Songs from the village of Ayiassos
With their ceaseless imagination and work, the inhabitants of Ayiasos, Lesbos, carved out an unsurpassable artistic and folk tradition. And raised with the melodies played by the magic flute of nature, such as the sound of the wind and the roars of winter storms,...
Angelique Ionatos’ Sappho De Mytilene
Greek poet Sappho was one of the greatest poets in classical literature. Her lyric poetry is among the finest ever written and, although little of her work has survived and little is known about her, she is regarded often as the greatest woman poet in world l...
Mariza Koch, Nikos Xydakis, Sappho
Composer Nikos Xydakis explains his approach to Sapho’s poetry: "I always found it very difficult to put a melody onto a direct, erotic speech. My motivation was to make the words sound convincing in my mouth. Regardless of whether they were spoken yesterday or t...
Sotiris Kakisis’ Sappho
Scholar Dimitrios Kargiotis notes the following about the way in which poet Sotiris Kakisis translated Sappho’s poetry into modern Greek: “Kakisis endeavours to attain totality against the fragmentary nature of the Sapphic corpus. He delves into a poetics of restitution, inven...
Do we really see everything on an archaeological site? What goes on when the visitors leave? What special requests do visitors make? Sotiris Gousis worked as a technician on the Acropolis for decades. He knows all its hidden secrets and shares a few of them with us…
Interviewee: Sot...
Nikos Kavvadias
Nikos Kavvadias was born on 11 January 1910 and died on 10 February 1975. He was a Greek poet, writer and a sailor by profession. He used his travels around the world, the life at sea and its adventures, as powerful metaphors for the escape of ordinary people, outside the boundaries of...
Songs about boats, part 4
Along with storm and the Sirocco a fishing boat came from Morocco. Along with the wind and the cold breeze a sailboat is sailing to Benghazi. Along with the fireship captain, a boat came from Algeria. And having Greece as a captain a frigate is headed to Egypt. Saint Nicholas...
Songs about boats, part 3
During their history, the Greeks - more than any other people in the world - have remained mariners without interruption; they have loved the sea, they have thought of it as a beautiful element, and they believed it had godlike powers. Greek song totally agrees with this...
Songs about boats, part 2
Greece is the largest shipowning nation in the world, as Greek shipowners control the highest share, 21%, of the global merchant fleet in terms of deadweight tonnes. During the last ten years the total capacity of the Greek merchant fleet, currently consisting of 5,520 ships,...
Songs about boats, part 1
A ship with a foreign flag, the small ship of Burnovas, ships from Chios, ships that never sailed, and so on. The list of Greek songs that contain references to ships and boats are just endless, because the sea is ever-present in the geography, the economy and the culture...
Tolkien wanted to create a mythology for the British ‘like that of the Greeks’. Was Galadriel, the queen of elves, inspired by Circe and Calypso? Bilbo by Odysseus? What do Ajax and Boromir have in common, and what is the link between the fate of Atlantis and the fall of Numenor?
Interviewee: Dim...
Zeibekiko, part 5
The zeibekiko songs that we have picked today talk about trucks and taxi drivers, but also about angels and the birds of the underworld. They take us to pointless walks before dawn and remind us of names of love, like Antigoni and Roza and Evdokia. And they enable us to appreciate...
Zeibekiko, part 4
Zeibekiko is one of the most characteristic Greek dances. This, and some musical instruments linked to folk tradition were recently included in the National Inventory of Cultural Heritage, by decision of the Minister of Culture. Together with zeibekiko, the three-string and four-string...
Zeibekiko, part 3
One of the good things with zeibekiko is that songs with this rhythm have been performed by all of the country’s greatest singers. A tribute to zeibekiko is a tribute to all those magical voices that made folk, popular music, the fantastic genre that it is today. So, let’s explore the...
Zeibekiko, part 2
According to some analysts, zeibekiko is named after the Zeibek people and is reported to have spread to Greek urban centres in the late 19th century. Being originally a dance of two people carrying arms, it evolved into a single improvisational dance. Initially it was considered...
Zeibekiko, part 1
This week is dedicated to Greece’s best known folk dance, zeibekiko. Also called the “dance of the eagle” due to the movements of the dancer, this circular dance has no set steps and is largely improvised. This first leg of our journey takes us to zeibekiko anthems performed by, a...
In the middle of the 16th century, the painter Domenikos Theotokopoulos, who would later become widely known as El Greco, painted an icon of the Virgin Mary in Crete. Wars, revolutions, massacres, and persecutions followed. People fled, taking this icon with them across the Aegean, and the identity...
Kastellorizo
The album that we are listening to today, titled “A drop of light in the Aegean Sea”, is a collection of music and songs from the beautiful island of Kastelorizo. Embedded in the wider Dodecanese tradition, Kastellorizo presents a wealth of songs structured on the manners of Ancient and...
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