Merry Christmas! (Or enjoy your preferred winter festival!)

In the past few years, I have only made very short trips to Greece, always accompanied by barbarian friends. Invariably, I mostly socialised with them, and I experienced the place through their eyes. So I had been looking forward to this slightly longer trip in order to rediscover Greece, and to be amazed by changes and progress (and my own rereading of the unchanged, with the benefit of a marginal increase in experience and perceptiveness). My expectations were not met right away. However, a couple of nights out in the centre of Athens did bear fruit. It was sufficient to see people dressed funkily and window shop for a while to be satisfied that Greeks are in the forefront of fashion. New ways of thinking cannot be far behind.

I did notice, however, an oddly high proportion of lingerie and hosiery shops. I did consider that it might be that these shops have more attractive window displays, causing me to notice them more, so I consciously compensated for any such bias and can safely claim that there are more lingerie and hosiery shops in Athens than in any other capital I have visited. The highly sensual aesthetic of Greek women that this observation suggests has yet to be evidenced conclusively, though.

Last night, Raphael and I joined some more funky people in the audience for Human Touch during one of their weekly gigs at Café Alavastro. Stavros Lantsias (left) played drums, keyboards, guitar, and percussion (including coffee tin, wooden chair, and empty water cooler bottle). David Lynch (middle; no relation) played tenor and soprano saxophones, flute, piccolo, tin whistle, percussion (including nylon bag and his own stomach), sang, and did a brief stint playing one of Lantsias’s keyboards upside down. Giotis Kiourtsoglou (right) played fretted and fretless 5-string basses, percussion (including his bass upside down on his lap), helped with vocals, and did a bit of standup comedy between songs. They were often playing instruments two at a time, and helped others in the group if they were otherwise occupied (e.g. by slapping a cymbal while Lantsias was playing drums with his right and keyboards with his left hand). Acclaimed and favourite singer Elli Paspala (romantically involved with Lynch?) was also present, but refrained from getting on stage. The freshness of this music was also helpful in my search towards contemporary Greece.

Importantly, although fresh and contemporary, the music of Human Touch is heavily influenced by traditional Greek music. In less developed countries, the road to progress is often understood merely as a break with tradition and the assimilation of the traditions of the dominant (anglosaxon) culture. Hence the traditional Greek roast pork Christmas meal has been superceded by the American turkey, and the ornamented model boat (Greece has been a seafaring nation for several millennia) has surrendered its place to the Germanic tanenbaum. In the context of my search for contemporary Greekness redefined, it is this critical regionalism (as Kenneth Frampton would say) that interests me. The mimicry of dominant cultures is a matter of course and I am not opposed to it; it’s just less interesting.

I can’t wait till September so I can get my contemporary Greekness fix by rubbing elbows with the usual creative suspects of Athens during the film and comics festivals.