Listening to Papazoglou and my heart exploding
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
In the late 1980s, I was overseas, in England first to attend seminars by the late Dimitris Tsaloumas who was a resident poet there, and upon whose poetry I was carrying out postgraduate research.
I then continued to Greece, to Almiropotamos, the village on the island of Evia that my parents hailed from. I had also recently separated and felt the weight of failure on my then slender shoulders. It was too soon to accept the undeniable fact that I had married too young.
Loss of love and enveloped by aloneness
Although my parents were supportive, it was a time when the Greek-Australian community was very conservative – I envisaged myself enwrapped in a self-conceived stigma that was difficult to transcend.
I was spoiled for choice in who I stayed with in Almiropotamos – grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins, as well as good friends – made through many trips to Greece, with my parents, and on my own. I had always felt a deep affinity with the Greek landscape, the people there.
After the first few days of exchanging news, my relatives and friends resumed their busy lives. Although Evia is not a ‘touristy’ hotspot, it has always attracted a local holiday makers in the summer.
Almiropotamos is divided into two parts: the upper village peopled by farmers, self-employed tradesmen and the odd shopkeeper; and the seaside section, which back then was a thriving fishing village and Greek holidaymakers’ paradise.
I stayed with my grandparents in the upper village. I occupied the beautiful second bedroom, filled with exquisite furniture that my carpenter grandfather had made himself.
I was loved and looked after, and I ate delicious food yet, I had never felt more alone.
I had resigned from my position as a senior teacher in a busy inner-Melbourne high school and I was drifting in a sea of vacuousness. No partner, no job, no foreseeable prospects on any front, personal or professional.
After a few weeks, the weather became very hot, and I decided to walk every day to the seaside section for a swim. It is about a half-hour walk which I would embark upon just after lunch, as that was the time when the dirt road was desolate – no people, no donkeys with riders, no cars – empty. A feeling of utter isolation framed my innate aloneness; just the rhythmic sound of my footsteps and the cicadas’ hypnotic singing, punctuated by glimpses of the sea in the distance. Intense heat, with the promise of the impending coolness of the water.
The empty road to Nikos Papazoglou
To fill the emptiness, I began to listen to Greek music. Almiropotamos is surrounded by mountains, so my rudimentary transistor radio only picked up a local radio station, so my walks were inevitably accompanied by island folksongs – that is until a couple of weeks in.
The local DJ announced that he was going to play songs from an album by a certain Nikos Papazoglou. I had never heard this name before and just assumed it would be more of the same.
The album was called Haratsi (Χαράτσι) and the first song that I heard was Idrohoos (Υδροχόος) (the Greek word for Aquarius). When I heard the title of the song, I thought it would be a sort of Greek version of the Age of Aquarius song that was a massive hit in the 1970s when I was in high school.
Papazoglou’s song was full of distinctive drumbeats, a complex rhythm, voices that collectively sounded like Byzantine hymns and words that spoke, not of some utopian ‘Aquarius age’, but of the certainty of love within an ever-changing landscape.
The second song was a mesmerising zeimbekiko that extolled the virtues of drinking and revelling as a pathway to remembering past heartache. The next, Αvgoustos (Αύγουστος), was a glorious symphonic triumph of a love affair that is doomed to hurt us, but that we are propelled to hurtle towards anyway. Xtes Vradi (Χθες Βράδυ) was a sort of Greek jazz number, hypnotic and beautiful.
I bought tapes of his albums and listened to them on those walks all summer long, joyfully lugging a heavy tape recorder on my shoulder the whole way. I was captivated by it. The music affected me on a visceral level and I started to connect to everything around me.
Following the music: Pilgrimage to Thessaloniki
It was Papazoglou’s music that led me to Thessaloniki. I never had any great desire to venture beyond Evia, but I wanted to see this singer in concert. I wanted to spend some time in the immediate environment that produced these phenomenal singers/lyricists/composers who were producing these extraordinary sounds with Greek music.
There were several artists collectively producing the ‘Thessaloniki Sound’: Nikos Xydakis, Manolis Rassoulis, Savina Yannatou, Heimerini Kolymvites, Socratis Malamas, Dionysis Savvopoulos, Melina Kana, to cite just a few. Papazoglou ran his own recording studio, ensuring a level of creative freedom for himself unimaginable by other more mainstream artists.
Their themes were expansive, from social justice, and displacement from country, to love’s joy and abandonment. Their musical influences were also expansive from Asia Minor, Byzantine hymnology to jazz, punk rock, and experimental music modes. It is no accident that it was in my ‘Thessaloniki years’ that I grew to love the music of The Cure and Talking Heads.
Papazoglou – talisman for a new love
It was at a luncheon with friends in the Modiano district where I met Nikos Papazoglou. It is common to be disappointed when we meet artists we so admire –not this time. He was softly spoken, gracious, interested in my research, and was moved that his family’s experience as refugees from Asia Minor had similarities to my parents’ experience of migration. He spoke about his non-Greek wife, acknowledging her impact on his creative endeavours.
I met my own life partner, Christos Avramoudas, shortly after a university student there in the School of Fine Arts, Thessaloniki born and bred, whose intricate ancestry spanned this city’s major cultural influences. We made Thessaloniki our home for some years, finally marrying there.
I love Greek dancing and danced to Papazoglou’s music throughout my pregnancy (the only thing that alleviated my morning sickness…). I was incredulous many years later when my adult daughter, who doesn’t particularly care for Greek dancing, got up to accompany me at an event and danced the most beautiful Asia Minor Smyrneiko dance – effortlessly carrying out the graceful footsteps, through to the gentle accompanying hand movements. I wonder whether this was an instinctive reaction or a deeply ingrained memory.
Too young to die – but the song remains
I was profoundly saddened when Nikos Papazoglou passed away in 2011, at the age of 63, after a long battle with cancer. His passing was mourned throughout Greece, but particularly so in Thessaloniki where perhaps his most famous song, Kaneis edo den Tragouda (Κανείς εδώ δεν Τραγουδά), echoed for days. May he be eternally remembered, and his songs ever enjoyed.
His music has accompanied me through life’s sorrows and joys. I hope that readers are inspired to listen to his albums – all of which are readily accessible online. As I always do, I would like to leave the last word to the artist himself. He wrote about so many themes, but it is his songs about love – in all its complexity – that he is best remembered for.
This is my translation of a love song that I first heard on that dusty island road all those years ago:
You’ll come on a rainy night
on some Saturday evening
you’ll show up like a lightning strike
that cuts through the dark sky
your voice will be fresh and cool
your eyes will by glowing
your words will reach me
like the sound of distant church bells…
Nikos Papazoglou in 1991 performing Αvgoustos (Αύγουστος)
*Konstandina Dounis is a cultural historian, writer, literary translator at the Monash Education Academy, Monash University
The original article: belongs to NEOS KOSMOS .
