Singers

The archive has a similar wealth of material concerning singers. With regard to both instrumentalists and singers, the intended goal of the instigators of the archive (Foivos Anogianakis, George Amargianakis, Grigoris Sifakis) was to record musicians who lived in isolation in their villages, who had no contact with the mainstream Cretan music which was now being centrally formed by the radio, the Cretan festivals that had become quite commonplace in the 1980s and, in particular, record-making.

This move is based on the intention, clearly worded by the two musicologists during the opening event of the process in question on 8 May 1982, to record the traditional music of Crete in its most pure and genuine form, as unaffected as possible by the “sirens” that try to influence it from time to time. The goal is, of course, utopian and infeasible: Pantelis Baritanonakis explains, in an interview given to Giorgos Amargianakis and found in our archive, that the main way to learn Cretan music and become a lyra player was to listen to the records of Stratis Kalogeridis and zealously copy them until he could play exactly like him.

However, the persistence of the creators of the archive is important. In the recordings that follow, which were made in the 1980s-1990s, listeners will perceive a singing style markedly different from the current one: more sparse, more austere, robust, without embellishments or showing off. The plan of the creators of the archive to record singing styles beyond the influences of discography and radio seems to have found its ideal incarnation in an amateur singer who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Cretan tradition: Nikolas Athanasakis from Astrochori, a village lying 55 km from Arta in Central Greece, travelled to Crete to visit his son, a student at the University, and fulfil an old personal vow he had made, since he was a fervent supporter of the politics of E. Venizelos and a fighter during the national resistance in WWII. G. Amargianakis did not miss the opportunity to record him and the result is truly impressive. This is also why the archive contains recordings of several amateur performers and singers of traditional Cretan music, many times of quite advanced age.