They made me defend Dalaras

My family used to listen almost exclusively to George Dalaras. In the car, at parties, when friends visisted, or when we had people from abroad visiting and we wanted to show them a little piece of Greek culture.

I used to think that he was a great artist until I was 14-15 years old. I remember the last album that I liked was the one with the songs of Goran Bregovic. I was excited how the rhythm was going faster in.....
the song: “Nyhta” (Night).

After that I began to hate him. Partly in response initially to my family, where everyone always knew everything better than me, because I was the youngest. I remember we went to see him playing with the band called Pyx Lax, and I told my parents that I was coming along only to listen to Pyx Lax, a small band at the time! He wasn't that bad that night...

The next year we went to see him again, played with the band called Kitrina Podilata (meaning Yellow Bikes). He wasn't good ... I remembered after the concert that we had seen him in the castle of Lefkada island once during the summer time, where again he wasn't good ... Well these 2 performances, as well my teenage age, the Bregovic songs that are the same in different languages, some things that comedian Tzimis Panousis said, and then I decided: Dalaras was finished for me.

Later in my life I realized why I dislike him till now. Dalaras is the symbol of everything bad in the modern Greek, after the Junta. The poor person who is now posh, but makes his money by singing revolutionary songs, betting on the memories of Greeks, the right-winger (at least life style-wise) with the left-wing past, the sold out person, etc. In general consider him a hypocrite.

Moreover, I thought he was to blame for many problems of the Greek music. He has “stolen” the songs from every Greek artist. This pissed me off and still does!

I had decided not to pay ever for his concerts, albums or anything else that he was involved, and usually the shows I listen to on the radio do not play his songs, EVER!

Living abroad, purely by chance I found several non-Greeks who spoke to me about Dalaras. Turks, Yugoslavs (I still call them that, because that's how I was taught to call them) Israelis and Arabs. I always said: "He has an amazing voice, but I can't stand him!"

And honestly I really couldn't bear to listen to him! The people who are listening to him fanatically are those who are leading Greece into destruction. The generation of the resistance in the Athens Polytechnic School against the Junta in 1973, the people who made a lot of money in the 1980's, who packed Athens, made illegal villas with swimming pools, inflated tax evasion, wanted to place their children in the public sector and were obsessed with getting them into University, voted PASOK (Papandreou's so called Socialists) and forgot where they were coming from. The only thing that this generations was left with was the voice