August 27 / Sunday
From traditional songs to Minor of Smyrna
Ourania Lampropoulou and Maria Simoglou present a variety of songs from Northern and Eastern Greece to songs from Smyrna of early 1900. Stories of true love, dreams about social acclaim and freedom, romances and magic herbs, sharp glances and exile, mentions of sailors and convicts: all these things “haunt” Greek traditional music and “rebetiko”, a multiform kind of music created in the previous century inside the café shops and the ports of Greece and Minor Asia. In this distinctive partnership, Maria Simoglou and Ourania Lambropoulou decode the secrets of music art and revive the eroticism but also the defeat, the hope and the relinquishment of people of those times... Ourania Lampropoulou / santur Maria Simoglou / voice |
(part 2)
Urban soundscapes of Interwar rebetiko
“Rebetiko” as a music genre is based on the preexisting urban music of Greece and the corresponding tradition of Smyrna and Istanbul. It developed in big urban centers and is addressed to the lower folk layers. Songs of this genre are mainly composed by learned or self-taught musicians and have reached our times mostly via the gramophone recordings. Ourania Lambropoulou and Eugenios Voulgaris bring with them two of the most important instruments of the interwar rebetiko tradition, oud and santur. The duet exploits santur’s wide harmonic range and oud’s articulate melodic imprint, in order to express the rich sentimental world of rebetiko. Their repertoire, sometimes nostalgic and captivating and sometimes cruel and hedonistic, express finely an atmospheric and colorful trip to the urban soundscapes of interwar rebetiko.
Ourania Lampropoulou / santur Evgenios Voulgaris / oud, voice |
Concert Time / 21.00 Free Entrance
Concert Time / 21.00 Free Entrance