DESCRIPTION:
Incidental song for the ethographical play ´´girls ready to get married``. It is a farewell to an old, cherished home which always smelled of basil. Interpreted by Panos Visvardis and Rena Dor. Visvardis was famous for his velvet-like voice and redorded quite a lot in the 1930´s.

The composer, a great figure and gentleman from Pilio and Smyrna educated in Berlin in the 1920´s, used to compose scholar music with his real name Yannis Konstantinidis and easy listening music with the nickname Kostas Yannidis. The greeks have only very recently found a fragile balance between scholar and popular, ideal and real, the latters were considered vulgar! Ariadne auf Naxos was first presented in the 1970´s in my country and never became our cup of tea, lol. Alekos Sakelarios was a beloved play, script and lyrics´ writer with quite a sharp pen in ethography.

In this composition I always admired the elaborate treatment of the melodic line.

The music landscape in Greece between the two great wars consisted mainly of the scholar (symphonic, opera, etc), the urban-popular and the rural-traditionnal music.The religious byzantine music of the orthodox church had quite an influnce on the musicality of people but mainly nurtured the scholar production. It never reproduced itself since there is no tradition in composing new works of religious music in Greece.

The urban-popular music contains songs or instrumental works. The rebetiko songs arised and flourished after 1922 when the Greeks of Asia Minor arrived in the mainland after been expulsed from their homeland. It was mainly the music of outcasts and poor people. Opposed to that was the ελαφρά μουσική (elafra mousiki=light=easy listening music) composed by musically educated bourgeois and destined to be heard by bourgeois going to the theatre, dance clubs and cabarets. They got their inspiration from operettas (waltzes, marshes, etc.) and lots of exotic to Greeks rythmes like tango, rumba, samba, habanera, fox trot etc. all imported from the West.

The illustrations are post cards from Athens, 1900-1950, found in the book by Yorgos Ioannou, Sideris 2001.

Video and text prepared for my e-friend Jurek46pink, as a sign of my respect. I just added some hiss and crackles, ok, just kidding J !

Enjoy