MIKIS THEODORAKIS, MUSIC AGAINST THE DICTATORSHIP

Mikis Theodorakis

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. Following the recommendations of the Health Department se does not go out and she is confined reading and listening to music. She has chosen Mikis Theodorakis. She loves this Greek composer and she adores all his songs, especially Tha Simanoun I Kabanes (When The Bells Will Ring) and To Yelasto Pedi (The laughing boy), two hymns against the dictatorship of the Colonels in Greece.

Mikis Theodorakis was born on a day like today in 1925 and The Grandma wants to pay homage to him talking about his life and his music.

Michael Mikis Theodorakis, in Greek Μιχαήλ Θεοδωράκης, born 29 July 1925, is a Greek composer and lyricist who has contributed to contemporary Greek music with over 1000 works.

He scored for the films Zorba the Greek (1964), Z (1969), and Serpico (1973). He composed the Mauthausen Trilogy, also known as The Ballad of Mauthausen, which has been described as the most beautiful musical work ever written about the Holocaust and possibly his best work. He is viewed as Greece's best-known living composer. He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.

More information: DW

Politically, he is associated with the left because of his long-standing ties to the Communist Party of Greece. He was an MP for the KKE from 1981-90. Nevertheless, in 1989 he ran as an independent candidate within the centre-right New Democracy party, in order for the country to emerge from the political crisis that had been created due to the numerous scandals of the government of Andreas Papandreou, and helped establish a large coalition between conservatives, socialists and leftists.

In 1990 he was elected to the parliament, as in 1964 and 1981, became a government minister under Constantine Mitsotakis, and fought against drugs and terrorism and for culture, education and better relations between Greece and Turkey.

He continued to speak out in favor of left-liberal causes, Greek–Turkish–Cypriot relations, and against the War in Iraq. He has consistently opposed oppressive regimes and was a key voice against the 1967–74 Greek junta, which imprisoned him and banned his songs.

Mikis Theodorakis

Mikis Theodorakis was born on the Greek island of Chios and spent his childhood years in different provincial Greek cities such as Mytilene, Cephallonia, Patras, Pyrgos, and Tripoli.

His father, a lawyer and a civil servant, was from the small village of Kato Galatas on Crete and his mother, Aspasia Poulakis, was from an ethnically Greek family in Çeşme, in what is today Turkey. He was raised with Greek folk music and was influenced by Byzantine liturgy; as a child he had already talked about becoming a composer.

His fascination with music began in early childhood; he taught himself to write his first songs without access to musical instruments. He took his first music lessons in Patras and Pyrgos, where he was a childhood friend of George Pavlopoulos, and in Tripoli, Peloponnese, he gave his first concert at the age of seventeen.

He went to Athens in 1943, and became a member of a Reserve Unit of ELAS, and led a troop in the fight against the British and the Greek right in the Dekemvriana.

During the Greek Civil War he was arrested, sent into exile on the island of Icaria and then deported to the island of Makronisos, where he was tortured and twice buried alive.

During the periods when he was not obliged to hide, not exiled or jailed, he studied from 1943 to 1950 at the Athens Conservatoire under Filoktitis Economidis.

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In 1950, he finished his studies and took his last two exams with flying colours. He went to Crete, where he became the head of the Chania Music School and founded his first orchestra. At this time he ended what he has called the first period of his musical writing.

In 1954 he travelled with his young wife Myrto Altinoglou to Paris where he entered the Conservatory and studied musical analysis under Olivier Messiaen and conducting under Eugene Bigot. His time in Paris, 1954–1959, was his second period of musical writing.

In 1960, Theodorakis returned to Greece and his roots in genuine Greek music: With his song cycle Epitaphios he started the third period of his composing and contributed to a cultural revolution in his country.

Mikis Theodorakis with Maria Farantouri

His most significant and influential works are based on Greek and world poetry -Epiphania (Giorgos Seferis), Little Kyklades (Odysseas Elytis), Axion Esti (Odysseas Elytis), Mauthausen (Iakovos Kambanellis), Romiossini (Yannis Ritsos), and Romancero Gitano (Federico García Lorca)- he attempted to give back to Greek music a dignity which in his perception it had lost. He developed his concept of metasymphonic music.

He founded the Little Orchestra of Athens and the Musical Society of Piraeus, gave many, many concerts all around Greece and abroad... and he naturally became involved in the politics of his home country. After the assassination of Gregoris Lambrakis in May 1963 he founded the Lambrakis Democratic Youth (Lambrakidès) and was elected its president.

Under Theodorakis's impetus, it started a vast cultural renaissance movement and became the greatest political organisation in Greece with more than 50.000 members. Following the 1964 elections, Theodorakis became a member of the Greek Parliament, associated with the left-wing party EDA.

Because of his political ideas, the composer was black-listed by the cultural establishment; at the time of his biggest artistic glory, a large number of his songs were censored-before-studio or were not allowed on the radio stations.

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During 1964, he wrote the music for the Michael Cacoyiannis film Zorba the Greek, whose main theme, since then, exists as a trademark for Greece. It is also known as Syrtaki dance; inspired from old Cretan traditional dances.

On 21 April 1967 a right wing junta, the Regime of the Colonels, took power in a putsch. Theodorakis went underground and founded the Patriotic Front (PAM).

On 1 June, the Colonels published Army decree No 13, which banned playing, and even listening to his music.

Theodorakis himself was arrested on 21 August, and jailed for five months. Following his release end of January 1968, he was banished in August to Zatouna with his wife Myrto and their two children, Margarita and Yorgos. Later he was interned in the concentration camp of Oropos.

Mikis Theodorakis

An international solidarity movement, headed by such personalities as Dmitri Shostakovich, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller, and Harry Belafonte demanded to get Theodorakis freed. On request of the French politician Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, Theodorakis was allowed to go into exile to Paris on 13 April 1970.

Theodorakis's flight left very secretly from an Onassis owned private airport outside Athens. Theodorakis arrived at Le Bourget Airport where he met Costa Gavras, Melina Mercouri and Jules Dassin. Theodorakis was immediately hospitalized because he suffered from lung tuberculosis. Myrto Theodorakis, Mikis's wife and two children joined him a week later in France. They arrived from Greece to France via Italy on a boat.

While in exile, Theodorakis fought during four years for the overthrow of the colonels. He started his world tours and gave thousands of concerts on all continents as part of his struggle for the restoration of democracy in Greece.

He met Pablo Neruda and Salvador Allende and promised them to compose his version of Neruda's Canto General. He was received by Gamal Abdel Nasser and Tito, Yigal Allon and Yasser Arafat, while François Mitterrand, Olof Palme and Willy Brandt became his friends. For millions of people, Theodorakis was the symbol of resistance against the Greek dictatorship.

After the fall of the Colonels, Mikis Theodorakis returned to Greece on 24 July 1974 to continue his work and his concert tours, both in Greece and abroad.

More information: Enet English

 
He was committed to raise international awareness of human rights, of environmental issues and of the need for peace and, for this reason, he initiated, along with the Turkish author, musician, singer, and filmmaker Zülfü Livaneli the Greek–Turkish Friendship Society.

Now he lives in retirement, reading, writing, publishing arrangements of his scores, texts about culture and politics. On occasions he still takes position: in 1999, opposing NATO's Kosovo war and in 2003 against the Iraq War.

In 2005, he was awarded the Sorano Friendship and Peace Award, the Russian International St.-Andrew-the-First-Called Prize, the insignia of Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of Luxembourg, and the IMC UNESCO International Music Prize, while already in 2002 he was honoured in Bonn with the Erich Wolfgang Korngold Prize for film music at the International Film Music Biennial in Bonn.

In 2007, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the distribution of the World Soundtrack Awards in Ghent.

Mikis Theodorakis has been versionated by lots of artists. One of the most popular has been Maria del Mar Bonet, the voice of the Mediterranean, who adapted some Theodorakis's songs to Catalan.

More information: Greek City Times

 Με τόσα φύλλα σου γνέφει ο ήλιος καλημέρα
με τόσα φλάμπουρα λάμπει, λάμπει ο ουρανός
και τούτοι μέσ' τα σίδερα και κείνοι μεσ' το χώμα.
Σώπα όπου να 'ναι θα σημάνουν οι καμπάνες.
Αυτό το χώμα είναι δικό τους και δικό μας.

The sun beckons 'good morning' to you with his leaves
The sky shines from all these flags
These people behind bars and those buried
Be silent, in some minutes the bells will ring
This soil is their soil, is our soil.

Mikis Theodorakis