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| ARIANA FERENTINOU News related to Greece last week was dominated by women. Dora Bakoyannis, the new Greek foreign minister, met another woman, Condi Rice, in Washington and talked about Turkey. Ms. Bakoyannis repeated the Greek positions on Cyprus and the Chalki Theological School while reassuring the support for Turkey's EU target. It was the first visit of Bakoyannis as foreign minister to the United States and was not expected to produce any spectacular news, except that Ms. Rice promised to pay a visit to Greece. While Ms. Bakoyannis was in Washington, another famous Greek woman hit the headlines in Turkey. She is not a politician, yet she is perhaps more familiar to the Turks than Bakoyannis. Because, as the greatest living Greek popular singer for some time now, Haroula Alexiou has managed to enter the collective recent memory of Turks and become one of their favorite popular faces. In spite of her maternal origins from Izmir, Turkey was not among her destinations for a long time. Actually, Turkey was not a destination for Greek artists until after the 1999 earthquakes. I remember trying to persuade her to spread her career towards this country where she could find new musical ways and a new audience. But Turkey, until the turning point of the �99 earthquake, was an unknown, risky option for Greek artists, which they would rather put aside for a later time. A lot of them still do. She did eventually come to Turkey, first as a friend, about 10 years go. We did stroll in Istanbul and reached the small fishermen villages near Kilyos, We did have fish in Sariyer and had lunch on Chalki Island. She did come to know my local green grocer from where she shopped for her favorite pastrami; she managed to communicate in Turkish with the patisserie owner and got her beloved sweets from the local patisserie. Even from her first visit, she felt an instant familiarity with the life and the city that made her eventually come back as an artist and she was immediately adopted by the Turkish audience. So much so that when she was in Istanbul last week for the promotion of her latest album, the news anchorman who interviewed her labeled her �the diva from the other side.� But Haroula is not Maria Kallas. If there is a characteristic of hers that has kept her on top of the Greek musical scene for almost 30 years, it is that she never became a diva. A diva is someone who is remote and above their audience, even above their national culture. There is a certain arrogance involved in that, too. If there is something that Haroula is not, it is arrogant and remote. And besides, she is very Greek. Since the beginning of her career she kept herself very firmly on the ground; she never rejected her roots from a poor Izmir immigrants' settlement on the outskirts of the city of Thebes, some 80 km outside Athens. In fact, she always made a point of referring to her origins on every occasion. But besides poverty and hardship, those immigrant groups had in them the wisdom of life and the determination of survival. So, from a very early age, Haroula was wise enough to know that in order to survive she had to develop, and in order to develop she had to be open to learning. To be gifted with a unique voice is not enough to make you a special artist. What made her special is the energy for constantly improving herself and keeping her head on her shoulders. Haroula is one of the few Greek artists who are just known by their first name. This is not incidental. Her charisma is that she manages to develop an emotional relationship with her audience. The audience loves her like their gifted daughter, sister, lover. And she, with her strong antenna, picks up all the changes that are happening around her and expresses them in her music, in the way she sings, the lyrics she writes and the music she composes. This is a period where popular music in Greece is undergoing a dramatic change for the worse. With Mikis Theodorakis in his 80s, with popular composers of the 70s and 80s generations drying out, with a rock-like new Greek music struggling in the background, the musical scene in Greece is in danger of being squeezed under a mass produced globalized sound pushed forward by multinationals. In that confusing scene, Haroula is the bridge maker. She can still wave her magic wand and enchant her audience with a rebetiko song as well as a western-type pop ballad of her own. Who is her audience? Actually, everybody. She has the capacity to communicate with that secret sensitive corner that all of us try to preserve, the corner from where imagination and feelings are triggered. I have followed her concerts for years. There is never a special audience, no special age or social group. She is beyond musical fashions. Everybody goes and likes it. She knows the way to merge the eastern and western elements of Greek popular music, to link old and new, because Haroula has managed something hat very few do. She managed to become the singer of her nation. Like Edith Piaf, like Amalia Rodriguez, like just a handful of others. Haris Alexiou was in Istanbul to promote her album Atnhologio, a compilation of her best performances. She will be coming to Turkey during the summer for a series of concerts. |