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student strike, one day they were not allowed into the building to teach. “So we had nothing to do and we thought what a waste of time… maybe we should get together and play instead as we’re all musicians. We sat down and played a few songs and we liked it so much we formed the Apsilies,” Dimitris recalls.
The singer on their album is the remarkable young Theodora Athanasiou, who was one of their students – you can hear her guesting with Loxandra on this issue’s fRoots 40 compilation as well as with Apsilies themselves on fRoots 38 – but when they sing in Greece they collaborate with other singers as well.
The members of Apsilies are spread across the country which means that prac- tising is made slightly impractical. Euge- nios lives in Patra where he does music for theatre and teaches at the Odeon as well: he’s working with music from Afghanistan and Persia and jazz improvisations and is an expert in makams, Arabic-Persian octaves. Apostolis is a multi-instrumental- ist who lives in Arta and collaborates close- ly with a lot of contemporary Greek singers like Mitsias and Lekkas. Theodora has her own career as a singer in Athens and Dimitris himself is in Thessaloniki. But as Dimitris says, “We don’t need any par- ticular preparations, we usually meet a couple of days before our concerts, but we often don’t end up practising, instead we drink tsipoura and so on, but we manage rather well.” They know the songs so well, since this is the material that they teach in the college. “The problem we have,” he says, “is what songs to play, not how to play them.” There are so many great songs that choosing is a hard task, he explains.
D
imitris’ interest in music started in primary school where he had a teacher who was so crazy about music he would teach normal curriculum subjects for three hours and the rest of the day he’d dedicate to teaching the class music. “This teacher was very autonomous and a little mad, in a good sense, and I owe a lot to him,” Dimitris says, though he is the only one from that class of pupils who contin- ued with a musical career. Even though they were found out, and the headmaster knew they were not following the nation- al curriculum, nothing much was done about it and they even performed a con- cert at the school. “This is the perfect teacher, someone who will show you the way, not someone who only teaches you reading and writing. He showed me and put me on route to my professional career. We were buying simple instru- ments like flutes and harmonicas, nothing fancy. I don’t remember any particular songs we’d play but we were playing Greek folk songs and traditional music mainly in his class.”
But how did he get into rembetika music? “In the ’80s there was the second revival of rembetika. The first was in the ’60s with Markos Vamvakaris whose music started to be re-recorded, and Bithikotsis amongst others covered these songs. Then in the ’80s all the rembetika bands started emerging playing these old songs again. That was when, in the area where I lived, culture, music and the theatre scene was flourishing from small independent groups and workshops, and that’s how I got involved with rembetika.” He adds that rembetika music never lost its
momentum since that second revival in the ’80s. Dimitris believes this is because “rem- betika songs are immediate, just like any laika music they don’t need to be explained or specially analysed by the brain, they hit your soul straight away and that’s why they are surviving.”
Apsilies have performed in France, Belgium, Holland, Austria and Portugal and all the gigs were sold out, attended by mostly non-Greeks, Dimitris tells me, slightly surprised perhaps that foreigners also show such great interest in the music he loves and plays. “People get pleasure from our music when they see us playing and enjoying ourselves, so they don’t care that they don’t get the lyrics.”
However what happens through the years with traditional songs is that the people welcome this music with open arms. “If no one was liking and accepting this music, it’d be forgotten. These songs have grown up and matured with time in a wise way, because they were once cre- ated with a lot of wisdom. So there is no need to actively work to save this music any more or spread it further. The music is there and ready to be discovered by people. I think it’s time for people to search for the music, rather than the music searching for its audience,” Dim- itris says, optimistically, as he is a strong believer that music makes you a better human being. “And in these hard times we will learn to return to what is sub- stantial in our lives, to what makes us feel better and be better and live bet- ter,” he adds philosophically.
Apsilies will make their UK debut on the Charlie Gillett stage at Womad Charl- ton Park on Saturday 28th July.
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