SIFIS LEKAKIS - VASILS SKOULAS - OURANIO TOXO (RAINBOW)

SIFIS LEKAKIS - VASILS SKOULAS - OURANIO TOXO (RAINBOW)

Vasilis had come to Rethymno, where the postgraduate teachers at the Pedagogical Department of our University had organized an event to honor him, which I attended as a member of the University and an amateur musician. At this honor, which was also attended by the then Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs, Yiannis Pyrgiotakis, several people spoke about his musical work. However, no one spoke about his bold composition for the era of the Dictatorship, the odes to the revolutionary Eleftherios Venizelos, which are also posted on YouTube. For this reason, I asked Yiannis to say a few words about this act of his. Then, after I completed the composition of the pieces, after careful consideration, I considered that Vasilis would be the best choice to sing them. I went to Anogia and his son Michalis and I listened to some demo music files that I had prepared. He told me that he would sing them but advised me that he should hear how I would sing them otherwise he would say them in his own way. So, I recorded the pieces at my house, with Iliakis and then I went to Anogia at his Center “DELINA” and recorded him with a laptop and an external sound card. The Anogia shepherd, Myros Skoulas, had given him some mantinades, I also had some of mine and the lawyer from Rethymno, Kostas Kallergis. At some point, Mario Diani, an Italian admirer of Vasilis and a colleague of his wife, known in University circles for his research on social movements, asked to come with me. Regarding the pieces on the CD: The pieces were created a few years ago. No. 1 was invented and perfected later with the addition of the second part. For No. 2, the reason was when one Tuesday evening I passed by the “SYNTEKNOS” Center in Athens, where the band of Rodamanthus Androulakis was playing, in which the soloist began to play something strange that affected me. No. 3, comes from what the Branch heard at the “ZORMBAS” Center of the brothers Thomas and Lazaros Chnaris in Kallithea, where he played Sitian kontylies in a sweet way, giving them a “Messarite color”. For No. 7 and 8, the reason was the words of poems in a booklet with mantinades and songs by the lawyer of Rethymno, Costas Kallergis. The music of No. 8 came about when I asked Michalis Stavroulakis, a good musician, whom I happened to meet through my friend Alekos Kalemakis, in Moires, Heraklion, who is a lyre player, musical instrument maker and representative of the urban, non-profit company “Akrites tou Notou”, when he was in his teens, to write a melody based on one of mine and another by the Rethymnoite civil engineer, composer and conductor Babis Pramateftakis. He finally gave me the one that is here. In Nos. 3, 7 and 8, for personal health reasons, I did not have time to play the final lyre. So, someone else played, but he did not want his name to be mentioned.