The first cigarette

Άλκης Αλκαίος: Πρωινό τσιγάρο Χαράζει η μέρα και η πόλη έχει ρεπό στη γειτονιά μας καπνίζει ένα φουγάρο κι εγώ σε ζητάω σαν πρωινό τσιγάρο και σαν καφέ πικρό και σαν καφέ πικρό Άδειοι οι δρόμοι δε φάνηκε ψυχή και το φεγγάρι μόλις χάθηκε στη Δύση και γω σε γυρεύω σαν μοιραία λύση και σαν Ανατολή και σαν Ανατολή Βγήκε ο ήλιος το ράδιο διαπασών μ' ένα χασάπικο που κλαίει για κάποιον Τάσο κι εγώ σε ποντάρω κι ύστερα πάω πάσο σ' ένα καρέ τυφλό σ' ένα καρέ τυφλό (1984)

Alkis Alkeos: The first cigarette The day is breaking and the city reposes in our neighborhood a chimney is smoking and I want you like the first cigarette like bitter coffee like bitter coffee The streets are empty, no soul can be seen the moon has just set down in the West and I seek you like a final solution like the sunrise like the sunrise The sun has risen and on the radio a hasapiko is crying for some Tassos and I bet on you and then I pass you by the card four of a kind four of a kind

This beautiful poem by Alkis Alkeos has become widely known in the Greek world with the music of Notis Mavroudis. I do not know whether it is Mavroudis himself who accompanies it on guitar on the video below, but from the Ibanez kept in his hands in the first frame we expect exactly the sound resounding a second later. The master of classical guitar is revealed not only by the motifs echoing the great 19th-century guitar composers but also by the typical creaking at the changes of stoppings, so intimately familiar to the ears of every classical guitarist. Mavroudis has taught in the conservatories of Milano, Compostela and Athens, and when in my school days I learned classical guitar, he was a celebrated master of the summer guitar festivals in Esztergom, Hungary.


The male choir might be surprising, but Mavroudis probably imagined it exactly like this when he set the poem to music. In fact, he intended it for a great concert, the greatest concert of Greece after the military junta, organized in 1985 in memory of the great composer Manos Loizos who had kept the hope alive in face of the regime. On that occasion the song was sung by the two singer-icons Haris Alexiou and Giorgios Dalaras. Since then a number of other recordings have been made as well, with Arleta or Nina Venetsanou (this latter accompanied by Mavroudis himself), although the popularity of the song is principally attested by the large number of amateur videos scattered all over the net.

I, however, love it the most in the performance of Angélique Ionatos. Not only because some twenty years ago we became enamoured of Greek music and modern Greek poetry due to the songs of hers and of her brother Photis Ionatos. But also because their style – perhaps because they have lived in Belgium since their teens – is refreshingly free from that artificial and overstimulated emotional tone which reminds you of the hits of the fifties and which is still felt as obligatory by some Greek singers.

Angélique sings the poems of contemporary Greek and French poets on this CD. It is worth to observe how differently – with a touch of tango and of French chansons – the Algerian French guitarist Henri Angel plays the classical solos of Mavroudis. And it is also worth to note how similar is the melody of this song to that of the Al alba, the “unofficial hymn of the Spanish Transición” written some years earlier by Luis Eduardo Aute, and to the refrain of another “unofficial hym,” the Ithaca by Konstantinos Kavafis, set to music by Photis Ionatos: Tous lestrygonas ke tous kyklopas…


Angelique Ionatos & Henri Agnel: Πρωινό τσιγάρο (3'28"). From the album Chansons nomades (Gypsy songs, 2001).

The poems of Alkis Alkeos have been set to music in a great number since the end of the seventies, and it seems like several of them have become “unofficial hymns,” too. In Greek forums and blogs they are often quoted, their videos included, and commented in an enchantment like this casual example might attest it:

I have never seen him. Not even in picture. I have not heard him speaking either. I don’t know anything about him.
But I know him. In the evenings he is sitting at home and working. He is an everyday, simple man. With good humor. He loves to work in the garden. Has a few friends.
He philosophizes. Smokes a lot. Loves to sit in front of the fireplace and to go on long walks. To walk among the fallen leaves.
I have never seen him. But I know him. For me he is the most important Greek poet.

Sometimes it crosses my mind how little we know about that popular – sung – poetry that so deeply determines the everyday culture of other countries, lending them ideas, images and words to formulate their own lives. And even if the songs themselves reach us and even if we might understand their texts, we do not know the most important thing: what they mean there and to them. Like nobody outside of our country knows what the songs of the band Lokomotív Gt. meant to us in the eighties. Natives only rarely commit these meanings to writing. This enhances the importance of such exceptional sites like the database of Riccardo Venturi which makes efforts to list not only the various anti-war songs themselves but also these “local meanings” of theirs. And this is why we also try to collect in our topic of “ballads” the meanings of the songs meaningful to us.

And we hope that our Greek readers would write us about the meaning of this song of Alkeos, too.