It's that time of year again, just got back from the fall Greek fest at St. Sophia's. We missed the one at St. Constantine and Helen, and this year St. George is only having a spring festival, so this may be the last one of the year. No ouzo, but moussaka, pastitsio, dolmades, souvlaki, spanikopita, and so on. We split a bottle of red wine, and listened to the music. The Good Band was playing, I have no idea what the name is, but they play the good Greek festivals. The keyboard player is the mother, the singer and guitar player is the daughter, the bouzouki player is the son, and the drummer isn't related. The mother and the daughter could be twins, small, dark, profiles like hawks, wearing long shapeless black sweaters that conceal breasts and cover hips. The son is maybe twice as large, tall, heavy, with a pompadour, long sideburns, a heavy mustache, and wearing high water pants and white socks. He's sort of goony but he's the man so he's in charge. On Tuesdays and Thursdays he plays Israeli music with an Israeli band at the Tel Aviv cafe. I don't think he really cares about the band that plays at the Greek Festivals.
The Good Band has never made a record or even a tape. Too bad because the father died a couple of years ago, and he had the really good voice. He was a church cantor, he led the choir when they sang hymns. He was small like the wife, and rather diffident. I've often wondered about the son, who is an incredibly gifted bouzouki player despite his total lack of cool. Cool isn't something you'd use to describe the type of musicians who play at Greek festivals, anyway. Whatever cool means got attenuated by the time it got to Greece and points east, so a cool Greek or a cool Yugoslavian or a cool Hungarian is something we would consider to be incredibly retro now. Buddy Holly glasses, turtlenecks, like that.
The band never plays the song I call the Good Song anymore. I haven't heard it since the father died, which is odd because it's something the daughter always sang, they used to use it to close their sets every time. I've sort of got used to the fact that they aren't going to play the Good Song, and I can't even ask why because they don't really speak good English. But it makes me sad.
I put my foot in my mouth, the guy I always thought was Russian, the one who sells the Russian lacquered boxes and brooches, turns out to be Greek. I was saying nasty things about Serbs and Slobodan Milosovic, and then later Chris told me that the Greeks support the Serbs because they are both Orthodox. I thought he was Georgian. But he was nice, probably because I am such a good customer. I've bought hundreds, really a couple thousand, dollars worth of lacquer and amber things from him over the years.
One of these days I am going to learn to dance, Greek dancing I mean. Watching the women and girls dance tonight it reminded me of the fact that in ancient Greece the symbol of unmarried women was the bear cub. Not goddesses at all, something wild. And then of course comes marriage, and seclusion, and wearing black. Like the women who still make the pastries and the moussaka and the pastitsio.
I suppose if I learn to hold my tongue they don't have to know that I'm Catholic, not Orthodox, and Dalmatian, not Serb, and I hate Slobodan Milosovic. After all, we are almost neighbors. Maybe they'll let me dance. |
