Greece: Giorgos Alkaios & Friends OPA!
EUROVISION 2010 – With OPA explanation!
Giorgos Alkaios & Friends will perform their OPA!*** in Oslo tonight. The Telenor Arena will open for the first Semi-Final of the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest.
This morning I watched the OPA-Video for the first time.
I started with Alkaios & Friends performing at the national Greek contest, wearing black. Dark men, slightly overweight, jumping around. Oh, Oh, I have a cultural gap! Are they from Crete or from Pontus?
The music? A mixture of Greek, Balkan and Arabesque with a touch of outer space LEDs drums.
The lyrics? Prophetic and inspiring for the debt-driven Greeks!
Promising Alkaios sings : “I paid what I owed and borrowed”. Here is my turn to shout OOOOPA!”
Accidentally I came upon an OPA- video-parody by Alexisger with Karagiozis (turk. Karagöz), the famous shadow-theater hero, who had been extensively using Opa! at his performances.
Finally I watched Alkaios & Friends rehearsing in Oslo, dressed in white. Not bad at all to leave outside the Oslo Arena the wild-macho, Greek-lover elements and come an idea closer to cool & purist, athletic , kind of North-European IKEA style. This I liked much, much better! Style & Perfomance were better, music & lyrics remained the same…
***What is an OPA?
Grammatically an interjection or exclamation the two vowels-one consonant “OPA” is used by Greeks to express emotions. It’s a kind of “verbal emoticon”, so to say…
Dancing Greeks articulate “OPA!” in order to express content, confirmation and rewarding. The interjection has then a similar meaning to English “Yeah!”
Non-dancing Greeks say “Opa!” either to express surprise or even imperatively to say to someone “Hold on!”