There was always going to be an artistic payoff for the misery heaped on Greeks over the last decade by global financial institutions. Kadinelia is a musical duo that fuses traditional Greek folk forms with bluegrass, and other hip Western genres. What makes them exciting is the confident joyfulness of their sound, which declares not only the resilience of Greek cultural life through the long crisis but also its energy and expansiveness.
Music is the form through which Greek culture finds its most fluent expression. Traumas caused by war and civil war, dictatorships, and myriad dislocations, have all generated new forms of music and performance that have embodied the urgency of their times.
The performers here are Evi Seitanidou and Athanas Zikas who are named Kadinelia after a falcon which is found in the Cycladic islands, and which is known to mate in flight. You won’t get a better metaphor for what a Kadinelia performance can feel like. Like Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, who are brought to mind by their effortless complementarity and the bluegrass twang in many of their songs, they manage to be both traditional and utterly of now and tomorrow.
It doesn’t hurt that on stage Evi Seitanidou might have been cast by Sofia Coppola. It is also that her expressiveness and authenticity can accommodate all of peasant longings, country wistfulness, urban beat and more. Athanas Zikas brings guitar, voice and a traditional windpipe instrument called a ‘tsambouna’. In exchange with Ms Seitanidou’s searching vocals, Kadinelia can both mesmerise and provoke.
This is the land from which people have for thousands of years sailed out toward mystery, to trade grain and wine, and it is still the anarchist capital of the world. That can help explain Kadinelia as much as the social turmoil that has shaped these most recent imaginings. Kadinelia is part of a general social and creative ferment in Greece. It’s not an easy image to accommodate, but picture the parallel reality of small traditional taverns serving organic food to workers as well as tourists only metres from refugee ghettos.
Promoters of Greek Fringe have a deep well to draw from but are also taking a risk in presenting these new artistic forms outside the environment that has spawned them. The artists emerging from contemporary Greece see no contradiction in revering the icons of their tradition while tearing them up. They are the new iconoclasts of Byzantium. But it’s not the freeze-frozen culture of a migrant’s memory.
The response so far is positive with tickets selling quickly in Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane and Sydney. That might say something about how new cultural developments can also be immediately global. This is the new Greece and there’ll be enough young Greek Australians as well as recent travellers that will recognise that it’s a moment.
It’s not that Kadinelia’s sound is difficult. It is in fact more of a happy release. The guitars are rhythmic. Ms. Seitanidou’s singing is melodic and sometimes exultant. There’s some rapping and beatbox that fits the shape of the performance. The melodic themes, emerging from a variety of instruments, are if not immediately recognisable, nonetheless familiar. When you hear Sinnerman you’ll know its Nina Simone, but you’ll be reminded that it’s an African American anthem, and you’ll marvel at its universality.
So while it's musically accessible to Western ears, there’s an edge to this music that conjures the graffiti-strewn and unsettled streets from which it has emerged, while also evoking sultry village affairs. In fact, Ms Seitanidou and Mr Zikas appear not to care for expectations at all. They are the zeitgeist of a tormented place and that just happens, it isn’t calculated for moderation.
It’s a struggle to describe music that fully embodies a long heritage as well as a contemporary moment. It is counter-productive to define it by the genres woven through. Kadinelia are reckless with boundaries. And as a result, they are fully formed new, and resonant beyond Athens, or any Greek island, or any staid expectation.
Evi Seitanidou: guitar, lyra, beatbox, vocals
Athanas Zikas: guitar, tsabouna, vocals
Tour Schedule:
5 OCT Northcote Social Club [VIC]
8 OCT Smith’s Alternative [ACT]
13 OCT BEMAC [QLD]
14 OCT Red Rattler [NSW]
Tickets: www.greekfringe.com
Kadinelia on YouTube:
Kadinelia - Sinnerman | live @ Athens, Vrachon Theatre
Kadinelia - Tis Moiras *Tom Alegounarias is a Professor of Education, The University of Sydney and Former President of The Board of Studies.
