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The
Greek Cypriot superstar Anna Visssi brings the passions,
jealousies, and melodrama of the ancient Hellenic gods to pop
music. Having traded Mt. Olympus for an auditorium stage,
Vissi's husky soulful voice alternates between full-blown ecstasy
and sobbing despair, juxtaposing modern pop phrasings with
traditional Greek and Balkan vocal techniques, the electric guitar
with traditional bouzouki and klarino.
Vissi's
1988 triple platinum album Antidoto (with music by her
husband Nikos Karavelas) brings out both a fragile romantic side
as well as her wilder, animalistic sensibilities. For a
study in musical contrasts, listen first to the playfully light
ballad Magava tout, a duet with Paris Karagiannopoulos, and
then move on to the title track Antidoto, where Vissi
revels in the Mediterranean obsession with merging love and death,
found also in Portuguese fado and Arabic folk songs:
My
mouth goes dry
My entire body goes numb
I sense the end is approaching
Such coldness…
Vissi
is passionate, raging, melodramatic - Hera made flesh - but also
gives in to the terrible power of love:
And
I will live only if
I find another love, an antidote
Because the beating of my heart
Will bring me to my end
Her
singing is throbbing, delirious controlled emotion, a song that
could have been hurled to Earth like an angry bolt of lightning by
Zeus, or perhaps unleashed like a most enchanting spell by
Aphrodite, the goddess of love.
Listen:
Antidoto,
Anna Vissi
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