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Mikis Theodorakis
He managed to get audiences to love his music worldwide, despite his songs being sung in Greek, she says. He composed music for the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca and Pablo Neruda amongst others, and his oratorios have been performed with Farantouri as lead singer around the world.
I ask Farantouri how all the works that Theodorakis composed reached her while she was in France and England and Theodorakis was either in police custody or otherwise imprisoned. “He’d always find secret ways to send me his material,” she says. “There was a journalist from an English newspaper who managed to visit Theodorakis while he was in police custody, and his every move and meeting was followed. Somehow the journalist was given a blazer, which contained sheet music for Katastasi Poliorkias, (State Of Siege) behind the buttons on the inside of the jacket.“
Farantouri says she lived some of her truly important moments in London. She found a Cypriot conductor and per- formed the compositions, presenting them in London’s Royal Albert Hall. Then these songs would reach Greece through Deutsche Welle and BBC radio, spreading the word that Farantouri had sung the new Theodorakis compositions in London.
Even the Beatles recorded Mikis Theodorakis’ music, Faran- touri tells me. She met Paul McCartney and John Lennon in the studio not long before the band broke up. She was invited over to sing for them as a move to show they were honouring Greece by singing Theodorakis’ songs. The Honeymoon, a well-known Greek song An thymitheis to Oneiro mou, was sung by the Beatles and eventually released on 1994’s Live At The BBC.
After working closely with Theodorakis for 50 years, her voice is linked with the songs that gave Greece and its oppressed people hope. If Theodorakis is the legend, then Farantouri may be the spirit of Greece. It’s a heavy title to carry and it seems, sadly, that Greece needs those songs now again. But there are no concerts or gathering like that now that Greece is struggling. Theodorakis is not banned and Farantouri’s freedom is not in danger so the move to sing for freedom as before is not present. Farantouri says it’s the people who don’t have an urgency to go out on the streets and demonstrate: they stay at home nowadays. The difference now is that “We do not know who the enemy is. Back then the enemy was the military dictatorship, today the enemy is the markets and they have no face,” Farantouri says.
I wonder what other music has influenced her. “Ah, I’ve always liked the voices of Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, Joni Mitchell.” All of these have a voice that is singing songs that are here to stay, she explains. As another love of hers is jazz, she has recently been in collaboration with jazz legend Charles Lloyd after he came to see her sing in the US. It was a very touching moment the first time they met, Farantouri says. “He took my hand and asked if they ‘could build a bridge and cross over to the other side together’ in a very poetical way.”
This is more than a musical collaboration on stage. They’ve become friends and Lloyd is a great fan of Greece, its culture, his- tory and music. Their album Athens Concert has three songs by Theodorakis and one by Eleni Karaindrou, another established current Greek composer who amongst other things has written the scores for Theo Angelopoulos’ movies. The rest of the songs on the collaboration are traditional Greek. The bridge Lloyd wanted to build with Farantouri is helped by the politiki lyra, played by Sokratis Sinopoulos (fR 355) and of course by Farantouri’s voice. The Afro-American jazz and traditional Greek melodies and rhythms flow together, while Lloyd’s saxophone captures the essence of the Greek melancholic soul and sorrow.
This is one of the few times that I have not asked all my questions in an interview and I tell her this, adding that it’s because she has been reading my mind somehow and answered them anyway. So very perceptive and thoughtful, Maria Faran- touri is a timeless goddess.
www.farantouri.gr F
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