When Dionysis Savvopoulos burst onto the Greek music scene in the early sixties, his highly original songs defied classification. There were no precedents in the music genres then common in Greece. He was initially seen as part of the ‘new wave’ group of composers and singers who emerged at that time and who were influenced by their French counterparts. But Savvopoulos created a genre all his own with his mix of modern and traditional rhythms and with his lyrics at times tender, at times playful and at times filled with biting social criticism. Αs Dimitris Karambelas put it, “in his work, sound, meaning, singing, yet also narration and stage performance, constitute a compact and inseparable whole”.
Published by Aiora Press, The rock song of our tomorrow: Dionysis Savvopoulos English Edition is the first anthology of Savvopoulos’ lyrics to be published in English translation. This bilingual edition was masterfully translated by David Connolly, with two short introductory texts by Dimitris Papanikolaou, Professor of Modern Greek at the University of Oxford, and Dimitris Karambelas, critic and essayist, both of whom have long studied and written on the work of Savvopoulos. It brings together selected song lyrics from ten different albums, released at different moments of Savvopoulos’ career and spanning a long trajectory. It features love songs, protest anthems, political folk rock and lyrical ballads. The book also contains QR codes so that readers can listen to all the songs in the selection in Greek together with four songs sung in English.
Savvopoulos has enjoyed an almost mythical status with the Greek listening public during the last sixty years and it would be no exaggeration to say that he has been the voice of several generations, given that his lyrics reflect the struggles, frustrations, hopes and sentiments of a broad stratum of Greek society. Indeed, many of his verses have become proverbial in everyday language. In the words of Dimitris Papanikolaou, to understand Savvopoulos’ role in Modern Greek culture, “one needs to take note of a feeling of proximity, the strong effective ties that a very large part of the Greek audience possess towards him, or, rather, his singing persona […] If there is a European model of the twentieth century singer-songwriter as national figure, Savvopoulos is its most prominent Greek representative”.
Dionysis Savvopoulos, Elli Paspala – Our Old Friends | The Rock Song of Our Tomorrow
As Papanikolaou notes, “unlike the big popular national composers of the previous generation, Manos Hadjidakis and Mikis Theodorakis, Savvopoulos was not interested in producing orchestral or musical theatre works, in setting published poetry to popular music, or, even, in writing music for the cinema. He was more focused on constructing a singer-songwriter persona and in adopting the voice of an autobiographical (or, rather, autofictional) oral minstrel whose main frame of reference remained the (Greek and global) 1960s, their political struggles, challenges, frustrations and the sense of immense potential being felt, as he put it in one song, ‘in the corners, in the square, in the corridors, in the lecture hall, in the streets’”.
Savvopoulos’ language is often zany, surrealistic and highly inventive and its inherent poetical quality has not been lost on the critics, who have included his lyrics in anthologies of contemporary Greek poetry. In his Translator’s Note, David Connolly comments that “many of Savvopoulos’ lyrics are rhymed and any attempt to reproduce the rhyme, even approximately, requires a greater degree of freedom in the translation approach. Greek, being an inflected language, lends itself to rhyme and near-rhyme in a way that English, an analytical language, does not. In my translations, I reproduced the rhyme, or more often an approximation of it, only where this came reasonably easily and did not requite too great a sacrifice of semantic meaning or pragmatic effect”.
Unsettled and unsettling, always somehow in abeyance yet at the centre of Greek cultural life, always nostalgic yet topical, Savvopoulos’ songs, alongside his inimitable performance, remain one of the hidden treasures a contemporary Greek would share with foreign friends in order to create cultural intimacy.
*Dionysis Savvopoulos is one of Greece’s foremost singer-songwriters. He was born in Thessaloniki and studies law at the University of Thessaloniki but did not complete his studies. In 1967, he was imprisoned and tortured by the Greek military junta for his political views. He has released fourteen studio albums of his own compositions ad a further six albums of live recordings from his concerts and shows. He has also written music for theatre and film and hosted his own TV and radio programmes. In addition, he has published five books containing his lyrics, music scores and interviews.
**David Connolly is retired Professor of Translation Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has translated over fifty books with works by contemporary Greek writers. His translations have received awards in the USA, the UK and Greece.
A.R.
TAGS: LITERATURE & BOOKS | READING GREECE
