Staying home for many creative people means using their talent to come up with new ways to create art and music.
Dimitris Dallas, a Chicago-based musician who plays multiple traditional Greek instruments, did just that.
In what most people would consider to be extremely complicated, Dallas recorded himself playing a musical sequence of a single song with a single instrument.
He then recorded the remaining parts of the song with different instruments and spliced them together with video-editing software.
The end result is a beautiful rendition of traditional Greek music — two songs in particular.
“The first song (contemporary) is called ‘O Horos Tou Sakaina.’ The tune is by Stavros Xarhakos and Giorgos Zabetas,” Dallas told The Pappas Post. “It’s an instrumental that is played on bouzouki. I played double bouzouki on the video which is the ‘traditional’ style where one plays the melody and the other the harmony.”
Dallas said he added guitar to accompany and baglama as an additional filler. He explained that this addition is more common in rebetiko style music.
“The second video is a traditional song from Epiros called ‘Panayio’ or ‘Skizo Rizo to Lemoni,'” Dallas said. “I played clarinet, laouto, violin and Epirotiko defi in that one, as well as sang the parts.”
“What’s unique in the region that this song comes from is that they do a lot of polyphonic (multi-voice) singing which I had so much fun doing in the video.”
Dallas began his musical career at age 10 when local Chicago legend Vasilis Gaitanos pulled him on stage to play bouzouki during one of his live performances. Since then, Dallas has learned to play the violin, laouto, klarino (clarinet) and tsabouna (Greek island bagpipe), among other instruments.
He plays in several traveling bands throughout the United States, including Endasi, The Old School and Ormi Orchestra.
Watch his performances below.
“O Horos Tou Sakaina” performed by Dimitris Dallas
“Skizo Rizo to Lemoni” performed by Dimitris Dallas
