MARIKA NINOU | Be it today, tomorrow or now
On Saturday 13 July at 22.00, FOUGARO ARTCENTER hosts a free-admission tribute to the unsurpassable Marika Ninou through her stories and her songs as they are performed by Katerina Tsiridou.
This emblematic figure of rembetiko, prematurely lost at the age of 35, sealed the so-called ‘golden era’ of the genre with her trademark voice and her interpretations that influenced subsequent popular music like few others.
Her brief life was adventurous and almost like out of a novel, and what is known about this matriarch of rembetiko is full of mystery, myth, exaggeration and passion and still fascinates experts and the public alike to this day, 67 years after her death.
The life of Marika Ninou served as the inspiration for the 1983 film Rembetiko of Costas Ferris. Manos Hadjidakis, dedicating to her his 1974 LP Perix, wrote: “This entire body of work is dedicated to the memory of the one and only Marika Ninou who, without knowing it, used the knife of her voice to carve deep within us the names of the gods of humility and Byzantine decline”.
Vassilis Tsitsanis had said of Ninou: “She was unique in her interpretations, she had this special quality. When she sang she made everyone stop and listen. She sang and taught at the same time, like a teacher instructing her students. This was an innate talent. She was born for the stage”.
Katerina Tsiridou
Born and raised in Athens, she was drawn to music from an early age and studied piano, guitar and baglamas.
Her first stage appearance was at the age of 19, next to Stelios Vamvakaris and Spyros Liossis.
Over the years she collaborated on stage and in studio recordings with Takis Binis, Rena Stamou, Iordanis Tsomidis, Tolis Harmas, Lela Papadopoulou, Kostas Papadopoulos, Vangelis Korakakis, Doukissa, Yorgos Xintaris, Chronis Aidonidis, Tasia Verra, Nikos Saragoudas, and others.
She has performed in many concerts around various countries, playing with Louisiana Red, Jolly Jumper & Big Moe and Bob Brozman in a production of Yannis Angelatos (Rembetiko & Blues “Passion Ceremony”), as well as with the “Piraeus” Swedish rembetiko band.
She has also performed in concerts at the Library of Alexandria, the Town Hall in Manhattan, New York and at the Berklee Performance Center.
