I have always adored Manos Hadjidakis. From a young age, his music mesmerized me. I must have been twelve, traveling by train with my mother from Istanbul. As we crossed the border over the river, I heard, from a tiny transistor radio in the neighboring compartment, a song unlike anything I had ever heard:
“Do not ask the sky / The cloud or the moon.”
What was this divine melody? This enigmatic voice, so sweet, so sorrowful, so joyfully melancholic? It felt as if our homeland was welcoming us back — but this time with a song that seemed to renew it from within.
Later, I listened to his songs on the radio: “The Paper Moon” (Hartino to feggaraki), “Love, You Became a Double-Edged Sword” (Agapi pou gines dikopo machairi), “Ilisos”, “The Song of Orpheus” (To tragoudi tou Orphea), “The Sea is Deep” (to pelago einai vathi) — among many others.
In the radio landscape of the time, they sounded utterly otherworldly, hauntingly out of place. They consumed me. I would turn the volume up, immediately recognizing the DNA of Hadjidakis. This was genius. A charming magician who changed the way we listened. He revealed to us the secret Greece of rebetiko (the Greek urban folk music of the early 20th century) and showed that the art of song had always been our main musical culture.
In essence, Archilochus (680–630 BC) and Markos Vamvakaris (1905–1972) were doing the same work — lyrical poets, each in their own age.
“It was Manos Hadjidakis. A genius. A delightful magician who came and transformed our ears.”
A Century of Legacy
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Manos Hadjidakis’s birth — a coincidence shared with Mikis Theodorakis, another titan of Greek music. Both were born in 1925, only three months apart: Theodorakis in July, Hadjidakis in October.
They were friends, classmates, collaborators, and sometimes charming rivals in a lifelong pursuit: the lyrical and oral poetry of Greece. This tradition existed long before them and, hopefully, will endure forever. Though recordings exist, its highest form remains live performance — in concert halls, among friends, in the immediacy of a live audience.
This centennial anniversary moves me deeply. I have carried their music inside me since childhood. My only regret is that Hadjidakis has received fewer commemorations than he truly deserves.
