KEY POINTS
- Folk motifs, acoustic melodies with psychedelic sounds
- The band will give four concerts in Australia
- Kandinelia released its first album in 2019
In the Cyclades, usually hidden among ravines and cliffs, lives a small species of hawk known as the Kantinelia. This hawk, which reportedly mates in flight, inspired Evi Seitanidou and Thanasis Zikas on their musical journey.
Their band brings to the stage a unique blend of folk motifs, acoustic melodies and psychedelic sounds.
The Kantinelia will be performing their first concerts in Australia, starting next week, as part of the Greek Fringe's ongoing effort to showcase independent artists.
It will kick off in Melbourne at the Northcote Social Club on Thursday 5 October, followed by the Canberra on 8 October (Smiths Alternative), Brisbane on 13 October (Queensland Multicultural Central) and finally Sydney a day later, at the Red Rattler Theatre in Marrickville.
Lovers of traditional music, Evi Seitanidou and Thanasis Zikas use instruments such as the tsampouna (Cycladic bagpipe) and the Pontian lyre, mixing electronic music with sounds of yesteryear.
Speaking to SBS Greek, Thanasis Zikas highlights the reasons why they chose these instruments to express their artistic concerns.
"Because we were playing these instruments. Evi played the lyre and I played the tsampouna . Indeed, the tsampouna is an ancient instrument. It wasn't played by musicians, it was played by shepherds. It's not a musician's instrument. The tsampouna is not played except during carols at Christmas, but it is very interesting. We generally like the primitive and the futuristic in art, this marriage where it's minimal and it's in our time now and a code to communicate more people with this language of music, the primitive and the futuristic together, in a minimalist mood. These instruments are made to evoke certain emotions in particular and they are very powerful and they are very wise through the ages," he said.
Evi Seitanidou refers to the band's progress from its first album in 2019 until today, in view of its next album.
"We are indeed now in the process of preparing the second album. It will have a new sound I think. We're going to kind of reintroduce ourselves to our fans. It will have our own songs, mostly with a little bit maybe psychedelic sound, maybe more rock and it will have lyrics that are inspired by everything that we have been living in Greece and worldwide in the last years. Our reflections and how we feel about things anyway. Through the live shows and all this interaction with the people, it's taken on a dynamic with the tsampouna and the beat box and all that. And we generally like what we play at gigs with people standing underneath and dancing. And that's kind of where we're headed with it. We like of course the more acoustic and the more party stuff with acoustic guitars," she noted.
The music of this particular group can be described as a clash of East and West, with both artists referring to the effort made to bridge these musical worlds.
"In the globalisation that we have today, the unification of peoples, music is the first to show that it can do it. It is becoming to marry blues with Epirotika and eastern blues with Indian and African. As soon as music does it, people and societies in general can do it", Thanasis Zikas said with Evi Seitanidou adding: "Generally there is a common code in all traditional music. Let's say the African ones from Mali, those desert blues we call them, very often remind us of the Epirotika ones and in general the pentatonic scale is a link between traditional musicians. Otherwise, human wherever on Earth is concerned with the same themes, love, the society in which we live, all these things, whenever they are somehow connected."
(Click on the podcast of the main photo to listen to the full interview)
