Philadelphia, PA – The eclectic sounds of Imam Baildi were featured this week at Drexel University and Undergrounds Arts in Philadelphia. Band members dropped in to Maria Hnaraki’s “Greek 225 Greek Music/Dance class” for a demonstration and history lesson about Greek music.
The course studies Greek music & dance historically by a) exploring performance events from Greece and b) focusing on certain music and dance genres as well as certain music groups and musicians. It urges students to view Greek music as/in culture and depict how Greeks make sense of the world around them through their music and dance performances.
Lysandros Falireas (band drummer) addressed the class with a slide show, while Alexis Arapatsakos (bouzouki), Lampis Kountourogiannis (guitar), and Giannis Diskos (clarinet) demonstrated Greek music styles throughout history.
Imam Baildi is the first young Greek band that managed to bring Greek music of the 1940’s, 50’s and ’60’s to an audience around the world. Their music is based on remixing songs by legendary composers and singers such as S. Vembo, M. Linda, V. Tsitsanis and M. Hiotis, and combining them with new sounds and production techniques in order to embed them into a contemporary musical context.
They are one of the most active young Greek bands in Europe, having played over 40 concerts in venues all over Europe and participated in several major European Festivals, among which Roskilde (DK), Sziget (HU), Transmusicalles De Rennes (FR) and Lowlands (NL).