Efficent at work or not..

May 17, 2008 at 11:53 am · Filed under Greek music, Music, Radio Feature and tagged: album, blogging, CD, choosing songs for radio, Dromoi, editing, Greek lyrics, Greek music, melody, Music, poem, search, Sokratis Malamas, sound, Swedish Radio

It took me a whole day to find a CD. I looked all over and could not find it. Found all the other things I wasn’t looking for but the one CD I needed for my radio feature was nowhere. I knew it was in here somewhere, so I wasted a whole day searching until i found it under a cardigan. I think it took something like 20 hours… with breaks of course.

In the meantime I was stressing like crazy thinking that I should be editing and editing and writing my script instead, but oh no, I had to look for the CD and during all this stress I came up with ten ideas for writing blogs and another ten for poems. So I gave in in the end and sat down and scribbled down some poems, they are also somewhere around here now, on pieces of paper, behind receipts, on napkins all being used as book marks. I bet when the time has come to look for these poems, I won’t be able to find them either unless I listen to that CD and write a few more poems…

In the end the album Dromoi, by Sokratis Malamas was in my hands. I have listened to it before, but now I needed to focus on the listening and figure out which songs I should use to illustrate the feature with and this music feature I was working on about him. Sometimes you have this favourite song, but for some reason it won’t fit in with the purpose of the show, or with the feature or there is some other production/editing reason that makes you leave out a song in favour of another.

This time I think I just decided that as it is a Greek singer to be featured on a radio station in a non-Greek speaking country, the most important thing is the melody and harmonies not the lyrics, as so few people will understand the lyrics. I also got help in getting a selection of his older songs from one of his record label representatives. 

I remember one of the first things Sokratis Malamas asked me was who was going to listen to this interview I was about to do? Was it going to be for Greeks in Sweden, or not? I said the show is not a language programme for minorities or immigrants, it is purely a music programme featuring music from all kinds of places in the world, so it is not exclusively a Greek audience, but a Swedish one. 

And then he asked me, but how will my music and my lyrics reach these people, if they don’t understand the language I’m singing in and I don’t understand theirs?

Well, he might have a point. If you do get to listen, you’ll find out if his music will reach you. I believe that music is universal and of course you get a better experience when understanding the language a song is sung in, but I have personally listened to many songs in foreign languages and love them, not because I understand the meaning of any of the words, but because I like the sound and the feeling a song sends out. If you would like to listen to the feature it runs on Swedish Radio and here is the link: 

http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/p2/program/arkiv.asp?ProgramID=2486&formatID=116&Max=2008-06-08&Min=2006-01-22&PeriodStart=2008-05-01&Period=3&Artikel=2071143

It’s available for up to a month after the show airs tomorrow Sunday 18th May 2008. You can access it via the link above. I hope you will enjoy listening to it and that it will introduce you to some new music.

Sokratis Malamas, photo Giorgos Vitsaropoulos 

Elisavet

Comments