eloping with her future husband in Cairo, she emigrated to the United States in 1914.
Koula and Andreas Antonopoulos settled in Chicago, where they opened a grocery store. Before long, however, music took center stage. Kyria Koula possessed an extraordinary natural talent, while her husband came from a musical family. In 1918, the couple founded Panhellenion Records, and Kyria Koula’s voice soon rivaled that of Marika Papagika.
Born Kyriakoula Paschali, she left behind a remarkable legacy of pioneering recordings: more than 250 traditional, klephtic, religious, and patriotic songs, as well as zeibekika. She was the first to record a song about hashish, “The Zeibekiko of the Hashish Smokers,” and the first non-Muslim performer to sing a Turkish song.