For South Australian band The Streamliners, music is not subjected to strict restrictions. Over the years they have played a variety of genres such as psychedelic, blues, soul, jazz, rock and original ‘roots’ music sounds. In fact, two of the band members, Dennis and Nick Kipridis, acknowledge the influence of rembetika songs in their evolution as musicians.
The Streamliners was formed in 1989 by founding members Dennis and Nick Kipridis while they were at university in Adelaide.
The five members of the band include lead singer and guitarist Nick Kipridis and brother Dennis on bass, guitarist Bill Rankine, Deryck Charles on keyboard and drummer Steve Peterka. At first, The Streamliners were influenced by psychedelic artists of the ’60s, then later by overseas and local Australian blues and jazz artists, such as Miles Davis and Charles Mingus.
Their first appearance in public was at the Adelaide Fringe music festival – where they had the opportunity to meet some interesting members of the music coterie. This was soon followed by their debut recording on ‘Deep South’, a national compilation of SA bands, releasing four tracks.
One of these tracks, Hummingbird, was awarded as the best R&B song at the Lithgow music festival in NSW in the same year.
“It just opened the doors for people to be aware of the band, here in Australia in particular,” Dennis Kipridis tells Neos Kosmos.
After gaining a good reputation among the ‘blues fraternity’, the group started doing more shows and recording one album after the other. At present they are about to release their sixth record.
The multi-award-winning The Streamliners have appeared in numerous festivals in Australia and some of the members have also performed in Venice, Rome and Athens, where they managed to establish contacts with other musicians.
Experimentation is an element essential to the group’s philosophy, as they are trying to produce fresh sounds and have been influenced by a wide range of music streams.
In particular for the Kipridis siblings’ musical background, it was their father’s influence that got them into music, as Dennis says.
Athens-raised Spyro Kipridis migrated to Australia in 1964 and contributed in establishing the Greek music scene in Adelaide, during the 1960s. Having met and shared stage performances earlier in Greece with Zabeta, Belou, Bithikotis, Repanis and Tsaousakis, Spyro Kipridis not only refused to give up music upon his arrival in Australia, but he even joined Greek bands in Adelaide.
He never forced his kids to learn how to play musical instruments. Instead he showed them the way into the world of music. Being a guitarist himself, he taught Nick a bit of guitar and showed Dennis a bit of bouzouki, but the boys picked it up on their own from an early age.
Back in those days, the two brothers were exposed to Greek rembetika, by having musicians visiting the house, hearing rehearsals and going as a whole family to see their father’s gigs.
“That music really helped us establish a musical ear,” Dennis says.
He describes rembetiko as a complex and demanding musical genre, which served them well as a “good ground in music” when later moving on to blues, folk, country and other “indigenous styles of music” which borrow elements from earlier styles.
“And that Greek influence or Asia Minor influence is still embedded in what we do.”
As he explains, Greek rembetika is a music that came out of oppression and as a means for people to relate to the music and find an outlet through that. Likewise, in American blues, songs that describe the hardships of the people are not sad, despite the common misconception. Instead, the music helps people express their emotions, and makes them feel like the song “is speaking to them”.
“There’s a funny thing we always hear here in Adelaide, if not Australia, that a lot of blues soul musicians are Greek!” he says, referring to the fact that Greek people had suffered a lot and therefore this music of ‘oppression’ originated.
He and his brother had heard from their father about those difficult times and were exposed to rembetika music from a young age. This storytelling, and the music that served to ease people’s pain, comprises for them their Greek heritage, and they say they feel “fortunate for that sort of upbringing”.
For more information on The Streamliners, visit www.thestreamliners.net/