As my post about Dimitris Mitropanos’s song Roza (https://wordpress.com/posts/wordscene.wordpress.?s=great+song+bu) has for some reason been generating a lot of interest recently, I thought I would translate another song in the zeïmbekiko style of the Greek rebetiko tradition – brilliantly performed here by Themis Adamantidis, Dimitris Mitropanos and Dimitris Basos.
The lyrics, by the writer Manos Eleftheriou, set to music by Christos Nikolopoulos, are again quite hard to understand. Anyway, let’s have a go and see if we can then attempt an interpretation:
At the Angels’ Bouzouki Club
At night some friends of ours who are called down-and-outs
watch us and wave to us from the sky
they come in the darkness like pickpockets
and play and feel pain and sing to us
about their stories that our minds can’t grasp.
Let’s go to the Angels’ Bouzouki Club
that’s like Byzantine times
throw away your old black clothes
and take into your soul humane voices.
At night some unknown people doing life in prison
sing some songs that are hallowed now
like military policeman at the gate of heaven
their songs and their caress
they sing their songs to us and silently weep.
Let’s go to the Angels’ Bouzouki Club
that’s like Byzantine times
throw away your old black clothes
and take into your soul humane voices.
At night some friends of ours who are called down-and-outs
watch us and wave to us from the sky
they come in the darkness like pickpockets
and play and feel pain and sing to us
about passions that our minds can’t grasp.
So who are these down-and-outs waving from the sky? I think they are the classic rebetiko musicians whose music was that of the outcasts and those on the margins of Greek society. Their music continues to be performed in dark clubs and still speaks to us today of the pain and experiences that generated it.
They’re in the sky because they are like stars or angels, they have a sort of immortality and an aura of glory and attraction to them like the Byzantine empire for us today. But they’re not remote or indifferent because they are waving to us. Their voices are those of humane, decent people.
Even people doing life in prison sing their songs now and these songs have acquired an almost religious significance. Their music is like a caress, communicating the pain and the passions that generated it, making them cry still, even though we can’t quite grasp what the music is about.
I don’t quite understand the reference to the ‘military policeman at the gate of heaven’. Maybe one of my readers would like to have a go at explaining it or indeed give another interpretation of this beautiful song?
wordscene 