Lefteris Hapsiadis

Lefteris Hapsiadis (Template:Lang-el, born October 23, 1953) is a contemporary Greek lyrics author, a poet and a writer of novels. In the last thirty years he has written various poems, three novels and also lyrics for 525 songs (registered with AEPI) in the contemporary Greek rebetika, laïka (pop music) and elafra (light music) genres. He has collaborated with various music composers, and has occasionally worked as a record producer. Among those, he has often worked with Christos Nikolopoulos with whom he has had a number of popular records (including Μία είναι η ουσία - One matter counts, and Κάποια, κάπου, κάποτε - Some woman, somewhere, sometime). Together they also created and produced a CD with 12 songs (December 1986), for which they were able to assemble together 11 popular Greek performers, including Giorgos Dalaras, Haris Alexiou, Stratos Dionysiou, Giannis Parios, and Manolis Mitsias. Nikolopoulos performed one of the songs in the CD as well, his first public singing performance ever. The CD was launched as "Τραγούδια για τους φίλους μου" - Songs for my friends. Other quite well known performers of Hapsiadis pop songs were Stelios Kazantzidis, Glykeria and Manolis Aggelopoulos.

Lefteris Hapsiadis

Life

Lefteris Hapsiadis was born in October 1953 in Φέρες (Feres), and lived during his early life in Κοίλα (Kila), both agglomerations located in the Greek Prefecture (Νομός) of Eβρος 5Evros-. This is the most north-eastern region of Greece, bordering with Turkey in the east, and with Bulgaria in the north. Hapsiadis likes to refer to Κοίλα (Kila) as his "Paradise on Earth", and nowadays he spends a major part of his life there. His origins are from Pontos; this is the area in the north of present day Turkey, along its Black Sea coast. To this day he has been quite loyal to his origins and throughout his career he has undertaken various artistic initiatives to try to preserve the cultural heritage of the land of his ancestors. Such work includes the production of three records with Καζαντζίδης (Kazantzidis) in the Pontos dialect, as a tribute to its special sound and style. Hapsiadis is quite knowledgeable of the Pontos Greek dialect that he learned from his parents and grandmother in Koila.

He attended high school in Αλεξανδρούπολις (Alexandroupolis), the administrative capital of Εβρος (Evros). For this purpose his entire family moved to town from Κοίλα (Kila). During that period his father owned a kiosk (περίπτερον), typical of Greek city landscapes, where passers-by came to purchase various items, newspapers, magazines, pocket books, cigarettes, souvenirs, postcards, etc. Hapsiadis helped his father by working at the kiosk during several hours a day, when free from school and homework. This gave him the opportunity to often read the newspapers, books, and magazines; it helped him grow his early appetite for the Greek sound of rebetika, a.k.a. the music of manges, members of a sort of inner city and urban slums gangs of the early 20th century. In a period when most of his schoolmates enjoyed the pop and rock music genres of the West, Hapsiadis was seeking to find out about little known events and details surrounding rebetika songs, their performers and their lyrics. He developed a habit of collecting rebetika lyrics and writing them down in a notebook as his favorite pastime. These were his start-up days of his future career as a rebetika songs writer.

For a short time he attended university in Patras, in the department of Biology, but only for six months, before he dropped off and got entirely absorbed within the professional world of rebetika in the Greek capital, Athens. He accidentally met one evening Giorgos Dalaras, and through him he later built close personal relationships with more key players of the Greek pop music industry. Names include Lefteris Papadopoulos, a widely known Greek lyrics writer, the then young composer Χρήστος Νικολόπουλος (Christos Nikolopoulos), and many popular Greek pop singers Στέλιος Καζαντζίδης(Stelios Kazantzidis), Στράτος Διονυσίου (Stratos Dyonisiou) and Μανώλης Αγγελόπουλος (Manolis Aggelopoulos). He also became close friends with Βασίλης Βασιλικός (Vassilis Vassilikos), a prominent novel writer. Βασιλικός (Vassilikos) became internationally known by his "Z" novel, a story about the assassination of Γρηγόρης Λαμπράκης (Grigoris Lambrakis), a left-wing political activist during mid-1960s. The novel was later made into a movie as part of a trilogy by Greek Director Costa Gavras, with Yves Montand in the leading role. In his first novel, Hapsiadis devoted a chapter to Vassilikos' life, about which Vassilikos later told Hapsiadis that he considered to be his most interesting biography written by an author other than himself.

Novels

File:HapsiDalaras.jpg

Hapsiadis with Dalaras and Nikolopoulos.

In addition to poems and song lyrics Hapsiadis recently wrote three novels. He only lately decided to focus on writing novels and had his first three produced in the last 5 years. All of them are largely autobiographic in nature with many details about events that actually took place and form part of the history of modern Ρεμπέτικα (rebetika). His first two novels were "Η ζωη μου τραγούδι το τραγούδι ζωη" (My life (is) a song, the song (is) life) and "Ο αλήτης άγγελος" (An angel vagabond) . In his second novel, although much of his writing is describes real life events, locations and names of personages, at the same time the author packages and presents those as elements of a plot in a "fiction" storyline. His third novel is scheduled for release end of October 2010.

As a self-taught author, Hapsiadis creates unusual plots wherein Greek music industry VIPs participate as key personages. In his books, the heroes maintain their real life names; however, Hapsiadis uses the name Λέλος (Lelos) instead of Λευτέρης to represent himself as the leading actor in his plots. All three novels, written is simple everyday spoken Greek, without many of the usual attributes and techniques used by many professional writers, read rather fluently, and they can be typically consumed by a reader in a matter of hours. Another unusual element in his writing is the fact that he often mixes lyrics and poems within his regular text blocks, either to support his arguments or for reasons of historic significance added to the described events. All his novels offer valuable historic information and insights in the evolution of rebetika from the times of Markos Vamvakaris and Vassilis Tsitsanis (pre- and post-World War II) to this day. The scores of events described, in many of which he himself participated as one of the players, is quite extended, and his recollection of details quite impressive. With a few scarce exceptions, Hapsiadis avoids criticism of his real life personages, however, on occasions, he is being critical of himself and his own weaknesses.

Songs

Per the generally accepted public opinion his most popular song lyrics were Mia einai i ousia (Μια ειναι η ουσία, "One matter counts") that he wrote upon a Nikolopoulos music score during mid eighties. The song was originally performed by Haris Alexiou and later, following accrued popularity, by quite a few other performers, including Giorgos Dalaras (Link to Live Performance at the Odeion of Herodes Atticus - Athens )

Μία είναι η ουσία:

(One matter counts)
δεν υπάρχει αθανασία
(There exists no immortality)
Αχ και του παράδεισου η κοιλάδα
(Oh, the valley of paradise)
δεν χωράει την Ελλάδα
(is not large enough for the whole of Greece)
Να 'σουνα, Θεέ μου, πότης
(I wish, God, you were a drunk)
να σωθεί η ανθρωπότης,
(to save the whole human race)
στο μεθύσι σου απάνω
(During your drunkenness)
να μαχαίρωνες το Χάρο.
(stab the Charon to death)
Άιντε ν' αρρωστήσει ο Άγιος-Πέτρος
(let's hope St-Peter gets ill)
να τη βγάλουμε και φέτος.

(so that we'll still survive this year)

The lyrics playfully deal with immortality, whereby the author admits that nothing is "immortal" and begs Almighty God to eliminate Death for good, after the former had a few drinks first. The lyrics are used in a hilarious passage in his second novel, when the author dies and struggles to get into Paradise, but comes across a rather annoyed St-Peter, who didn't seem to have liked the song lyrics of his Mia einai i ousia song at all. That passage is quite amusing. Curiously enough, although it describes the hero's termination of life and his travel to heavens, it sort of deprives easily intimidated readers of the fear of death itself. His most popular song performed by Giorgos Dalaras, also a close personal friend, was Kappoia, kapou, kapote (Κάποια, κάπου, κάποτε).

Κάποια, κάπου, κάποτε ήταν η ζωή μου

(Some woman somewhere, sometime was my whole life)
η αρχή το τέλος μου κι όλη η ύπαρξή μου
(My beginning, my end, and my whole existence)
Τώρα μες τα όνειρά μου ψάχνω τη μορφή της
(Now I am looking for her face in my dreams)
μα και κείνη χάθηκε σαν την υπόσχεσή της
(but she disappeared just like her promises)
Κάποια, κάπου, κάποτε μου ‘χτιζε παλάτια
(Some woman somewhere, sometime was building castles for me)
ήταν όμως γυάλινα κι έγιναν κομμάτια
(however, they were made of glass and broke in pieces)
Τώρα μες τα όνειρά μου ψάχνω τη μορφή της
(Now I am looking for her face in my dreams)
μα και κείνη χάθηκε σαν την υπόσχεσή της

(but she disappeared just like her promises)

File:Hapsikaza.jpg

Hapsiadis with Kazantzidis.

Hapsiadis often admitted to friends that he feels deeply connected with all his song lyrics; however, he inevitably shows extra affection to a select number of those that were inspired by authentic events in his lifetime, and by his intimate personal emotions during such moments. Among these songs are two referring to the country of his youth, the towns of Alexandroupolis and Orestiada, in the far north of the Evros Prefecture. It is generally known in Greece that the border regions of the country, especially Greece's eastern border with Turkey, are the least desirable areas for young Greeks to serve their country during their military service. As a young kid, working at his father's kiosk, Hapsiadis watched many pitiful soldiers passing by, feeling miserable about themselves and cursing their 'bad' fortunes for being dropped by the army in such desolate and risky geographies. In addition, until recent years, Greek conscripts were treated as second rank citizens in the towns and villages of Evros, as many among them would admit to this day. Unless they enjoyed a military rank of some sort, conscripts wouldn't be typically admitted inside many public venues, and many local businessmen would prefer to live without conscripts entering their businesses. Hapsiadis was inspired by this to write two of his most moving songs, Alexandroupoli meria, originally performed by Dimitris Mitropanos, and Oresteiada , performed by Stelios Dionysiou and Ploutarchos.

Songs for my friend

(Tracks of the CD Τραγούδια για τους φίλους μου)
by Nikolopoulos and Hapsiadis, 1986

1. Μοιάζουμε (We resemble each other) with Μανωλης Μητσιάς (Manolis Mitsias)
2. Αν τέλειωνε η ζωή (If life ended) with Στράτος Διονυσίου (Stratos Dionysiou)
3. Πως μπορεί (How is it possible) with Ελένη Βιτάλη (Eleni Vitali)
4. Ετσι σ'αγάπησα (I loved you this way) with Διονύσης Θεοδόσης (Dionysis Theodosis)
5. Φοβάμαι (I'm afraid) with Δήμητρα Γαλάνη (Dimitra Galani)
6. Κάποια, κάπου, κάποτε (Some woman, somewhere, some time) with Γιώργος Νταλάρας (Giorgos Dalaras)
7. Καλύτερα ελεύθερος (Better be free) with Γιάννης Πάριος (Yannis Parios)
8. Το διαβολάκι (Little devil) with Χάρις Αλεξίου (Haris Alexiou)
9. Τώρα που έφυγες (Now that you've gone away) with Λίτσα Διαμάντη (Litsa Diamanti)
10. Οι δρόμοι τής ανατολής (The streets of the East) with (Xristos Nikolopoulos)
11. Με χρώματα κι'αρώματα (WIth colors and odors) with Μάρη Βάσου (Mary Vassou)
12. Οταν χορεύεις μάτια μου (When you're dancing, my love) with Μανώλης Αγγελόπουλος (Manolis Aggelopoulos)

Honors

During his 25 year long career as a lyrics writer, Hapsiadis achieved a number of Golden and Platinum record awards and occasionally he has been publicly recognized for his contribution to the Greek Popular Music by the Prefecture of Evros and Municipalities of Alexandroupolis and Feres with organized concerts dedicated to his song-lyrics successes.

See also

• Mangas
• Rembetiko – a film by Costas Ferris

External links

• Stelios Kazantzidis: Ta zeibekika at Music Corner
• World News: Glykeria - Older Videos
• Thrakinea - 3 June 2009
• Interview with Nikolopoulos at Icona
• Lyrics of 158 of his songs
• Rebetiko On-line Brief introduction in Greek and English, and a large photo collection.]