Category: Music

Your Firework Eyes: what the lyricist said

By: | Post date: 2019-03-22 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Music

Michalis Bourboulis wrote the lyrics for Your Firework Eyes. Michalis Bourboulis has been interviewed about his greatest songs, including Your Firework Eyes. You can be a great artist, and still be a dick. For that matter, you can be a great artist, and still be clueless about what you’ve wrought. Bullying Stamos Semsis, the songwriter […]

Your Firework Eyes

By: | Post date: 2019-03-22 | Comments: 8 Comments
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Music

Your Firework Eyes, Τα βεγγαλικά σου μάτια, is a 1995 song (Lyrics: Michalis Bourboulis, Music: Stamos Semsis), first sung by Giorgos Dalaras, and covered the following year by Dimitris Mitropanos. It is a moving, fragile, beautiful song about the loss of love. And there are some interesting things about how it was put together, that […]

Crossover artists in Greek pop: the Malamas–Karras effect

By: | Post date: 2019-03-20 | Comments: 2 Comments
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Music

I am about to post here on late song renderings by Dimitris Mitropanos, and there’s something about what he did with his late repertoire that was special, but that I couldn’t quite put a name to. Mitropanos had a decades-long career as a Laiko artist: he worked in the mainstream Greek bouzouki pop tradition, singing […]

Why do Israelis love Stelios Kazantzidis’ music?

By: | Post date: 2017-08-18 | Comments: 1 Comment
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Music

I’ll give Stelios Kazantzidis – Wikipedia’s take, but I’m very interested in hearing from Israelis why Greek Levantine-flavoured music, and his in particular, appear to have had such resonance in Israel. In Israel, he was a musical icon. Many of his songs were translated into Hebrew and performed by the country’s leading singers. Yaron Enosh, […]

What influence has Bollywood had in Greek music?

By: | Post date: 2017-08-15 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Music

Material drawn from forum thread ΙΝΔΙΚΑ ΚΑΙ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ ΤΡΑΓΟΥΔΙΑ. There is a book on the influx of Bollywood tunes into Greek music: Ινδοπρεπών αποκάλυψη. Manuel Tasoulas & Eleni Ambatzi. 1998. Ινδοπρεπών αποκάλυψη [Revelation of the Indian-styled]. Athens; Περιβολάκι, Ατραπός. Bollywood productions were very popular in Greece in the 1960s; my mother remembers watching them as […]

Why is Greek music being exported so successfully to outside markets like the Balkans, Turkey and the Middle East?

By: | Post date: 2017-08-11 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Music

It’s kinda guess work, but this is my thinking on the topic. Musics of adjoining regions have a family resemblance. German music and Greek music don’t have a lot in common. But German music has things in common with Czech music, which has things in common with Hungarian, which has things in common with Romanian, […]

Hiotis vs Hendrix

By: | Post date: 2017-08-10 | Comments: 4 Comments
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Music

This is not high Greek culture. This is not even low Greek culture. This is stoopid Greek culture. But I got a laugh out of it, and I’m translating the YouTube comments about it. In the left corner: Jimi Hendrix. This audience, I assume, needs no introduction to him. In the right corner, Manolis Chiotis. […]

Why does Greece produce such amazing music?

By: | Post date: 2017-08-07 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Music

Given the amount of Greek songs that I’ve written about over at Hellenica, of course Greece has produced amazing music. The notion that it hasn’t, which Konstantinos Konstantinides’ answer gives, is to me as strange as the question itself seems to be to him. Of course, there’s a catch with the presumption behind this question. […]

What are the most “moving” and “emotional” Greek songs of all time?

By: | Post date: 2017-08-01 | Comments: 1 Comment
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Music

… No, I don’t think I’ve posted enough about Greek songs, actually. Other than Nick Nicholas’ answer to What’s the most recent song you’ve cried to?, here’s three more torch songs. Yes, all sung by George Dalaras, and I make no apologies for that. 1. My favourite song ever is Don’t Be Angry At Me, […]

Alkis Alkaios: Erotiko

By: | Post date: 2017-07-31 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Music

I think I may end up setting up a separate blog, just for Greek song lyrics. The mysticism and allusiveness of Greek songs never ceases to enchant me. Evangelos Lolos’ answer to What are the most “moving” and “emotional” Greek songs of all time? A rich harvest, with several songs I did not know, even […]

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