Gospel according to Psarantonis

In a tavern in Heraklion, Psarantonis opens up about his life, his loves, and his unwaning passion for the Cretan lyra

* The interview was held in a tavern in Heraklion. We spoke for two hours. Initially Psarantonis was withdrawn, but later he opened up – we were also drinking raki. A friend who admires him had advised me: “Direct the conversation to the archetypes: life, love, death. Psarantonis is primitive, innocent.”

Why are you called Psarantonis?
It’s a nickname. At Anogeia [a mountainous region within the prefecture of Rethymno, Crete] we all have nicknames. My grandfather was called this [‘Psarantonis’]. He was part of a group of 5-6 people who would go and steal from the Turks. He was the quickest. If they came across any Turks, he would move like a bullet and would catch them all, from the first to the last, ‘like fish’ [ψάρια]. So he got the name ‘Psarotourkos’ [Ψαρότουρκος] and from that came ‘Psarantonis’ [Ψαραντώνης]. It then stuck to the whole family: Psaronikos, Psarogiorgis…

How old are you?
Tell them I’m 100! (laughs)

Did you go to school?
Yes, I went to primary school. I learned to read and count.

When did you start playing music?
From very young. At 10 I was playing the lyra and at 12-13 I was performing my own music.

At that age? How is that possible?
It comes on its own. As you are walking it comes to your head and you take up the instrument.
Is it something you produce immediately or slowly?
It’s produced better slowly… Listen, I never play a piece the same way twice. Even if I were to play it immediately again it will not be the same. You dress it up one way the first time, a different way the next. You embroider it, you push it forward, you take it far. Music, my child, is miles long. Don’t listen to those who put dots on paper or those who read them.

Isn’t that music also?
No, it’s not! The feelings of the artist can’t be put on paper. They can’t be sold, and they can’t be bought. Music is character. Can all the sheets of paper and all the pen markings go to make up a Nikos? [meaning his brother, Nikos Xylouris] Let these scholars take Nikos’ songs and learn them and sing them… These songs that are manly will be turned by them into…songs fit for a pansy! (laughs)

Do you know how to read music?
Yes, I do. And so what? I don’t need them. Notes are what Karagiozis speaks of when he says, “Do re mi fasolada!” (bursts out in laughter) [φασολάδα: beans, a play on the solmization system of do re mi fa sol la ti]. I saw this as a little kid and I’ve never laughed as much.

What do you think of musicologists?
They are full of hangups. Words, theories, slavishness to foreign trends, that which is good they don’t want.

Why don’t they want it?
Because they can’t handle it. They are jealous of it because they can’t create it themselves.
Before you go up on stage to play, do you do any preparations?
I only tune the instruments. We then come out all together and we go wherever the stream leads us. I never say: “Lads, we will now play this piece.” They look to me to see what I’ve begun playing and then they come on board.

Have you ever done rehearsals?
(laughs) No, they know what to do.

Wait on now, Psarantoni! How do they know?
Well, we’ve been playing so long together. Sometimes I play a new piece and they don’t know it at all.

During a concert?
Yes. I play the piece and they follow the rhythm.

Do you take notice of the audience below?
Yes, I do take notice of the audience, because they play along with me. The way they listen, the way they applaud changes my performance.

Do you think of anything as you are playing?
Of course I do!
I notice that you close your eyes.
Yes, I have my landscapes. I go to landscapes I like so that the music might turn out well. How can I explain it? We human beings have nothing, nature has it all. She is God. She gives birth to you, devours you, punishes you. She also gives us music. I stand opposite Psiloriti [Mount Ida, the highest mountain in Crete] for hours. And I come out with the lines: “On Psiloriti’s peak / the snow never ends / as soon as the old melts / it is buried with new.” I look at him and he would impart the music to me.

Where were you looking at him from?
I was opposite, in Idaio Antro [a cavern, known as the Cave of Zeus, on Mount Ida], near my village.
And you were sitting with your lyra and playing?
Is it possible now to behold Psiloritis and play some trashy song? [Psarantonis uses the term ‘σκυλάδικο’, which refers to a genre of Greek folk music sometimes associated with disreputable nightclubs, and popularized by such artists as Vasilis Karras and Lefteris Pantazis.] He rebukes! He wants rizitika [ριζίτικα]: a type of song with a long history in Crete], he wants tragedy, he wants…
…passion! Passion! You got it, lad!

In your sleep, in your dreams, do you ever hear music?
Yes, of course. A melody once came to me in a dream and I got up and I put it together. And it’s a nice piece, called Air [Αιθέρας]…
Does music ever frighten you?
It certainly does. There are times when I wake up in a sweat. Music is a wild beast which cannot be tamed.
Tell me 2 or 3 songs by others which you like.
I like many songs by my brother, Nikos: Weaver [Ανυφαντού], Augusta [Αυγούστα], The Brave Man in Sfakia [Παλικάρι στα Σφακιά]…

Didn’t Xarchakos [Stavros Xarchakos: b.1939, leading Greek composer] write that one?
Yes. Xarchakos is great. He has power, fire – and it shows. I also like much of Hatzidakis’ work, virtually all of it. [Manos Hatzidakis: 1925-1994, one of Greece’s greatest composers, won an Oscar in 1960 for the music he wrote for Jules Dassin’s film, Never on Sunday.]
What about Theodorakis? I heard you prior to the concert the day before, when it was announced that he will have yet another concert, this time for his 80th birthday, and you said “Now we’re saved!” [Mikis Theodorakis: b.1925, modern Greece’s best known composer]
Leave me alone, don’t mix me up with him!

Have you ever been invited to appear on television?
They avoid me. I don’t want to go anyway. Last year when I was playing at the An Club in Exarcheia [a district in downtown Athens, known for its vibrant artistic and intellectual life], they asked me: “Do you want to go on TV to advertise the shows?” I replied: “No, they can simply say that I’m playing here.”

Why don’t you go on TV?
Because they say “Bravo!” to everyone, and so they’ve cheapened it. One person comes in and they stuff him with “Bravo!”, another person comes in and they stuff him with “Bravo!”; their laughter is a sham, their movements are a sham. What’s the point of me going?

Why do you say they avoid you?
Because their circles are like that, don’t you know this already? I went to play at a club and they said to me: “ERT [the former state-owned radio and television broadcaster of Greece] will send out a team”. “Don’t bet on it!” I said to them. And the day before they were meant to arrive, they said they won’t be coming. They don’t have a team to send, they said! I got so flustered that I phoned the person in charge at ERT and I said to him: “Public television is not your possession! Who do you think we are? You don’t have a team for us, but you do for the killjoys!”
(Vasilis, the tavern-keeper, intervenes, having up to this time quietly followed the conversation. But now he can no longer hold himself back. “Listen, lads! Psarantonis is peeved because he’s been 50 years in the profession, he has offered so much to the place and the state does nothing for him. His trips abroad are made on his own. The biggest overseas festivals invite him directly. Greece never nominates him – only Dalaras [George Dalaras: b.1949, an internationally renown Greek singer] and others it sends out. Even in Crete there has yet to be a concert with Psarantonis paid by the municipality, with free entrance for people. For Markopoulos [Yannis Markopoulos: distinguished Greek composer, b.1939 in Heraklion, Crete] they give each year four concerts in Eleutheria Square [the central square of Heraklion, Crete]. All free! If only the immigrants go, Eleutheria Square will be full! And Markopoulos is given loads of money so that he may come and play ‘Orpheus’ each year… Is that equal treatment?”)

Psarantoni, would you like to play at the Odeon? [Odeon of Herodes Atticus, a prestigious amphitheatre on the southwest slope of the Acropolis of Athens]
I make an application each year and they never give it to me.

Are you serious?
Yes, for 10 years now. They know that I would fill it up, but they don’t give it to me.

And what excuse do they give you?
They say, “We can’t this year, come back next year.” But do you know what some friends of mine are scheming to do? They are thinking of sticking up posters all over Athens which state that Psarantonis will be playing at the Odeon on such-and-such a date. A large crowd will be gathered and we will be playing, not inside, but outside the Odeon. It would be a great joke to play on them! (laughs)

Have you heard the anecdotes about you from Crete? (Many anecdotes are circulating which portray Psarantonis as a hero who is a little idiosyncratic, with his own logic.)
Yes, they also tell these to me. They told me a recent one with the helmet. It is said that I mounted a motorbike – I actually don’t know how to ride one – and I had placed the helmet here, on my elbow; and at the lights the traffic cop said to me, “The helmet, Antonis, is worn on the head, not on one’s arm”. And I said to him, “What are you talking about! Do you know how many times I’ve fallen and broken my elbow?” (laughs)
Is there someone or something you would give your life for?
The fatherland. It’s worth it!

Would you ever play with a Turk on stage?
Of course. And I’ve already done so! I’ve played with a Turk, with an Indian, with blacks and with Asians.

Do you believe in God?
I do believe, but as I said: by ‘God’ I mean Nature. She has the power, she gives the pulse to things. Every thing has its pulse: the heart, the air, the wave, the grass… Even a rock has its own pulse: its immobility, its silence. And at times life forms on a rock. Haven’t you seen the cliffs, on the boulders, where tiny trees grow? And eros [έρωτας], where does it sprout from? Doesn’t it sprout from the cliffs?
Eros?
Eros, a plant, dittany – that’s what we call it at Anogeia. [Dittany is named έρωντας in the Cretan dialect.]

Does it have anything to do with love?
Sure it does. History tells us that love sprouted when a tear from Zeus over Pasiphae dripped onto a rock.

Love is difficult, isn’t it?
It is. All loves are difficult.

How many times in your life have you fallen in love?
I fall in love every minute. If I come across a beautiful flower, even a little beautiful flower, I can fall in love with it!

What about a beautiful woman?
Leave that alone! (laughs)

In difficult times where do you draw strength from?
From music.

What are you afraid of?
Nothing.

Death?
No, because it is mandatory. And when it comes, may it be welcome.

Do you take care of your health?
No. I smoke, I stay up late, I don’t take care.

And yet you are 100 years old!
And yet I’m 100 years old!

Do you pray?
At times, if need be. It’s only human. Even to go to church: it’s only human.

Do you go?
No, I don’t. But, at times, if I pass by the front of a church and someone else does the sign of the cross, I’ll do the same – so that he doesn’t call me a lout! (laughs)

Do you place any trust in priests?
I reproach them when they say that before Christ there was nothing. “Didn’t any leaves sway?”, I say to them. Also Knossos, Zeus, Orpheus – what were they?… Listen, my son: we are to love Christ because he was a good man, but there were many Christs before him and some were even greater than he was.

Such as?
Such as Zeus, Orpheus, Homer, Kornaros, Kazantzakis… They were all divine-human, with a great flame within them. They knew how to converse with Nature. I acknowledge them, I love them but there is not only one such person.

Do you ever cry?
I cry when I am alone.

What makes you cry?
Whatever saddens me and moves me… Once an old man – a fearless man who had gone to war – said a mantinada [a folk Cretan couplet] to me just before he died: “Amongst the small I was small, amongst men I was manly / amongst grouches I was even more grouchy.” He was saving this mantinada so as to tell it to us on his last days. And he cried and he affected me also. “Uncle, don’t cry,” I said to him. “A man who doesn’t cry,” he said, “doesn’t enter the fire.” And then I asked him: “Were you ever afraid in war?” He replied: “I was afraid many times, but I would say: ‘Whoever dies along with many, fears not death.’ And I would rush forth and it would be the faint-hearted who got killed.” He put it well, didn’t he?
Very well!
And they say men don’t cry! Who doesn’t cry?

Were these your teachers?
They were my teachers and it is they I remember, and I’m lucky that I made it in time to meet such figures in my life.

Did you get to meet Hatzidakis?
Yes, when he was doing shows at Anogeia. He loved me very much. When I took part in the Cretan lyra competition for the first time (don’t write this down, they will say that I’m bragging), he said to the others on the panel: “What are we doing here? He is going a thousand years forward and a thousand years back.” And he stood up and applauded.
I imagine that these words are amongst the best you’ve heard.
Yes, because they come from a true artist. This is natural. Artists get together and understand one another. They are like tall mountains: the one beholds the other and they fall in love… Each year I go to Mires [a town in the prefecture of Heraklion, Crete] to listen to Leonidas Klados playing the lyra, to see how he grasps the instrument, how he crafts a prelude, how he fine-tunes things…

Do you feel nostalgic about old times in your life?
Sure I do. I feel nostalgic about my childhood years when I was learning to play music, when I would listen to my brother Nikos play so beautifully and sing so beautifully. Our house was next to the church, separated by a narrow lane two metres long, and we would always hear the chanters. And I remember how Nikos would stand on the bed, place a blanket around him and begin to chant. And I would chant too!

Do you think about Nikos often?
Every day. There has never been another person as complete as he was. Handsome, brave, an authentic human being…

A better musician than you?
Much better!

Are you happy with how your life has gone up to now?
It has been full of troubles, but I am happy. Very, very happy! Life is a battle. From the time a man is born he battles to find a breast to suckle, he battles to stand up, to walk. Until there arrives a dawn when he can reach the other door and depart.
If you weren’t a musician, what would you like to have been?
I would’ve liked to have goats and sheep and to live in the mountains.

Do you ever play music to animals?
Yes, of course! To sheep, to birds, to all animals. And if you play well, slowly, they like it and don’t leave. I have found a tree at Idaio Antro which has a large hollow. In the evenings birds gather there. Many birds! As soon as I enter the hollow they are frightened and fly away. I begin to play the lyra and the birds come back. They sit on the branches, they listen, they turn their little heads every now and again, but they don’t look at you. And at some point they too begin to sing. And a dog might bark, sheep and goats call out… And we all together make music.

* Translator’s note: The interview was conducted by Christos Ioannidis, who published it in Greek in the magazine Schooligans. Notes in square brackets have been added by the translator.