Her Greek Australian mum was an opera singer, she grew up in Athens playing piano. Since moving to Melbourne with her family five years ago, she has become part of the city’s contemporary Greek blues tradition.
Stavroula Thomopoulos is part of the Erinaki duo, set up with energetic rebeti local Con Kalamaras.
Their music was developed during Melbourne’s lockdown, and they grew from a duo into a group and recorded original songs for their first album which will launch in March.
It all started thanks to another musician who Stavroula credits as her second mentor Wayne Simmons.
“I always smile when I bring him in mind because he opened this door for me to rebetiko” Stavroula said to Neos Kosmos.
The former Alphington Grammar music teacher invited her to join one of the weekly ‘rebetiko jams’ organised at 300, the Clifton Hill taverna, to see if she enjoyed singing.
“The first week I went there, honestly I was shaking. I probably knew five or six songs all in all. Dad loved laiko and rebetiko and he would play the music while driving us or in vinyl at home so I was familiar with the songs but didn’t know how to sing them properly.”
Lockdown blues
The weekly music gathering became Stavroula’s initiation in Greek blues and a place to connect with other artists including sparking the beginning of an exchange of music and lyrics that grew into Erinaki.
“Our collab started during lockdown. I remember Constantinos [Kalamaras] sent me a music recording and within half an hour I had sent back the lyrics. This was our first song.”
Whenever home visits were allowed, Stavroula and Constantinos would catch up for musical brainstorming sessions.
“We’d spend two – three hours, me on the piano Con on the guitar, or the bouzouki..this is how we wrote nine songs during lockdown.”
The tenth song is a karsilamas, and the album features a range of genres.
“We’re inspired by rebetiko, laiko, entehno and many of our songs are rooted in paradosiaka like one called ‘Avgoustiatika’ which is a balos-style song, what we often hear at paniyiria.”
Another one is titled Athens, an ode to the city she knows and loves.
“One day Constantinos sends me this tune with baglama and says ‘what can you do with this one?’. I started scribbling words in these sticky notes about Athens.
“In Greece we go for a night out even younger than here so I already had this experience. We wanted to describe this vibe that an Athens outing has. And I think we did. It sounds a bit more modern, with a bit of tsifteteli influence.”
“Constantinos usually writes the music, I write the lyrics and we do the orchestration together.
Like mother, like daughter
Stavroula is in her element when singing. It’s a talent that runs in the family.
“Mum was born and grew up here, but spent some time in Italy studying and performing as an opera singer and then in Athens as well.
“She went to Greece at 19-20 years of age for holidays and met my dad.”
It was a love story, when Stavroula’s father, Panayioti, met Maria while in Greece for holiday from Chicago where he had moved to study dentistry.
“They wanted to get married from the second date. So they both came back to Greece and stayed there. The rest is history,” says Stavroula.
The three children of the Thomopoulos family were raised speaking English with their mum at home.
But mum and daughter have also had a third language to communicate with Stavroula finding from a young age her niche in classical piano studies.
“Music is something that connects us in a different, higher level,” she says and credits her mother for her vocalist training.
The skillset has proven transferrable in rebetiko and laiko and other music genres. Stavroula performs in the Greek jazz band Cats and the Canary, in events including the latest Antipodes Festival and the HACCI Awards.
“I like trying different kinds of music and when I meet people I enjoy collaborating with it gets easy to move in between genres.”
New kids on the rebetiko block
Erinaki sounds like a musical project that welcomes this inclusivity.
“We went from Erinaki duo to big band Erinaki,” Stavroula says explaining that they have other musicians complementing them with more instruments, including Joseph Tsombanopoulos who’s played percussions in all the album songs and bass player Adrian Close.
Guitarist Alex Petropoulos, a regular of the group, met the Erinaki crew via the rebetiko jam, as did Yiannis Arvanitis, a bouzouki player who moved to Melbourne from Adelaide.
Is there a revival of the rebetiko scene in Melbourne?
Stavroula believes so.
“There’s a lot of us young musicians in our ’20s, some of them used to be Wayne’s [Simmons’] students in guitar and bouzouki that we’ve found a new love in rebetiko.”
“And this music is welcomed in the mainstream, especially here in the northern suburbs, Fitzroy, Northcote, Clifton Hill, where it is termed world music.
“We may not always play the old songs as they used to be but we still respect them. We just jazz them up a bit to make them more interesting to the modern ear.”
Erinaki will have their album launch on Sunday 19 March at Northcote Social Club. Joining them on stage will be Joseph Tsombanopoulos, Alex Petropoulos, Adrian Close & more guest musicians, as well as bands Omados and Delyrium as support acts.