"Loxandra" ensemble was found in 1997 in Thessaloniki (Greece) from percussionist Loukas Metaxas and kanun player Dimitris Vasiliadis. Kyriakos Tapakis was also "Loxandra's" oud player from the beginning.
They start playing music from the "café aman", the places that the Rum people, (Greek immigrants from Minor Asia, Cappadokia and Istanbul), played the songs of Turkish "meyhane" (tavernas), after they came in Greece. That music, believed to be the "Mother of Rempetiko", the music of the Greek "underground" people.
Loxandra ensemble was the first band in Greece (after the second world war) that specialized in this kind of music, with the same instruments that used originally, like in the past!
(Without bouzoukis, lutes, guitars, modern drums etc, that came later in this music).
When the band reformed in 2003 from D. Panagoulias, D. Vasiliadis and L. Metaxas, they opened their music horizons playing also traditional music from several parts of Nothern Greece and Nothern Agean and Eastern islands that their instruments are used, along with a great deal of Mediterranean music despite Greek, like Turkish, Arabic, Balkan, Gypsy and Sefaradic traditional, Ottoman classical, music from Azerbaijan, Black Sea, Armenian and many other, with respect in tradition but with an approach of their own influences.
Members of "Loxandra" or as a band, they have work with musicians like : Ross Daly,Chicko Freeman,Nikos and Yasemi Saragoudas, Kariofillis Doitsidis, Kudsi Erguner, Ziad Rajab, Domna Samiou, Christos Tsiamoulis, Eleni Vitali,, Kostas Anastasiadis, Kostas Theodorou, Sokratis Sinopoulos, Katerina Papadopoulou and many others.
They play in festivals, concerts, music scenes, weddings, private parties and they have play for a number of belly dancers from Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Germany and the U.S.of America.
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