35 f The Greek Café
The second of this issue’s bands reviving cross-cultural Café Aman music from the turn of the last century. Elisavet Sotiriadou meets Thessaloniki’s Loxandra.
I
t’s very windy. I’m outside Moni Lazariston, a former convent that’s now an arts and concert centre in Thessaloniki, and I’m looking for Loxandra – the band. I see a man
approaching and what stands out is his dyed blond goatee in the middle of his dark beard and long hair. His beard makes such an impression that I can’t stop look- ing at him, and I find myself listening in to his phone conversation because the wind is blowing the words he says in my direction. I suddenly realise that this is the person I am here to meet and, a little awkwardly, I tell him that it’s me he’s looking for!
So together Loucas Metaxas and I are searching for a spot for the interview, while we’re waiting for Dimitris Vasiliadis to appear. They are the two founding members of the music group Loxandra, but the Loxandra I know is a passionate- for-life-character from a famous Greek novel of the same name, based on a pow-
erful Greek matriarch from Constantino- ple, a doyenne of the Constantinople cui- sine who ruled by one thing only: deli- cious food. She’d even take dolmades to the cemetery when visiting the dead. The book, written by her granddaughter Maria Iordanidou, was turned into a TV series in Greece and recently a theatre production in which the band Loxandra played live music. The book not only gives a vivid and witty portrayal of the lifestyle and customs of Greeks living in Con- stantinople in the early 20th Century but also talks about the history of this cos- mopolitan city and the brutal resettle- ment of its Greek population.
For Loxandra, food was the best cure for almost anything and a way to cele- brate any occasion. Unfortunately, neither food nor music had the power to inter- vene in the dirty politics the Allied powers played which resulted in the Asia Minor catastrophe and the displacement and mass killings of the Greeks who had been
living in Anatolia – now Turkey – for over 3000 years, or the corresponding expulsion of Muslims from Greece to Turkey.
Loxandra, the band, play the tradi- tional songs of the Greeks who were liv- ing in the cities of Smyrna and Con- stantinople at that time. But they also have a wider repertoire of music from the Balkans, Caucasus, the Ottoman and Byzantine Empires in an effort to keep alive the musical traditions of those times and places, giving it a breath of fresh air yet respecting its originality and sound. Inspired by the novel and Loxandra her- self, Dimitris Vasiliadis, who is a Pontic Greek, says the name for the band was “my obsession and my idea. I thought it was a characteristic name and there was a link to the music we do via that name because of the environment the book is set in. But it doesn’t limit you. Under this name you can play anything. Also it has a nice sound to it and both Greeks and non- Greeks can say it.”
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