It’s Not Easy Being Greek
Musicians Kristi Stassinopoulou and Stathis Kalyviotis, who re-spark old Greek folk songs with a modern push.
It’s not an easy time to be Greek. There’s the grinding and seemingly interminable economic crisis, endemic unemployment, riots and violence in the streets, a corroded political landscape (including the stratospheric rise of a neo-Nazi party, as chronicled by Maria Margaronis for The Nation) — and the feeling that the country is sliding into irrelevance. Greece’s collective self-identity is in trauma, both at home and within the diaspora. (My name kind of gives me away as a member of that tribe.)
Perhaps entertainment and culture would, or should, be the very least of anyone’s worries at the moment: when the unemployment rate is over 22%, who really cares what’s on the radio? But these days, and whether intentionally or not, the rudderless state of Greek music seems to mirror something of the country’s drift.