“Enas alitis se troxeia pou den telionei …” 
I was very lucky, as usual. Someone wanted to know exactly when Alkistis Protopsaltis had been born, which lead to eternal researches, as usual, all around internet in order to get a precise information (which is never easy in those cases as you have to imagine yourself figuring out with which search you may fall on a complete Greek text that may allow to copy single Greek letters and paste them on the google mouth until you manage to guess more or less how the word ‘genisi’ may be written, with how many itas, omikron itas, epsilon, double consonants and the kind), which I finally managed to do after though having thoroughly explored Alkistis Protopsaltis official site, which of course, didn’t say anything at all on the subject. (My mother used to say that women have no birthdays anymore after 40.)
Thus, I discovered that she had put some songs of her new album on the site, exactly 4, and as my general Greek music collection had mainly disappeared after a violent attack on my computer, so that only some old Gaitanos, Vissi, Theodoridou and 2000 Protopsaltis staid among my old souvenirs, I spent quite a long time with greatest pleasure listening to her new inspirations. Of course I couldn’t avoid writing down the texts of three of them, and even daring a translation into Spanish (as below), some kind of old exercise I started about 15 years ago in order to quicken up my process of learning of such a difficult language.
Say that my almost astonishing progress in that unbearable language was made thanks to a bad translation of Lorca’s ‘Marianita Pineda’ in the song ‘Mera megalis thlipsis stin Granada’, which makes of a hard core revolutiony, to whom Marianita Pineda devoted, a vulgar ‘contrabandieris’ without political orientation. Things went on through royalist songs ‘Na bgei o ilios mia fora’, sung by some older people of the place I was staying in, and whose political orientation I had, at the beguinning, some problems to grasp, and then it was too late, I had liked the song. Further progress was made by the by heart learning of byzantine music ‘I genisi sou Xriste o theos imon’ and popular songs of diverse origins (’Arxondo ios perni prosfigula’, tzarakatzan sung ‘Agapao mia vlaxopoula’), until Xristos offered me a Gaitanos album with some, I guess, reaching as far as the 16th century popular songs (’Ean eisai gia tin poli kai tin Agia Sofia’), that finished by enlargening my Greek up to almost unbelievable extents.
In the meantime, of course, and to the greatest dispair of, for example, Alkistis Protopsaltis, known as heavy fighter against pirates and corsairs, Harry, a black man from Nigeria, who used to land in the village every Saturday afternoon, provided with all sorts of half known and known and completely unknown singers and songs my eager mind, so that even just starting at those times Theodoridou and a triple sung ‘Ti s’ekana kai pineis’, Xaris Aleksiou and Vissi fell into my nets. Thus also, Alkistis Protopsaltis.
Not that I didn’t know already Alkistis Protopsaltis. As star she shone quite brightly all along the Greek music star system and almost generally known as extremely snob and belonging to elitistic to intellectualism leaning currents, she had really not managed yet to attract my attention the way whatsoever. It was thus, figure out, Harris himself who convinced me that day of buying the 2000 edited ‘Udrogeies spheres’, after having asked for three times if he was really sure that it was good, and even if I didn’t know whether I should poison my popular stuck rhythms with such elite, I finally gave in. I finally could not but admit that she had a really good voice.
It was really very, very difficult. The first time I listened to it, I didn’t like it at all. Thus, ten times later, I couldn’t yet get a clue of how the rhythms went. Seven days later I grasped some words of one of the songs ‘Agapi mou, fengari mou, asteri mou’, so that I had the feeling to arrive to an oasis after a long walk through the desert. The more I was trying to understand what it all was about, the more fascinated I staid of the heavily symbolic texts that remained almost meaningless. How strange.
In the meantime, another intellectual highness had landed among my properties, a present from a French that gathered some Sappho poems in Elitis translation and sung and composed by Ionatou/Venetsanou (which has also gone lost, by the way). Luckily, I disturbed often my to the Himalaya peaks reaching listenings with some early Kotsiras, a singer who had become famous through the introduction song of the serial ‘I prodosia’ (The betrayal) and who never managed to extort to music excessive elite, or in Istanbul acquired Nilüfer (Her yerde kar var) in order not to get too lost in the labyrinths of the depths of thought.
At the end, I did even manage to like Protopsaltis, were it only because I could really but really not but give in to the evidence that she sang very well, thing that you may be greatful for, seen the whole amount of weak voices and empty lyrics populating the musical scene all around. Thus, as usual, I started some investigations on the same and managed to learn (popular sources) that she had started with popular music a certain time ago and had slowly shifted to more intellectual spheres in time, without it being very clear, why. Known as quite snob and almost unbearable to deal with (may her voice excuse, I argued finally), it seemed that most of the lyrics of her songs were written (and composed?) by a friend of hers, whose name was, as far as I remember, something like Nikolopoulou. (Please correct, if ever wrong.)
The more I was going into the depth of those songs, it took about three months until I coulp put one word beside the other in a somewhat coherent way, the more some kind of sharp irony somehow touched by a hidden tenderness, started invading my observations. In fact, if well considered, it seemed as if the authour of the songs was giving words to the very character of Protopsaltis, the latter was giving voice to, not excessively aware eventually of the fact that she was just talking about herself. Thus: “to exoun sto ema na pinoun fotia, i proti roli’ (they have it in blood to drink (better, spit) fire, first roles’ gave very quickly the image of some Protopsaltis shouting around because the tone had not hit the right string at the good moment. Taken all together it finally finished by depicting some very troubled character, whose ambition seemed more to be a repressed desire of saying something than a sheer tending for glory and money “kati tha ginei, tha tin tromazei tin disi” (something will happen, it will frighten the west), somehow used to walk on troubled waters (leaning heavily on alcohol, you may have deduced from texts ‘botiglia i nixta dipla mavri k’adia’ – ‘bottle the night, just beside, black and empty’) and in a certain way always running away from something (san pankosmios xartis ginan ta xeria sou ta dio: like a world map have become both your hands).
Well, I said, if you wanna say something, just do it.
In 2003 I left Greece, having bought as last souvenir a Protopsaltis cd at the airport, which I could though never listen too because it was scratched. Her next album appeared 2004 and I didn’t like very much. After she disappeared as well as myself.
This now was a quite astonishing surprise. It is obvious that it seemed as if Nikolopoulos had definitely taken other paths, quite fed up with so much fire, as the new texts don’t show the extremely sophisticated management of the language as before. Many though are slightly leaning on those, as if taking back the same subjects in another way. Music is much less elitarian than before as the usual attempt of attracting foreign rhythms into the usually extremely regulated Greek patterns is substituted by the introduction of what could be called contemporary popular rhythms not without though daring an extremely interesting exploration: the soft shift from some classic piano into heavy metal in ‘to xirokrotima’, which is extremely interesting and leaves some place for thought.
In general, symbolism remains, and although the longing for some ideal love continues to mark all lyrics, it is obvious that it has become more bitter, almost distant. In fact, it is as if the same was said, but in other words ‘ego planitis se troxeia pou den telionei’ (and me a planet on a path that never ends), ‘mia Penelopi tholomeni ap’to poto’ (some Penelopi dazzled by alcohol) etc. Some words go as far as to lean on early sung and Xaris Aleksiou overtaken ‘Theos ean einai’ ‘K’ego monaxi s’ena spiti kleisto’ = ‘Oi filoi mou oloi fiaksan spitia sevgaria ginan, monaxa emena pasxa akoma xoris mia stegi etouti alithia’. The other is only because he is absent, which to a certain extent is perhaps the general leitmotiv of Protopsaltis music. The awareness of the impossibility of love pushes an ideal other to the borders of fantasy and imagination.
Thus, you may ask yourself, if such an impossibility may not have reasons and causes and if this were not the start of some kind of solution.
What is thus what Alkistis Protopsaltis did want to say, which she did not manage to say in a convincing enough way? Perhaps the answer is given in ‘to xeirokrotima’, which at the beguinning, may not struck excessively as it seems relatively simple. Well considered, it may just be a personal and very subjective expression towards the very fact of coming back after 4 years silence, and giving back some fright and the fact of suspending success not to some personal conviction but to the acceptation of the public, just express some hope through affirmation (eimaste akoma zoondani – we’re still alive) the come back will not crash with emptyness.
It’s though more, if well analyzed. The ‘you’ that strange ‘you’ as lover that was becoming shadowier and shadowier until it becomes a ghost, is a mass of people in front who fuses as a whole in one sole identity: ‘me koitas se koito kai melanxolis, kairos polis’ (You look at me, I look at you and you become melancholic, it’s a long time). The almost symbiotic fusion with the public makes of the very fact of being on the stage an erotic moment that lasts for a while through the feeling of belonging created, you’d almost say, by the music, and after ‘kaneis kanenos’ (nobody no one’s).
This fusion as fact is accompanied by the strange change of the soft piano music to heavy metal, as if the first’d have necessarily the second as consequence inside of a logic where the other has become nothing but the idealization of another in a mass of foreign people. Perhaps you may hear somewhere the drums of the second world war arising deafly out of that composition: the incapability of understanding the other as a singular one in front leading through the assimilation to an abstract whole to emptyness and distruction.
If this were so, the song seems almost to be a solution: by saying things as they are, it points already at a way out.
Were we not be wanting to push things so far, it becomes quite evident though that Protopsaltis manages, it seems, pushed by circomstances, all alone by herself, to join popular elements to soft symbolic elements, whose roots get lost also in deepest popular tradition. And that’s also bizarre. How does it happen that the very essence of Greek popular song is in time associated to elitarian intellectualism, while the ‘with the finger at reality pointing’ tendency is said to be popular?
It’s nothing but search a little around to get aware of the fact that symbolism is the principle of Greek music, and is said even ‘grammar’ in one of those old Gaitano songs, where a man says ‘don’t go down to the shore, because there is storm and you may get drown’ and she says ‘if there is, I’ll make of my body a ship, of my arms the paddles …’ so that he finally says ‘don’t write letters or ‘grammar’ to me, because grammar I don’t know, and it makes me cry’ (Min mou grafeis gramata, giati gramata den ksero kai me pianoun klamata). The ability of transforming reality into a symbolic realm where the material storm becomes some psychic harsh weather you may go through by simply shifting the meaning of words, so that it may help you through even material storms, maybe the core of the Greek teaching in its way of dealing with reality, and this is exactly what all Protopsaltis music is about. At the end, even the most abstract and time lost problems and thoughts may be easily expressed in little words whose double and triple meaning construct the coordinates of them without loosing too many words.
Joining this very traditional custom to a contemporary rhythm succession that obliges to reconsider the actual world through the angle of very old acquisitions may be perhaps the only thing Alkisti Protopsalti really wanted to say. If you manage to learn … grammar.
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agapao sena polska