Solon Lekkas

Born in 1946 in Pigi, Greece. He is a builder, a stonemason, but also a sweet-voiced singer, amateur musician and dancer. He lives today in Taxiarhes, close to the city of Mytilene. He is always involved in singing and dancing, mostly as an amateur, but also professionally.

 

You can’t learn those things; they are spontaneously coming to you. You can’t learn them; you can’t set about to study to become a dancer. If you go to a dance school, the instructor will teach you what he wants, not what your inner self tells you, what you would like to learn. If you bind the legs and hands of a singer, he will be unable to sing. You can’t study how to sing or dance. In the old days, people would hum the tunes. They would sit at the kafeneio and sing a zeibekiko humming “taran, tararan” and they would enjoy this much more than they would if there was actual music accompanying them.

I have enjoyed these songs ever since I was a kid in school. The teacher would put me up front in the singing band where we performed school songs. I would memorize them, remember the lyrics by heart. We didn’t have to write them down. Back then, everybody was singing the oldies, no new songs. We would pick them up from other people singing them together. Sitting at the kafeneio, there was nothing else to listen to; no TVs, no nothing -the customers themselves would be doing the singing. Without music, using only their voices. Sometimes, two of them would sing an amane (long, drawn out love song), the first in high and the other in low pitch voice. There was no music; they would just follow each other. A lot of people would play tabors and the toubeleki, singing the tunes. But they would not play their instruments inside the kafeneio. They would only sing without music. All the songs, some old songs they knew, were performed without instruments. I know all those songs. Even the visiting bands would perform the same old songs. The old men, playing the oud, would also perform those songs.  

 

 

Solon Lekkas

 

At the opening of the Biennale, Solon Lekkas will be accompanied by Kaiti Koulllia and Kyriakos Gouventas.