Stamatis Kraunakis’ new album “The Tiger” was released.
As much as Stamatis Kraunakis from time to time occupies the media with the exuberance that characterizes him, it should not and is not right to sideline his main quality, that of composer and lyricist. And Kraunakis is a very great composer. The closest link between the younger generation and the giants of the past. His best quality features are revealed in his brand new album released by Minos-EMI titled “The Tiger – Folk Songs”. More specifically, we have fifteen songs in his own lyrics for the voice of Christos Gerontides (Dimitra Galani participates in three of them).
Disc-gift to the folk child from Perama
A record-gift from the creator to his closest collaborator, a folk kid from Perama, who was nurtured artistically with Kraunakis and they have been together for fifteen years. It is no coincidence that the song “Perama”, in lyrics by the poet Kostas Tsioufis, reveals how much the composer took into account the world that his performer carries. Songs cut and sewn for a popular male voice with an intense theatricality that automatically differentiates her from any other professional singer. But Gerontides is a professional. And if you haven’t seen him in shows, you’ve heard him perform Lorca’s masterful rocking songs in the recent past. Here he seems to narrate, sometimes with extroversion and sometimes with melancholy, the mosaics of his own life through the hand of his mentor, which is why I repeat that this album is a gift to him and his talent. And because many people will be quick to characterize the album as “Zampetic” or “Tsitanic” (I even found it “Theodoric”), yes, there are all of them in the songs, but there is also Kraunakis, who has his own stamp on everything he writes .
“Zeta”, “Tonight again” and “Luzeria”
Listen to “Zeta” which has harmonies rare for a Greek folk song, but also listen to “Tonight again” (for Sofia Vembo) with Galani in lyrics by Tsitsanis. And of course there is also “Louzeria”, a song that, before it was even aired, it was as if people were waiting for it to be put on their lips, as was the case in the good old days with songs that are now part of the collective memory of the Greeks. It would be remiss not to mention the defining sound of bouzouki Nikos Katsikis, who gave this material climate and atmosphere.
Exactly as Kraunakis writes in the insert of the publication: “I wish it would be played in groups, in taverns, by improvised players everywhere, like a material that we have always known and suddenly from a crack in the soil, it sprouted in the season”. I have a feeling that this is exactly what will happen even though we are living in an anti-spiritual age, which brings out all the damnation and forces many people to become…searchers in order to discover the beautiful, the great and the true. The new song is here. Discover and enjoy.
The new album by Stamatis Kraunakis includes 15 songs cut and sewn for the voice of Christos Gerontides, which has a strong element of theatricality
