Frangosyriani

In 1935 Markos Vamvakaris went home to Syros for the first time in almost twenty years. He brought along the musician Batis, his younger brother and the pianist Robertakis, and played a club on the waterfront where, by his own telling, the crowd filled the place every night for about two months. The islanders were proud of him as one of their own. Vamvakaris said he always looked down at the floor while he played and sang, because if he looked at the audience he lost his nerve. One night he raised his head for a moment and saw a beautiful girl with black eyes. He never looked up again, but he kept thinking about her, took a pencil and roughed out a few lines about a fire burning in his heart and a sweet Frangosyriani who seemed to have bewitched him. Frangosyrianoi was the name used off the island for Syros's Catholic Christians. He never learned her name, he said, and she never knew the song was about her. Back in Piraeus he finished it, and recorded it himself that same year. The lyrics walk the love affair through eight places on the island, from Foinikas to Piskopio. Grigoris Bithikotsis's 1960 recording probably did most to carry it to a wide audience, and it has since been covered by George Dalaras, turned into reggae by Locomondo and heard in Fatih Akin's film Soul Kitchen. A glance from the stage of a seaside club became the song Vamvakaris is perhaps best remembered for.