Interview in "MEN" - december2004

[Geske 37]

I'm refering everyone to

http://www.dalaras.com/forum/index.php?s=8...=16&t=2097&st=0

for the original text and for the two pages of (rather startling) FOTOS.

This is a hurried translation, not a slow careful one like when I take days or weeks to translate an interview, but to obtain your forgiveness I'm counting on your being as impatient as I am to hear all about the new record and the plans for the winter.

So here goes for the introduction.

MEN December 2004

Giorgos Dalaras

«The man with the thousand faces and the single unique voice»

interview by Nikos Nikiteas

The first thing, possibly, that comes to your mind when you hear the name of Giorgos Dalaras is "the man who has done almost everything there is in music". Because, very simply, he has travelled around practically every musical region, has taken up a host of musical instrument, has worked together with a host of different people, and always with that - almost irritating - perfectionism and total devotion. And yet, one more time, he manages to change, and to surprise us, as the artistic happening of the winter bears his signature. A new mood, a new record (Sta tragoudi pou sou grafo - In the songs I write for you) and Antonis Remos by his side: nothing is as it used to be. The one thing that has not changed is his taste for a laiko/popular celebration with full-blood laika songs.

[Geske 37]

Question: "Most people have called your collaboration with Antonis Remos in Peiraios "unexpected". You have astonished us, I might add."

Dalaras: "From that point of view, there is a nice challenge, and I hope you won't misunderstand me, choosing to take it that way, I mean the words in the positive sense. I like it to be challenging and I feel a need to take it up. Besides, as you know, I have answered other such challenges in the past.

Question: "I have a feeling, though, that this is a different case."

Dalaras: "I realize that this collaboration is calling up a lot of questions, and to some people, in fact, may even seem inconceivable. I perceive that our circle is fighting, divided right down the middle. Half are astonished and the other half cry bravo. On the other hand, we aren't doing anything unethical..."

Question: "No, of course not, but the question remains: what did you see in Antonis Remos that moved you to single him out?"

Dalaras: "To begin with, for the past few years I have been keeping an eye on him from afar, I've been to see him [on stage] three or four times, but I never was a close friend of his. The thing, then, that I realized about Antonis, is that we have here a singer of great strength: I've seen him do a three-hour programme [non-stop] without cracking his voice. To me, that means a lot. Besides, these last two years, it has moved me to see his attempt to get closer to another kind of singing, different from the one that set him up."

Question: "The fact that he sang Mikis Theodorakis made it easier for you to open the door to working together?"

Dalaras: "Exactly. I have always worked with the good ones, and Remos is a good singer. He is a laiko paidi [sorry, I can't think of less than half a page of explanation for this expression - G.], his intentions are good, and he loves the art of song. I think he is the most appropriate person with whom to do what I mean to do. And if all goes well, I have a mind to go to materialize some schemes I have for shows and travels.

to be continued... -G.

[Geske 37]

Question: "What is it that you have in mind, exactly, to do with Remos this winter?"

Dalaras: "From this summer on, I have started to see things in a lighter light [pun by the translator - sorry - G.]. Compare it to the painters who go through different periods in their life (the grey period, the red period, and so on); for me, too, a time has come - and this need comes from inside me - to experiment with own self, doing rather different "Pictures at an exhibition", pictures that will have a different colouring, with more light. Something like that is how I see our work in that [new] venue."

Question: "Meaning that the passing of the years has softened something inside you?"

Dalaras: "Certainly. And I want to be quite honest about this. When you live the life of an artist, you can not, from one moment to another, throw it away. What does happen is something else, namely [that you exercise your] right to introspection. It's a right that all human beings have, to look inside themselves at one point or another. As time goes by, you find out that the system is stronger than the individuals, and that, for better or worse, the world changes at its own pace. Maybe the time has come for a new beginning in some matters that spring chiefly from inside me. Anyway, it is with this good humour that I am entering into this experiment with Antonis.

to be continued....

[Geske 37]

Question: "What else does this new beginning signal?"

Dalaras: "Before leaving behind me my many activities in this line of work, I want to approach those young people (meaning the younger section of the public) whom I did not have with me these past years, presumably because of my choices of these last years. I want them to see me, to listen to me, and to see it I am able to do something different. That new venue that we are making ready on Peiraios street is another incentive for me.

Question: "When will you be starting?"

Dalaras: "We will start on the 15th of December, in a venue that will be unique in Greece, as much for size as for what it's like inside. It will hold over 7000 people.

to be continued........

[Diane 34]

Many, many thanks Geske!

[Geske 37]

Question: "What will you be singing together?"

Dalaras: "Everything. Our appearance together will last a good while and it will comprise many genres, with a different accent and colour. It will be a very bright programme, very entertaining, totally extraverted and not at all koultouriariko [meaning all that is boring and none of what's interesting about Culture - G.]. It will be entirely founded upon the laiko/popular song, such a everyone has loved and needs for enjoyment. The fact is that I want to take part in a programme where people will be enjoying themselves in all possible ways.

Question: "In this selection of songs, Remos' songs got in at the side?"

Dalaras: "They are things we can not separate from Antonis, as he has done them."

to be continued.........

p.s. Diane, you know, translating a Dalaras interview is my way of savouring it, extracting every last drop of enjoyment... lucky that the User's Manual for a Vacuum Cleaner (which is what I'm supposed to be doing at the moment) is not due too urgently :p

[Diane 34]

Hmm, a Dalaras interview or a vacuum cleaner manual (!) ..... difficult choice!!

How lucky for us that you actually get so much enjoyment from this.

[Geske 37]

Question: "How was it managed?"

Dalaras: "The people I have worked with, over the years, even if their songs have a different climate, understand my disposition... Antonis, though, has made a double record with 40 songs that are of the best that has been made in these past years in Greek music, so you can't say he lacks repertoire. Of course, songs of another kind get in too, but some times these too are needed, in order to colour the programme... And don't forget that some of those "outcast" songs are excellent."

[Geske 37]

Question: "When you made public that you were going to work with Remos, many people wondered: 'are we going to see Dalaras sing also with other singers from that night-club line of music?' "

Dalaras: "Why, no!"

Question: "What is the distinction, then?"

Dalaras: "Human beings have a right to change, as they have a right to correct themselves. Remos definitely is not your singer who is relying on cheap effects, he relies on the song, the singing, itself. He never took off his clothes for provocation, he didn't do weird acts. The human being has right to grow better. I admire people who begin somewhere and then reach a higher level.

Question: "So that if Despoina Vandi sings something else, it's possible that you would work with her?"

Dalaras: "Meaning, something like Aleksiou's songs? Of course, then I'd work with anyone who has a voice."

to be continued.........

[Geske 37]

Question: "A little while ago, listening to your new CD "Sta tragoudi pou sou grafo - In the songs I write for you", I was wondering what 'contemporary laiko/popular song' means, and what content you give to that term in 2004."

Dalaras: "We will have to see what the wider world makes of it. I don't know how much people change, as the decades pass, but I do believe that some things do remain stable. There are aspects of everyday existence that people keep the way they are. Things like, for example, food and clothes and a way to move around are things of first necessity. And just so song - given the fact that we are a singing people - is a stable given fact of our life. To answer your question, then, I'd say that 'laiko/popular' is that song which keeps us company in our everyday existence."

Question: "For all that, you will admit, I suppose, that the laiko of the '70s and '80s is different from today's."

Dalaras: "Today's changes faster, the way everything is changing faster around us, we live at different speeds. The singing of the decades of the 50s and 60s and 70s formed one whole. It lay close to a people that formed one whole, united, with shared wants. It was characterized by a different kind of lyrics, and it was used to denounce or to describe. Now, the times are different, and the things that mark people's lives are not the same as back then. Loneliness has always existed, but nowadays, one would say you "cut" it with a knife! That is an element that singing that could not leave out. It describes it, just as it describes the speed [of life], but also the fight for tomorrow. At least such as want to describe that, because there is also a class of songs that don't attempt to describe anything at all. That's the chewing-song, like chewing-gum, the one we chew up and spit out afterwards."

to be continued........

[Geske 37]

"the chewing-song"!

this is pure delight.

[Geske 37]

Question: "How do laika get written nowadays? Does it still hold true that they are collective songs, as they used to?"

Dalaras: "Of course they are. Friendship and communication among people is another of those prime necessities of life. Don't forget that groups of friends are dynamic entities, and that friendships get around. In record-making, I have been existing for years in this collective way of thinking. We are changing, though, our work goes on, we grow older, we makes hits, we become unapproachable - either through our own fault or because others see us as unapproachable and so don't even try to ring up. So you lose some people and find others again, and that what keeps it interesting."

Question: "In the case of the new CD, what happened, exactly?"

Dalaras: "This CD has been created collectively, mostly by musicians. There is Stamos Semsis, who is a member of the Kamerata, the man of symphonic music, but also the grandson of the great laiko/popular composer Dimitris Semsis who came from Polis [Constantinople or Istanbul, as you will - G.], who was the best violin player of the Balkan at the beginning of the [20th] century. So this is a guy who smells the smell of daily life and comes into the laiko/popular song. He is the one who set the lyrics by Giorgos Pavrianos, a friend and one of us for many years. There is also Antonis Vardis, a heart's friend from the time of the 'boites', I know him like my own pocket and he knows me like his guitar! He embellished with his music the lyrics by Antonis Andrikakis, Lina Dimopoulou, Zoe Panagiotopoulou and others. Then there is Lakis Papadopoulos, a friend for many years, whom I asked for a song. And there a recent friend, Stelios Gargalas, a musician to be reckoned with and solo violin player."

Question: "So, we are talking about songs belonging to a group of people?"

Dalaras: "Exactly. The songs of a group of people who writes with a sense of beauty, and with a variety of lyrics; simultaneously with a simmering restlessness and a taste for sarcasm and irony against presumptions.

to be continued............

translator's note: in the above, all the references to "group of people", "group of friends", "collective" and so on translate the single (important) greek concept of "parea", which has no equivalent in english (that I know of).

[Geske 37]

Question: "What is music to you?"

Dalaras: "Poetry of sound. Music had the power to do the same job as poetry - [though] maybe to lesser degree, because it has no exact meanings, only impression.

to be continued........

[Geske 37]

actually I don't quite agree with him

I think music and poetry DO have the same effect, but the difference is not of degree, rather of mode of action: poetry is more effective on the conscious mind and music on the unconscious (though both obviously affect both the conscious and the unconscious, or else they just chewing-songs).

[Geske 37]

Question: "Who put you inside this whole story of music and singing?"

Dalaras: "My father did. He was a laiko/popular musician who played several instruments, but chiefly the bouzouki. He had an excellent voice, unique, and at the same time he was an excellent composer. It's a well-known fact that the first song that Kaiti Grey sang in 1952, and gained fame, was my fathers: "Th'anevo kai tha tragoudiso sto pio psylotero vouno - I will climb up and sing on the most tallest mountain". A classic. [see Apo Kardias 2 track 17 for his own version - G.].

Question: "What kind of person was your father?"

Dalaras: "In my entire life, I've seen hem ten times at most, he was always travelling. He was free; that which made him who he was, though, was music. Everyone considered him an excellent musician."

Question: "What did you get from him?"

Dalaras: "Everything, except his actually being present. His talent, though, I'll never equal that, he was way ahead."

to be continued.............

[Geske 37]

Question: "What is left to you of those experiences?"

Dalaras: "I got though and quick; you develop a survival instinct, which may also make you a difficult kind of person. There were times, of course, when I was cursing inside me, cursing my bad luck, but the general end result is good. I have had lots of friends, from when I was a small kids on; I have had a lot of laughs; I have travelled all over the place and I have done all sorts of things from improvised rock-climbing to improvised sea-diving, somersaults with motorbikes, and going into ravines with cars..."

to be continued..........

[Geske 37]

Question: "After 35 years of constant presence at the front of the musical stage, don't you feel a bit like you've become an institution?"

Dalaras: "I'll accept the bit about the constant presence, but the 'institution' has about it something of conservatism which personally I object to. Did I really manage to become an institution? Bravo to me. Imagine that, a kid born in a Peiraias barracks, to become an institution!"

Question: "How do you experience the weight that attaches to your name?"

Dalaras: "I think it gets used a great deal too much. I'd rather see Giorgos, than Dalaras. From a certain moment, it's been overdone - a lot has been said as to good, a lot has been said as to bad. It seems people revel in myth-making, but for me it's tiresome.

to be continued..............

[Geske 37]

Question: "Are there any composers with whom you would like to work?"

Dalaras: "I have worked with most of them. I have not collaborated as much as I wished with Stavros Ksarxakos, with Dimos Moutsis and with Dionysis Savvopoulos on original songs."

Questions: "Is it true that you were critical of Savvopoulos' decision, at the Irodeio, to put Kalomoira inside the pie?"

[this refers to a typical Savvopoulos stunt in a recent concert - G.]

Dalaras: "As Giorgos, I can not see how he is justified; but I can look and see him as Savvopoulos, because we are utterly different characters. I'll let it be, because it happened, but I can't applaud it, I don't know how useful it was. But since I've been watching Savvopoulos for years, I know he's always been doing things like that, he likes a circus, he like Karagiozis, he like the farcical. He is a man who loves provocation, rather unpredictable.

to be continued............

[Geske 37]

Question: "About 'fame story', what would you say?"

Dalaras: "It's selling moonshine and nothing else. It's well done on the technical side, but as a concept it is a bad job as far as society is concerned. I would prefer something more honest, such as there used be with "na i efkairia - here's the chance", without all the trappings. Music is being used as a cover-up. That fairy-tale about the academy and the professors is meaningless and depreciating. But it seems that nowadays, the more you despise people, the better you fare.

Question: "Are there any good voices in there?"

Dalaras: "I have heard some good voices - but weren't we saying a little while ago that we are a singing people?"

Question: "Would you work with any of those kids?"

Dalaras: "I wouldn't have a problem with it, if the voice were good. But I would tell that kid that he or she has lost as much as they have gained."

Question: "Did you notice any good voice?"

Dalaras: "The ones who came out first were not the best. Usually, the best voices came in second and third. I'd single out the voice of Grigoris Petrakos."

to be continued............

[Geske 37]

Question: "May I suppose that you are continuing to consider the world from a [politically] Left point of view?"

Dalaras: "Yes, never mind if it's supposed to be out of fashion. I believe that it is the counterweight, to balance the pendulum of history."

Question: "I am aware that Nikos Konstantopoulos is a friend of yours, and as it happens, in recent times his name has been named very seriously for the post of President of the Democracy [the head of the Greek state, I'm not sure I got the right standard English term; anyway most of the actual dirty work of governing gets done by the prime minister - G.]

Dalaras: "There is a deep friendship between Nikos and me. The man is a credit to Greek society, a man who has really fought, who has earned his credentials as a fighter. He never at any time avoided standing up straight and speak up. He is truly of the Left. I believe that if the proposal is made, he owes it to himself to accept. He is a needed man, for his ethical and political thinking."

αυτά - G.

[Geske 37]

If you find any bits that don't seem to make sense, PLEASE do tell me. There are bound to be mistakes, I just checked Word's statistics and it tells me I have translated that thing at over 500 words/hour, which is preposterous and rather frightening.

I really have to go back to the vacuumcleaner now, but I'll try and do a re-read later. I'd hate to make him say things he didn't...........

And DO look at the greek topic or else you'll miss the FOTOS!

[Anna 752]

YES, have a look at the photos!!! Otherwise you would miss the photo where Dalaras was screaming as loud as he could.

that photo was taken when Dalaras had a look at the other photos!

[Michael 2]

 YES, have a look at the photos!!! Otherwise you would miss the photo where Dalaras was screaming as loud as he could.

that photo was taken when Dalaras had a look at the other photos!  

:lol:

[Apostolis 2,082]

:lol: :lol:

[Astron 17]