Nana Mouskouri 21st century life
 Mouskouri's family lived in Chania, Crete, where her father, Constantine, worked as a film projectionist in a local cinema. Her mother, Alice also worked in the same local cinema as an usherette. When Mouskouri was three, her father moved the family to Athens. Mouskouri's family worked extremely hard in order to send Nana and her elder sister, Jenny, to the prestigious Athens Conservatoire. Mouskouri had displayed exceptional musical talent from the age of 6. However her sister, Jenny, initially appeared to be the more gifted of the two. In fact Mouskouri has one vocal cord that is thicker than the other. This unusual condition accounts for her unique voice, both speaking and singing.
Mouskouri's childhood was stamped by the Nazi occupation of Greece. Her father became part of the anti-Nazi resistance movement in Athens. Mouskouri began singing lessons at age 12. Despite the flaw in her vocal cords, Mouskouri took singing lessons regularly. During the Nazi German occupation, her family no longer had the financial means to pay for her singing lessons, but her teacher saw that she had a certain talent and continued to give her lessons free of charge. As a child, she listened to radio broadcasts of singers such as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday and ?dith Piaf.
Nana Mouskouri on the cover of the Greek magazine, Radio Programma, published in May 1957. This was her first appearance on a magazine cover.In 1950, she was accepted at the Conservatoire. She studied classical music with an emphasis on singing opera. After eight (8) years at the Conservatoire, Mouskouri was encouraged by her friends to experiment with jazz music. She soon began singing with her friends' jazz group at night and they even managed to get a radio slot. However, when Mouskouri's Conservatory professor found out about Mouskouri's involvement with a genre of music that he considered to be absolutely worthless, he flew into a fury and prevented her from sitting her end of year exams. [citation needed] Mouskouri left the Conservatoire and began performing at the Zaki club in Athens.
She began singing jazz in nightclubs with a bias on Ella Fitzgerald repertoire. In 1957, she recorded her first song, Fascination, in both Greek and English for Odeon/EMI Greece. By 1958 while still performing at the Zaki, she met Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis. Hadjidakis was immensely impressed by Nana’s unique voice and immediately offered to write songs for her. In 1959 Mouskouri performed Hadjidakis' Kapou Iparchi Agapi Mou (co-written with poet Nikos Gatsos) at the inaugural Greek Song Festival. The song won first prize, and Mouskouri began to be noticed.
At the 1960 Greek Song Festival, she performed two more Hadjidakis compositions, Timoria and Kiparissaki. Both these songs tied for first prize. Mouskouri performed Kostas Yannidis' composition, Xypna Agapi Mou, at the Mediterranean Song Festival, held in Barcelona that year. The song won first prize, and she went on to sign a recording contract with Paris-based Philips-Fontana.
In 1961, Mouskouri performed the soundtrack of a German documentary about Greece. This resulted in the German-language single Weisse Rosen aus Athen (White Roses from Athens). The song was originally adapted from a folk melody by Hadjidakis. It became an enormous hit, selling over a million copies in Germany. The song was later translated into several different languages and it went on to become one of Mouskouri's signature tunes.
|
