Koutsoubas: Xarchakos’ art elevates man and meets our struggle

The art of Stavros Xarhakos, which tames the soul and elevates man, meets our own struggle for a higher civilization, where “man will cease to be a wolf for man”, underlined the general secretary of the Central Committee of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoubas, in his speech tonight at the packed SEF, at the big concert-dedication of the KE of the KKE to Stavros Xarhakos.

“Stavros Xarchakos belongs together with Mikis Theodorakis and Manos Hatzidakis to the greats of Greek music who, each through their own path, made the leap into the so-called “artistic folk music”” he noted.

“His creation is just as great, as great are the poetic, cinematic, theatrical creations, which with his infallible aesthetic criterion he has chosen to express musically, But this is not the whole truth. Xarchakos does not simply serve the art of his collaborators. He is its co-creator. The iconic film or theater projects he participated in are inseparable from his music.”

D. Koutsoubas then referred to films (Tagsidi, Lola, Kokkina Fanaria, Koritsia som Helio, Rebetiko), theater (To Megalo mas Cirko) and poetry (Lament for Ignatios Sanchez Mejias) works which, as he emphasized, would not was never the same without the modest signature of S. Xarhakos.

D. Koutsoubas, in another part of his speech, emphasized that “it is not only Xarchakos’ great love for folk music and his substantial knowledge of it that make his work speak so deeply to the folk soul .

It is also why in his creation the misery of poverty finds absolute expression, through a unique combination of the love that permeates the entire work and the bitterness from her tortured life”.

“This woe in Xarhakos never becomes a conscience, a cry of the humiliated. It’s like a sob that won’t come out. As in “smoggy eyes”. In this sob, however, there is always a levity. Sometimes even the sobbing turns into anger for the false words, the big ones, of Greece – mother of misery. It seems that Xarchakos is not only moved by the plight of the popular world. Perhaps he is even more moved by the boyishness of his fighters who are rewarded with death, some “Saturday night in Kaisariani” or “a morning in a corner in Kokkinia”, as in the disturbing song “Nyn ki Aei” in verses by our great poet Nikos Gatsu, with whom Xarhakos had a particularly fruitful collaboration,” he added.

“Xarhakos’ songs inspire us and move us so deeply, because they have “blood and heart”” said D. Koutsoumbas emphasizing “he burns whole when he creates. This is why his music has the power to ignite souls, even the weakest.”

“In 1966 at the initiative of Hatzidakis and on the occasion of the banning of the songs mainly by Theodorakis based on the occupation law on preventive censorship, Xarchakos led together with Theodorakis and Hatzidakis in the campaign for the abolition of censorship in the intellectual work” said the D. Koutsoubas, pointing out, among other things, that “today, in the year 2023, Stavros Xarchakos is still fighting censorship with the same stubbornness. But this time he comes to face a much more insidious, impersonal and therefore even more dangerous form, the censorship of the “market”. A “market” that, measuring views and profits, despite the strong resistance of the younger generation of creators, tries to impose not only the mediocrity of commercialized, or better, commercialized art, but also the vulgarity of the cultural “categories” that infect the young souls, deifying money, competition, violence, sexism, drugs, illiteracy and all kinds of delinquency”.

“These are the natural “cultural” derivatives of a society that ages, rots and malforms, in the midst of corruption, attempting to drown in the foul waters of its mire the beauty of life and the art that serves it” said D. Koutsoubas, emphasizing that ” along with his measured speech, Xarchakos enlists in this fight his strongest weapon, music. Not only his, but also our entire musical tradition. From artistic folk to rebetiko, through his exquisite orchestrations”.

D. Koutsoumbas also spoke about the discreet, quiet and important activity of S. Xarchakos for the dissemination and development of the original musical art especially by the new generation.

He pointed out that instead of the state’s recognition and undivided support for such a charismatic and valuable man, “the official state, instead of encouraging the development of his activity and initiatives, takes care to destroy what he created with so much effort.”

“We are referring”, he then said, “to the only state orchestra in Greece whose subject is exclusively Greek music, the State Orchestra of Hellenic Music (KOEM), founded in 1994 by the Ministry of Culture, under Thanos Mikroutsikos, with artistic director and conductor Stavros Xarchakos. An orchestra that was consciously pushed by all governments to sink, without instruments and musicians, until today it was announced through the state budget of 2023 its final closure. Together with our other great, historical musical ensemble, the “Orchestra of Colors”, by Manos Hadzidakis.

“It seems like a symbolic move for the final severing of the ties of the official state with the most glorious areas of our music, in the midst of celebrations for the extroversion and transformation of our modern culture into an exportable product” said D. Koutsoubas and added:

“This society harbors an innate hostility to art, because when it is true, it cannot help but defend human integrity against any attempt to degrade and alter it. It can only resist alienation, the inactivity of thought, inhumanity” he said and addressing S. Xarchakos he said:

“Your soul-taming and man-elevating art meets our own struggle for a higher civilization, where ‘man shall cease for man to be a wolf.'”

“The KKE does not treat art, culture, as a decorative element of its political action. We fight every day for everyone to realize more deeply that the most important function of art, and culture in general, is to contribute to the expansion of the educational horizon, the multifaceted development of the personality, the ability of everyone to understand and influence social reality. To contribute with our pioneering action to raise the cultural and educational level, to raise everyone’s struggle, for the essential protection of the victims of all kinds of violence, especially children, youth, women, immigrants, the elderly, the disabled fellow human beings , against any kind of racism, alienation, due to gender, religion, sexual orientation. To contribute so that the smile shines again on the lips of the children, on the lips of the workers, of all the popular families who suffer from poverty, unemployment, debts, the pandemic, degraded health and education, the degradation of the artistic studies” said D. Koutsoubas.

“And from this step we declare our solidarity with the LARCO workers who are fighting to have a living wage, a job.

To all the artists who are on the streets of the struggle and ask for the withdrawal of PD and the promotion of their studies.

We raise our voice together with all private and public sector workers, self-employed professionals, farmers, scientists, pensioners, students, pupils and their teachers, artists, for a better and happier tomorrow. For the big, the beautiful, the shocking!” he added.

“Stavros Xarhakos, on the occasion of this great concert that makes history for modern Greece, we want to tell you, on behalf of the KE of the KKE, that we thank you from the bottom of our hearts, because with art, ethics and attitude you, you teach us not to tolerate asceticism, to love good and to renounce evil in all its forms, aesthetic, moral, social.

We thank you for your struggle to create in our children antibodies against the onslaught of cheap, obscene cultural stimuli, for your concern and care for young artists.

We thank you for the uncompromising honesty of your art, free from ideological, political prejudices.

And we wish you always to be strong, strong, restless, with your youthful flame undiminished and with “the swallows of your music singing unceasingly”.

We wish you above all that you and all of us will live, that day when your labors will be justified, the day when our people in the abundant Greek light will “sow grass in the desert” and make “the earth a cradle for the unborn children” concluded the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the KKE in his speech.

RES-EMP

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