Lefteris Hapsiadis

Life

Lefteris Hapsiadis was born in October 1953 in Feres, and lived during his early life in Koila, both agglomerations located in the Greek Prefecture (Νομός) of Evros. This is the most north-eastern region of Greece, bordering with Turkey in the east, and with Bulgaria in the north. Hapsiadis refers to Koila as his "Paradise on Earth", and nowadays he spends a major part of his life there. His family origin is from Pontos; this is the area in the north of present day Turkey, along its Black Sea coast. To this day Hapsiadis has been loyal to his Pontos origins and he has often collaborated in various artistic initiatives to preserve the cultural heritage of the land of his ancestors. An example includes the production of three CD records in the Pontos dialect, performed by Kazantzidis and Xrysanthos (an authentic Pontos singer), in the late eighties, early nineties . Hapsiadis is fairly knowledgeable of the Pontos Greek dialect that he learned from his parents and grandmother in Koila.

He attended high school in Alexandroupolis, the administrative capital of Evros. For this purpose his entire family moved to town from Koila. During that period his father owned a kiosk, typical of Greek city landscapes, selling printed press items, like newspapers, magazines, pocket books, postcards, etc. Working at the kiosk as well gave him the opportunity to read a lot and grow his appetite for the Greek lyrics of rebetika, a.k.a. the songs of manges, members of a sort of inner city and urban slums gangs in the early 20th century. When most of his age peers enjoyed pop and rock, Hapsiadis was discovering little known events and details surrounding rebetika songs, their performers and lyrics. He developed a habit of collecting rebetika lyrics and writing them down in a notebook as his favorite pastime. That helped him a lot in being accepted in the circles of key rebetika industry players, in later years.

For six months he attended college classes in Patras, in the department of Biology before he dropped out and got entirely absorbed inside the professional world of rebetika in the Greek capital, Athens. He met Giorgos Dalaras, and through him he later came close to quite a few key actors in the Greek pop music industry. Names include Lefteris Papadopoulos, a widely known Greek lyrics writer, the composer Christos Nikolopoulos, and various popular Greek pop singers Stelios Kazantzidis, Stratos Dyonisiou and Manolis Aggelopoulos. He also became close friends with Vassilis Vassilikos, a prominent novels writer. Vassilikos became internationally known by his "Z" novel, a story about the assassination of Grigoris Lambrakis, a left-wing political activist in the mid-1960s. That novel was later made into a movie as part of a trilogy by Greek Director Costa Gavras, with Yves Montand in the leading role. In his first novel, Hapsiadis devoted a chapter to a dramatic period of Vassilikos' life, right after the loss of his spouse Mimi, in Rome, Italy.

Songs

Per the generally accepted public opinion his most popular song lyrics were Mia einai i ousia (Μια ειναι η ουσία, "One matter counts") that he wrote upon a Nikolopoulos music score during the mid-80s. The song was originally performed by Haris Alexiou and later, following accrued popularity, by quite a few other performers, including Giorgos Dalaras.

The lyrics playfully deal with immortality, whereby the author admits that nothing is "immortal" and begs Almighty God to eliminate Death for good, after the former had a few drinks first. The lyrics are used in a passage in his second book, when the author dies and struggles to get into Paradise, but comes across a rather annoyed St-Peter, who didn't seem to have liked his "Mia einai i Ousia" song at all.

Another popular song of his, performed by Giorgos Dalaras, was Kappoia, kapou, kapote (Κάποια, κάπου, κάποτε).

Among his songs there are two referring to the Prefecture of Evros, the towns of Alexandroupolis and Orestiada, in the far north. It is generally known in Greece that the border regions of the country, especially Greece's eastern border with Turkey, are the least desirable areas for young Greeks to serve their country during their military service. In addition, until recent years, Greek conscripts were treated as second rank citizens in the towns and villages of Evros, as many among them would admit to this day. Unless they enjoyed a military rank of some sort, conscripts wouldn't be typically admitted inside many public venues, and many local businessmen would prefer to live without them entering their businesses. Hapsiadis was inspired by this to write two emotional songs, Alexandroupoli meria, originally performed by Dimitris Mitropanos, and Oresteiada, performed by Stelios Dionysiou and Ploutarchos.

Songs for my friends

(Tracks of the CD Τραγούδια για τους φίλους μου)
by Nikolopoulos and Hapsiadis, 1986

1. Μοιάζουμε (We resemble each other) with Manolis Mitsias
2. Αν τέλειωνε η ζωή (If life ended) with Stratos Dionysiou
3. Πως μπορεί (How is it possible) with Eleni Vitali
4. Ετσι σ'αγάπησα (I loved you this way) with Dionysis Theodosis
5. Φοβάμαι (I'm afraid) with Dimitra Galani
6. Κάποια, κάπου, κάποτε (Some woman, somewhere, some time) with Giorgos Dalaras
7. Καλύτερα ελεύθερος (Better be free) with Yannis Parios
8. Το διαβολάκι (Little devil) with Haris Alexiou
9. Τώρα που έφυγες (Now that you've gone away) with Litsa Diamanti
10. Οι δρόμοι τής ανατολής (The streets of the East) with Christos Nikolopoulos
11. Με χρώματα κι'αρώματα (With colors and odors) with Mary Vassou
12. Οταν χορεύεις μάτια μου (When you're dancing, my love) with Manolis Aggelopoulos

Novels

In addition to poems and song lyrics Hapsiadis recently wrote three novels. He only lately decided to focus on writing novels and had his first three written after 2005, more than twenty years after he started writing lyrics. All of them are largely autobiographic with many details about events that actually took place and form part of the history of modern rebetika. His first two novels were "Η ζωη μου τραγούδι το τραγούδι ζωη" (My life (is) a song, the song (is) life) and "Ο αλήτης άγγελος" (An angel vagabond). In his second novel, although most of his writing describes real life events, locations and names of real persons, the author presents them as the building blocks of a "fiction" storyline. His third novel was presented to the public on October 23, 2010. It is called "13+1 Γιατί;" (Γιατί=why in Greek) completes a trilogy in which rebetiko holds a central role.

As a self-taught author, Hapsiadis creates unusual plots wherein key Greek music industry players participate as personages. In all his novels to-date his heroes maintain their real life names; however, in his second novel, Hapsiadis uses the name Lelos instead of his own given Christian name of Lefteris to represent himself as the leading actor. All three novels are written in simple everyday spoken Greek. He usually places verses inside the text, often for reasons of historic significance to the context he describes. All his novels expose events with actual historic data. He often offers his own insights in the evolution of rebetika from the times of Markos Vamvakaris and Vassilis Tsitsanis (pre- and post-World War II) to the present day. The events he addresses, many of which he himself witnessed as participant, are presented in quite a bit of detail. With a few scarce exceptions, Hapsiadis avoids criticism of his book personages, however, on occasions, he is being quite critical of himself and his own weaknesses.

Honors

During his 25-year-long career as a lyrics writer, Hapsiadis achieved a number of Golden and Platinum record awards and occasionally he has been publicly recognized for his contribution to the Greek Popular Music by the Prefecture of Evros and Municipalities of Alexandroupolis and Feres with organized concerts dedicated to his song-lyrics successes.