Travelling with Panait Istrati

The “Greek Song” cycle is one of a number of cultural interventions spearheaded by the Friends of the Greek Song, a coalition of Greek artists and intellectuals intent on bringing about a renaissance in Greek song by reviving its lost Center, proving its ability to evolve and redefining its terms (“entechno”, “laiko”, “poiotiko”).

Music is an autonomous art-form: it can move you as a purely acoustic, tonal event. Song, however, imparts an emotional impact which has less to do with its musical element per se than with the artistry with which it combines its music and lyrics—which is to say with the canvas painted by the words.

This marriage of words and music is stimulating: it allows us to see and hear a text differently, to notice and be moved by aspects of a literary text which might otherwise have passed us by, but also to appreciate the music more fully as a rational reflection of the text.

This dialectical, interactive relationship between music and words becomes more interesting still in the case of a text like this one by Panait Istrati (1884-1935) from Brăila, a friend of Nikos Kazantzakis and a writer Romain Rolland described as the “Maxim Gorky of the Balkans”.

The opening event of the Cycle centered on "Unknown Hellenism" is dedicated to this great Greek-Romanian writer.