For generations of Greek music fans, two names have come to symbolize the country and its social and political struggles: the internationally acclaimed singer Maria Farantouri and the composer whose music she took to the world, Mikis Theodorakis, whom most Americans know primarily through his score for Zorba the Greek.
This weekend, Farantouri will sing some of Theodorakis’ songs in a rare Carnegie Hall performance — her first in nearly a quarter century.
Now 70 years old, Farantouri met Theodorakis when she was just 16 and training to be a classical singer. He was more than 20 years her senior — but they both immediately knew that she was to be his muse.
“I had the opportunity to sing one song solo,” she recalls, “and he asked me if you know that you were born to become a singer for my work, my priestess? I knew. I knew, and I said ‘Yes, I know.’ From then, I was on this big journey.”
Four years later, in the spring of 1967, a group of right-wing army colonels seized power in Greece, and the brutal junta lasted seven years. Theodorakis, who has always been politically active (although his views and alliances have changed over the years), had been imprisoned and tortured — even buried alive — for his left-wing views during Greece’s civil war, right after World War II.
Under the junta, he was imprisoned again, and his music was banned again. He and his family were banished to a mountain village, and eventually sent to a prison camp. But Theodorakis managed to send Farantouri a message, written on a gum wrapper, telling her to leave the country. She went into exile in Paris and later in London, where she became part of the social unrest sweeping the world.
Asma Asmaton – The Mauthausen Trilogy – Lyrics Iakovos Kambanellis (ex prisoner) live at Irodeion 2014
When the dictatorship finally collapsed in 1974, Theodorakis and Farantouri returned to Greece and played a televised concert in Athens. And even though their recordings had been banned, everyone knew their songs — and what they stood for.
Farantouri, who was born in a working-class suburb of Athens in 1947, when the country was struggling to recuperate from the Nazi occupation, was struck with polio as a toddler, and quarantined. After her initial success with Theodorakis, she began collaborating with other influential Greek composers, including Manos Hadzidakis and Eleni Karaindrou, and other international musical giants, including South African singer Miriam Makeba, jazz musician Charles Lloyd, and Australian classical guitarist John Williams. Joan Baez and Nels Cline have covered her songs.
In the late 1980s and early ’90s, Farantouri was even a member of the Greek Parliament; her husband, Telemachos Hitiris, is also a politician — and a poet. These days, she says, it’s sometimes hard to hold onto the idealism that has propelled her career. Hard-right politicians and nationalistic ideas are on the rise all over. And her country is still struggling with the economic crisis and the massive influx of refugees.
“Everything today is a spectacle,” she says. “I remember when I first saw the first Syrian child drowned in the sea — like with Vietnam, with that photo of the naked girl. Then, everybody was in the streets, we had demonstrations, we had for some days shock. Now, we’re used to seeing on television this spectacle.”
Maria Farantouri has spent her life trying to change society through song. She is still singing — and hoping that others will add their voices to hers. (full story and interview npr)
Carnegie Hall, NY, May 12 2018
