MIKIS THEODORAKIS
STATE D’
PETROS GAITANOS
Mikis Theodorakis writes ...
After the rough ASIKIKO POULAKI, here it comes, the sweet Politia D’. Drapetsona at the end of a cycle, a reminder that notes the distance of the journey from Politia A’ in 1960.
Indeed thirty six whole years have past ever since. The POLITIES one after the other they signal the stops of my musical journey. Mostly the inner ones and the dear ones. Αn opportunity to underline the offer of Manos Elefthetiou with whom our collaboration begins with the LAIKA from 1968. The presence of the unknown Spiros Toupoyiannis underlines my faith in the simple, folk songwriters who are expressing the “moist” of the Greek soul. The lyrics of Eleftheriou’s and Toupoyiannis’ helped me to sing very simple according to my needs, for my ideal company that today contains thousands of unknown simple people. While they are insisting as much as I will remain in the garden of the Greek music fathoming with the song our injured sensation. If only the choice of Petros Gaitanos appears worthy of his predecessors.
Personally I would be placing him between my POLITIES if I wouldn’t believe in him.
Mikis Theodorakis
Athens, Greece
September 1996
Lefteris Papadopoulos writes ...
For the POLITIA D’.
Elytis said: …..Wherever place it finds you! the bad, brothers wherever your brain gets foggy mention Dionysios Solomos mention Alexandros Papadiamantis…..
I would add: Wherever the bad finds you, brothers / wherever your brain gets foggy / sing Mikis Theodorakis.
For the song Mikis Theodorakis is the reference point.
He is the tree trunk to grab on it and fight with the high waves of the rough sea.
He is a hymn in life, in fight, in love, in eternal and indestructible things. He is a consolation and a hope.
The commanders of the song left Theodorakis aside. They tried to isolate him by feeding him with “garbage and chicken food”, methodically with all the ways for decades to the people and mostly to the ignorant youth. They tried to represent him somehow a graphic one who insists to write songs, in a period that the majority of people wants something else but what they achieved at the end? By placing the Greek song which had been honored by Mikis Theodorakis at the very bottom.
To the point that it can’t go any lower. Theodorakis is always present and always great. Not only with the old, his monumental songs that reveled our land, our wound, the paths for the resurrection. With his new songs as well.
The ones that he creates every so often to remind us, that in a song the presence of the poetry the melody the kindness the clarity and the ethos are always there. You need to have your soul dedicated there in order to serve during the harsh and sterile times, definition of the true song. That’s why my heart beats with every new album of Mikis. Like in love.
Especially when you have his colleagues, in the lyrics of wonderful poets, like my favorite Manos Eleftheriou.
In front of me POLITIA D’
Great joy!
Great relief! Mikis on the arena again. With a new and important singer in his company: Petros Gaitanos.
Who he didn’t ask for the easy, gold daily wage and the glory of the night clubs but who fights from his own position and his exceptional voice and his adolescent daring, to really help the true song to open again its wings and to fly and scan the unsightly, the bad taste ones and the miserable musical structures of the market.
Good luck!
Lefteris Papadopoulos
Athens 13 . 9 . 1996