Mikis Theodorakis

UNESCO Courier, July-August, 1992

No one who has heard the wonderful bouzouki melodies written by the Greek composer Mikis Theedorakis for Zorba the Greek or his theme music for two other noted films, Z and Etat de Siege, will ever forget them. Theodorakis has infused the soul and spirit of the Greek people into all his musical works. He is also a militant who today, as a member of his country's parliament, continues a struggle for freedom and justice which began when he joined the wartime resistance as a teenager and has taken him more than once to prison or into exile. Here he looks back on the circumstances that gave rise to his musical vocation and his political commitment.

* Tell us something about your early life. was born on 29 July 1925 on the island of Chios, opposite the native village of my mother on the mainland of Asia Minor, in what is now Turkey. My father was from Crete. He had volunteered to serve in the first Balkan War, in which he was wounded, and had then entered the civil service. When the Greek army occupied Smyrna, he was posted to the small town of Bourla, where he met my mother. She came from a very poor family. Her father was a farmer during the winter and went out fishing in the summer. Her brother, who had had an education, later became a Director in the Ministry of Economic Affairs. My family therefore came from the lower middle class of government officials who instilled a sense of discipline in their children.

I was born after the military defeat which Greece suffered following the Turkish revolution of Kemal Ataturk. It was a real tragedy for the country. I think that Greece lost its soul when it lost Ionia. Greece and Turkey have been in conflict with one another over long periods of their history. The first Greek nationalist revolution was directed against the Ottomans, in 1821. And Crete remained under Turkish domination until 1912.

Many of our relatives, on both my father's and my mother's sides, were victims of these confrontations and made great sacrifices. My father used to say that our two families had shed a river of blood. I therefore grew up in an atmosphere of patriotic stories and the stirring revolutionary songs known as Rizitika, which had a very great influence on me.

* Even so, you have memories of a happy childhood.

-- Yes. We had a country house, where we were surrounded by aunts and uncles forming one big family. This house had also been the home and source of inspiration of a famous naive painter, Theophilos. It was a wonderful experience to live there in the middle of the olive groves, the orange trees and the flowers, overlooking the sea. I remember that there was a boat which used to sail past twice a week. The impression which that white boat on the blue sea has left on me is like a wound, like the mark of a scar left by a moment of exhilaration. I really believe that I have tried, in everything I have composed, to recreate that beauty and rediscover those images engraved in my memory like a childhood dream.

I also remember evenings we spent with my father, stretched out on the ground gazing at the stars. He knew a lot about the stars and he explained them to me and made me follow them, telling me their names and their history.

Another of those childhood memories that leave an indelible mark on you came from my uncle. Just before he was posted to Alexandria as consul, he came back to the village to get married and brought me a gramophone as a present, together with records of Greek classical and popular music and of jazz, which was then at its height. I was only four years old and there I was discovering music! We used to hold social evenings at which young people danced the Charleston and the foxtrot and I was put in charge of the gramophone. Moments like those have meant a lot to me throughout my life

My uncle also gave me a set of recordings of operatic arias, which for a long time made me afraid of opera. I think that this was probably because, for a child of my age, there was something frightening about the voices of those famous tenors and prima donnas. I was sixty before I made up my mind to tackle opera. The music I heard on that gramophone in my childhood certainly contributed to developing my tastes for a long time to come.

What sort of child were you?

-- I had some crazy ideas. I wanted to fly like a bird. I climbed a tree and flung myself into the air and almost broke my neck. Then I did it again, because I was sure that I would be able to fly. One day, I wanted to take off from the top of a three-metre-high wail, because I thought that I would be able to fly down to the beach below. I was just about to jump when my grandfather suddenly came out of nowhere and tried to catch me and stop me from hurting myself. I fell on top of him and he lost his balance. I broke my wrist, but the old man broke his leg. There was utter panic all around me. Everybody was obsessed with my wrist, but nobody bothered about my grandfather. He was very embittered, and started to refuse his food. It was this, coupled with the after-effects of his broken leg, that eventually ruined his health. He died not long afterwards. That was the first time I had seen a dead person and I didn't realize what it was all about.