Greek Music Express

Today, here at GME, we are honouring the memory of an outstanding Italian singer-songwriter who was born on March 4, 1943 and who inspired a number of Greek colleagues of his. This multi-faceted artistic personality excelled in singing and songwriting, played clarinet and keyboards, and solidified his...

Greek Music Express is celebrating Clean Monday with songs that refer to a theme that is directly associated with this special festivity: Kites. The selection is endless, from Mikis Theodorakis' orchestral "Kites" to Diafana Krina’s "Torn Kite". Leading voices such as Anastasia Moutsatsou, Melina A...

“I found myself after the breakup at the station, in my carriage / a life in a suitcase my dead dreams / suddenly there in the crowd a voice so familiar / a voice that becomes a scream as it says my name / and the train started and you again far from me. And I wanted so much to tell you that I love y...

Today, here at GME, we are mourning the loss of a fantastic singer who sadly passed away yesterday at the age of just 65. Manolis Lidakis was born in beautiful Crete, the birthplace of endless music artists. His connection with music started at the age of 12, when he became a member of the Philarmonic...

Today’s tribute to songs about trains takes a more electrified turn with rock songs containing references to rail travel. Key protagonists of Greek rock are present, from Christos Thivaios to Dimitris Poulikakos and from Manolis Famellos to Vassilis Papakonstantinou. Also, rock mega-bands will be a...

Here at GME, we tried to think of the most appropriate way of honouring the souls lost at the Tempi disaster. We could spend hours talking about the inefficiency of the Greek state and the responsibilities of consecutive governments that undermined public services, privatised the Greek state railways...

We, here at GME, love trains. They are by far our favourite means of transportation, having offered us countless moments of departing, arriving, contemplating and a real sense of travel, especially in Northern Europe, in Belgium, Sweden, Wales and elsewhere. It is no coincidence that the name of our...

Today, we are exploring the contribution of Fotis Polymeris to the development of light song – the dominant style of music in Greece in the 1930s and 1940s. Polymeris, who passed away in 2013 at the age of 93, was one of the leading vocalists of his time and an equally talented songwriter who gave u...

Orfeas Peridis has been described as one of the most important singers-songwriters of his generation, although he prefers the word “troubadour”. As for Costas Makedonas, for more than 30 years he has stood out as one of the most expressive and uplifting modern male voices in art-folk. Today, here at ...

Who really was Nikos Gounaris and what enabled him to be accepted by everyone? What is it that launched and maintained his legend well beyond the confines of his genre, light song? The famous rebetiko musician Yiannis Papaioannou writes in his autobiography: “Of those so-called ‘Europeans’, only one i...

Kostas Hatzidoulis was a researcher, producer, writer and lyricist. A deep connoisseur and lover of folk and rebetiko, he dedicated his entire life to research and the production of records and books. Hatzidoulis curated dozens of compilations of old folk and rebetiko songs, as well as many record productions,...

This week, here at GME, we have been celebrating the outstanding work of Yorgos Kazantzis, a talented composer who has played a key role in boosting art song, the dominant genre of Greek music in the last half a century. Today, we will be exploring the song collections that he released in the 21st century...

Yorgos Kazantzis, one of the most important Greek composers, was born and raised in Thessaloniki, in the Kalamaria area. He has had numerous collaborations with prominent singers such as Dimitris Zervoudakis, Melina Kana and Pantelis Theoharidis, and has offered us some of the greatest art song collections...

The first period of Giorgos Kazantzis’ creative work strongly bears the characteristics of a musician seeking for his personal identity in the classical form, mainly, but also having basic influences from the modern Western world, rock and jazz music. His musical education, moreover, including theory, c...

Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, the general-in-chief of the Greeks in the Trojan war, avenges his father’s murder by his mother, Clytemnestra, and Aegisthus. This was his duty as expressed by his sister Electra and the oracle of Delphi. So, he returns to Mycenae from his hideaway and slays both of t...

This week, here at GME, we decided to commit all of our broadcasts to presenting the universe of a magnificent creator with a solid grip of melody and tons of sensitivity: Giorgos Kazantzis. The formal occasion is his 70th birthday tomorrow, on February 11. Kazantzis has been active in different fields...

The discographic debut of Iraklis Triantafyllidis, the 1976 “In Other Worlds” album, is widely regarded as a work of rare beauty by an artist who had the potential to become the ‘new face’ of Greek song in the second half of the 1970s – had he wanted to. The material itself, its sheer strength and dynam...

Naxatras is a hard psychedelic rock band from Greece. They play a warm psychedelia full of fat grooves, dreamy melodies, heavy riffs and trippy guitar solos all with the vintage touch of the 70's. They have been playing and developing their sound since 2012. "Naxatras", which was released in 2015, became...