{"id":7300,"date":"2016-11-07T12:32:03","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T10:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesandbox.eu\/el\/2016\/11\/07\/magic-greek-music-greek-choir-stockholm-orfeas\/"},"modified":"2022-10-19T12:32:13","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T09:32:13","slug":"magic-greek-music-greek-choir-stockholm-orfeas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/omilo.com\/el\/magic-greek-music-greek-choir-stockholm-orfeas\/","title":{"rendered":"Greek choir in Stockholm, Orfeas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greek choir in Stockholm, Orfeas, and the magic of Greek music!<\/strong> An Omilo student from Sweden, Gail Ricksecker, writes about her passion, Greek music and learning Greek.<\/p>\n

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I consider myself very lucky today to sing in a Greek choir in Stockholm, Sweden. Orfeas is an amateur choir consisting of about 40 first and second generation Greeks, Swedish lovers of Greece (like me) and a few non-Greek speaking singers who love music. See our website where you\u2019ll find information in Greek, Swedish and English: http:\/\/grekiskakorenorfeas.hemsida24.se\/<\/p>\n

My first trip to Greece was to Crete in 1982. My knowledge of Greek music then was pretty much limited to \u201dZorba the Greek\u201d and \u201dNever on a Sunday\u201d. Little did I know then that my love affair with Greek music was just beginning.<\/p>\n

On Crete I then purchased an LP with Mikis Theodorakis<\/a>. It was an instrumental recording called \u201dFun in Greece with the music of \u2026 Theodorakis\u201d (\u0393\u03bb\u03b5\u03bd\u03c4\u03ae\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5 \u03c3\u03c4\u03b7\u03bd \u0395\u03bb\u03bb\u03ac\u03b4\u03b1 \u03bc\u03b5 \u2026 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u03b4\u03c9\u03c1\u03ac\u03ba\u03b7) and I played it over and over again after returning home to Sweden. I can\u2019t explain the magic of the bouzouki sounds, but I was spellbound by the haunting melodies. Perhaps I just wanted to savor the sweet summer memories of Crete at the time. But today I know there was much more than Zorba for me to discover in the way of Greek music.<\/p>\n

Greek language barriers in music have been broken in Sweden by excellent interpretations of the texts of Greek Nobel Literature Prize laureates Giorgos Seferis (prize 1963) and Odysseas Elytis (prize 1979), whose lyrics have been put into music by Mikis Theodorakis. Therefore many people in Sweden have enjoyed Greek music without always knowing it was Greek. Perhaps the most popular is \u201cO Kaimos\u201d sung by among others Swedish-Finnish singer Arja Saajonmaa. She sang it at the 1986 funeral of Sweden\u2019s prime minister Olof Palme, and children learn to sing it in Swedish schools.<\/p>\n