GREEK FOLK MUSIC BY “TAXIMI” FROM SWEDEN.
Folk music in a preserved form gets no nourishment, does not renew itself, dies.
“TAXIMI” wants to offer resistance to this, and show “the original is universal, the simple is genuine, the popular is sophisticated”
Apart for some songs and compositions by Mikis Theodorakis which became popular all over the world, and the more commercial and “tourist friendly” versions of rebetika, there is little knowledge of Greek folk music in our country (Sweden) and the rest of the world. Taximi wants to change that; the musicians have a Greek background, but are now residing in Sweden.
The group TAXIMI, formed in 1990, sing in Greek and play traditional Greek instruments like bouzouki (the well-known instrument resembling a lute, that most people associate with Greek music), baglama (a miniature bouzouki), outi, tampoura as well as guitar, violin, mandoline, clarinet, accordion, and percussion.
The six (sometimes more) musicians appear in both small and larger circumstances, on radio and TV, at concerts and intimate parties.
In 1997, Taximi played at the “HERODION THEATRE” below the Acropolis in Athens, a venue where many great artists have appeared.
The word Taximi means improvisation, an important part of Greek folk music.
Just in time for their tenth anniversary, Taximi is releasing a CD with “rebetika”, (simple songs about love and longing that most Greek people know and love to sing) and “smyrneika” (music from the other side of the Aegean sea, in the Smyrna area).
“Dimotika” (songs of the countryside), “nisiotika” (the music of the islands) and “laika” (urban music) is also on the repertoire.
TAXIMIs last CD production, "The Northern Latitudes", is a result of a commitment over several years to the wealth of Greek traditional music.
From time immemorial the Greeks have been forced to emigrate from Greece to lands far and near, even to ”The Northern Latitudes”. This is the reason why the emigrant’s involuntary alienation has been the subject of folk music. On the other hand, very few songs have sung of the voluntary emigrant’s life and existential reflections, an emigrant who has been integrated into a new society, its ways of thinking and life patterns. How does it feel time after time to be called “Swedish“ in Greece and “Greek“ in Sweden? To discover that one doesn’t recognize childhood friends? To see new weaknesses and strengths in one’s native country that one had never seen before? To feel the need to defend with the same intensity and matter of course what is Greek when in Sweden and what is Swedish when in Greece? We have now chosen to attire a number of these universal reflections in words and newly composed music.
