MARINELLA
and GEORGE DALARAS
at Radio City Music Hall, in New York City
 |
Photo credit: Dinos Diamantopoulos ©
2002
|
Review by
Jon Pareles
about Marinella and George Dalaras
from the newspaper «The New York Times»
from the newspaper «The New York Times»
Published: April 10, 2003, New York
Love, fate and history were
the makings of the songs of George Dalaras and Marinella, two singers
who have been stars in Greece since the 1960's and who shared the
stage of Radio City Music Hall on Friday night (April
4, 2003). The audience regularly sang along on their hits.
Mr. Dalaras, who sells out
arenas in Europe, is a pivotal figure in Greek popular music, drawing
on major songwriters and holding on to traditional elements and a
social conscience. He has a kindly, imploring voice that can take on
a steely core. “All the songs have bitterness in them”, he sang
on Friday night, “because we live in pain from the day we are
born”.
Yet Mr. Dalaras was a modest,
amiable figure next to Marinella, a luminary in the Greek pop called
laika. Her voice was earthy and strong, and she had the presence of
an actress as she danced a few teasing steps or brought dignity to
longing.
Their repertory approached
European pop from the East. In a few songs (including one in Spanish)
Mr. Dalaras demonstrated a smooth, European-styled tenor, while
Marinella had a quasi-chanson and a song that could have been
bachelor-pad music, complete with bongos. Yet their orchestra had a
front line of bouzoukis and an accordion, and Mr. Dalaras played not
only guitar but also baglama, a small lute.
Many of the songs were built
on odd-meter Greek dances, stately or ebullient. And both Mr. Dalaras
and Marinella sang with the grainy peaks and the microtonal ripples
of Greek folk styles, lending the songs the gravity of tradition. One
striking song began with a violin solo that mimicked the trills and
slides of a traditional Greek fiddle. Marinella sang about a mother
receiving letters from her son, a soldier, and telling him not to
write because she could not read.
When Mr. Dalaras wasn't
singing about love, he also had wartime memories in mind. He sang
about the bravery of Greek soldiers in World War II and about an
isolated Greece fighting Turkey during World War I. Throughout the
set, heartache also invoked the sorrows of history.
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