The streets of our youth

I remember the parents’ meeting before my daughter started high school. The teacher asked us to close our eyes, and as we did so she played Paul Anka’s “Put Your Head on my Shoulders”. And old pictures and scenes came into our minds; we travelled in time to faraway days… to the days of our adolescence… “Now you have felt what your children are feeling in this age” she said, and indeed we did.

This memory came to me as I was listening to the 1969 album created by Leftheris Papadopoulos (lyrics) and Mimis Plessas (music) “O dromos” – The Street.  It is a travel in time to adolescence in an urban poor neighbourhood of occupied Greece during WW2, which begins with children’s antics and finishes in sudden maturity as the young ones go to the army and the teen lovers part. In between, it is the light of adolescent love and the greys of its pain, all this in an environment of the unpaved streets, with various typical articles of the place, and some peculiar characters.But it seems that there is much common to teenagers’ spirit whatever time and place, as well as the longing on the part of the adults to theirs teens’ times.

“I was born in Athens in November 1935. My parents were refugees,” writes Leftheris Papadopoulos. “I grew up in a courtyard in Fokeas Street 18, down Kyriakou Square (Victoria). The yard had eight rooms, a communal faucet and a toilet. In each room there was a family, with three to four people each. “Heads of family”, day laborer, carpenters, masons, cobblers, plumbers, bakery workers, waiters, yogurt makers; all what I know of my world these great people taught me, and of course my parents.”

Leftheris was less than six when the Nazis and the Italians invaded Greece, in April 1941.A new horrible reality cast its shadow over his neighbourhood: “There were only children, many children; children that played ball on Aristotelous street which was a dirt road at the time. Bony and barefoot children with a touch of bitterness carved in between their eyes. They were speaking with death. That is why they all loved life so much. There were Germans housed in the 2nd junior High School on Hayden Street. Down the street there were Italians. Basements were selling cheap ‘passions’ to soldiers… (Young) boys were selling cigarettes and shining shoes in the streets.”(1)

These were the places, the scenes, the moods and the times in Leftheris Papadopoulos mind when in 1969 he jotted on paper some songs about childhood and adolescence; he placed them in that era. One day in 1969 destiny brought together Leftheris, who was already a notable journalist, lyricist and writer, and the significant musician Mimis Plessas-who wrote from 1952  music to many beloved songs and films.

Mimis tells: “…After our first successes with Lefteris we became friends. We came together in a friendship that became stronger through mutual appreciation, intimacy… I was sitting in his office and was expecting him to finish a phone call. There were some scattered manuscripts on his desk. Knowing his picturesque character, I started reading and I felt flooded with an ineffable tenderness. The writings of Lefteris were describing my teenage years, my years during the occupation. I gathered what I found there before me… what a coincidence… there were 12 (songs)… And immediately I thought, “A great album”… I thought of the title to, “The Immature Years”. I told Lefteris that I wanted to set these songs to music. He gave them to me reluctantly, because he didn’t believe that they could be material for songs. He feared the diffuse of sensitivity as they contained his own memories too, and they were not given the form of verse – refrain that lends the familiar strength to a song.”

From this point it appears that a wind of inspiration had intervened and caught up with everyone involved. It took Mimis Plessas only two days to compose music; the enthusiastic producer in the record company “baptized” the work as “O dromos” (the street); the singers were Giannis Poulopoulos, the leading male voice of the era, Rena Koumioti and Poppy Asteriadi. The musicians made the orchestral recording in less than ten hours “as if the musicians who came to play knew the piece beforehand” (Plessas) and after two days the singers recorded their vocals “in one go”. As the album was released in April 1969, the tender wind strummed the string of people’s souls. It went on to become the best-selling album in Greek music history. Online sources quote between one million to more than two millions copies sold in the last 43 years.

Let’s hear some of the album’s songs. The first three are the original versions. The album opens with children antics. “Maria was laughing”, (Γέλαγε η Μαρία) sung by Giannis Poulopoulos.

 

The hoop was rolling at Filis street

A glass partition was glistening in sunlight 

You were grabbing the stone without to think 

Flinging your hand – the glass fell down

Maria was laughing, Maria

 

We were cutting crotches from the almond-trees

We had ravaged the impoverished square 

You were putting as target bulbs and birds

and Mr. Alekos’ fat lady

Maria was laughing, Maria

 

On the kick-scooter with the bearings 

you were making people crazy from the fuss 

And the homemakers were shouting “oh boy”

They were saying that will call the police

Maria was laughing, Maria

A girl describes a love union that is about to happen soon with her beloved one… “Give me, my boy, your mouth”(Δώσε μου το στόμα σου). Rena Koumioti:

 

As a little swallow at my balcony

You were looking for your first nest

Lean to lie on my bed sheet

to fill the room with birds

 

The water is running over your body

I am running behind you, me too 

Give me, my boy, your mouth

Into your deep kiss to be drowned

 
Life begins in your arms

I was unborn till yesterday

Take me, my boy, in your arms

Take me and do whatever you want with me

 

“The Statue” is one of the strongest songs on the album, according to its writer. The youth finds comfort from the statue in a painful moment of his life… Giannis Poulopoulos sings.

 

Yesterday shortly after midnight I descended 

At the small square where I met you 

A statue that saw me, remembered me

And didn’t refuse to hear my pain

 

And I told him about you and about me

And his eyes were filled with tears and he was crying

I told him about your behavior and the other things

The unforgivable great mistakes of yours 

 
And then, my God, I burst into tears 

That I was found like a rag at dawn

Along with the statue we proceeded to the road

He wiped my eyes and we parted

 

 

Listening to the songs makes one wonder how they could have sprout out of a reality of occupation, hunger, uncertainty, fear and death, where “every morning was a resurrection”. The songs bring us back to the past, to children games, to old objects like gramophone and harmonica, to old street scenes and neighborhood life of young people.They reflect the flame of youth, but it looks like they   somehow they have no direct reference to the distressing situation.Their content has a life of its own.

That is exactly what Papadopoulos and Plessas tell us – even in the most horrible days- life is present! No occupation can stop “the most beautiful and pure flower… the flower of love. The flower of uncertain adolescence… which is not yet distinguishable between the years of childhood and the complete erotic acquaintance” (1); it has its own existence and it is universal, eternal, indestructible. Everyone may find his youth in these songs, not only Greeks. The youth ends abruptly at the end. “Soldiers were leaving/ you were leaving too… how to forget you /that earth has taken you away”

In his book “the magical songs of Leftheris”, Makis Tselios asserts that the tender and vivid youth scenes and the old urban neighbourhood’s memories that are in the songs give people moments that they are “happy,crying, hoping,waiting, being nostalgic,remembering,talking,dreaming…but also the memory opens their own notebook”  and that “finally leads you to the unique worldview of those ordinary people and their non-negotiable pride. Because at the time all that the poet describes was happening, the bravery was living and was wandering around, and an indefatigable proud in the neighbourhoods, facing Death by threatening, provoking and mocking him.”

Tselios feels that within the dense urban reality these songs reflects purity and harmony that can be “completely compatible with human action”, a harmony that existed then but doesn’t exist anymore in the modern city life. The bonds, the directness, the respect between people have all been changing, and for the worst.

Even so, there is some bias in nostalgia, and things were not as good as they seem from now, it is well understood why “o dromos” captured so many people’s hearts. The lively youth with their love and pain and the harmony and compassion between people are reflected well in these songs, and they were surely existed, as well as the brave people behind them.

Twelve mandolins will play for you (Δώδεκα μαντολίνα)…(press cc in the video for subtitles, the next two songs are in more recent versions)

The first time (Πρώτη φορά)

Mimis Plessas said once that it is the song with the most erotic lyrics ever. Giannis Kotsiras, with Mimis on the piano:

“Deep silence was falling”(Έπεφτε βαθιά σιωπή)   “It is one of the brightest moments of Plessas, and one of the most lyrical words of Papadopoulos. A blessed time for the Greek song”(Tselios) Adolescence ends as young men goes to life duties-to the army, the same time the lovers parts, and finely it is death that takes the beloved one. Giannis Poulopoulos:

 

Deep silence was falling

In our old forest

“Run that I catch you”

You have told me the first time

And when the rain was crackling

on the fallen leaves,

How much chill

within the soul

 

Yellow, bitter wine,

Yellow moon

Soldiers were leaving, 

You were leaving too

And you had in your glance

A dark blur  

Aa dark….. as if

The night was falling

 

Some red wound

that does not seem to close,

The small chapel

Near the spring            

And a yellow silence

in our old forest,

How to forget you 

That earth has taken you away 

 

Notes:

A related post: Every one has its own Aristotelous” at: https://greeksongstories.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/aristotelous-street-nostalgia-at-its-best/

(1) from: http://u8329492.fsdata.se/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=98&id=11049&catid=3&func=fb_pdf

Other links:

http://www.e-orfeas.gr/singing/bestalbums/2066-article.html

http://www.madblog.gr/blog.php?user=vinylmaniac&note=1983

 The parts from the book of Makis Tselios “the magical songs of Lefteris” were  translated and brought by Nata Ostria

 Thanks to  Nata Ostria for translations and research, to Katerina Siapanda for lightening few points, to Shahaf  Ifhar and Dany Matz for editing.

Tags: Greek Music, Kotsiras, Leftheris Papadopoulos, Mimis Plessas. O Dromos, Poulopoulos