Dimitris Mitropanos - Our national loneliness (2011)

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Dimitris Mitropanos - Our national loneliness (2011)

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Dimitris Mitropanos (Greek: Δημήτρης Μητροπάνος) (born 2 April 1948) is a Greek singer. He is renowned for his mastery of Laïkó, a Greek music style. Mitropanos lived in his native city of Trikala in northwest Thessaly until the age of 16, beginning his musical career in 1964. He has worked with some of the best known Greek composers, such as Mikis Theodorakis, Stavros Xarhakos, Madra Mandicencio, Manos Hadjidakis, Marios Tokas and Thanos Mikroutsikos, and has been one of the top performers of Greek popular music for over four decades. Mitropanos has been known to be a heavy smoker, which is evident from the way his voice has progressively changed over the course of his career. From an early age he worked summers to help his family financially. First as a waiter in his uncle's restaurant and later at ribbon cutting wood. After the third grade of junior high, in 1964, he went to Athens to live with his uncle in the Acharnon street. Before finishing high school he began working as a singer.

At the same age, after the encouragement of Grigoris Bithikotsis, whom he met at a gathering of his uncle's company, where he sang, he visited Columbia. There, Takis Lampropoulos introduced him το Giorgos Zampetas, with whom will work alongside at "Ksimeromata". Dimitris Mitropanos considers Giorgos Zampetas as a great teacher and a second father to himself. As stated, 'the Zambetas is the only man in the song which helped me not to expect anything. With all my other colleagues got something and gave something». During 1966 Mitropanos meets Mikis Theodorakis and sings the parties "Romiosini "and" Axion Esti "in a series of concerts in Greece and Cyprus. In 1967, Mitropanos records his first album with the song "Thessaloniki". This followed the recording of "Chameni Paschalia", a song that was censored by the Greek military junta thus never released.
In the course mapped out on the street of folk art song, 1972 is a milestone. The composer Dimos Moutsis and the lyricist and poet Manos Eleftheriou release "Agios Fevrouarios" with Mitropanos and Petri Salpea as the song's performers, marking a milestone in Greek music. In July 1999, Mitropanos and Moutsis will meet again on stage at the "Odeon" with Dimitra Galani and the soprano Julia Souglakou for two nights at the Athens Festival. The concerts were recorded live and released in a double CD two months later. George Katsaros's "The Road to Cythera" and Giorgos Hatzinasios's "Ta Sinaxaria" follow suit, projects of high quality with a high profile in Greek society. In a long career in the Greek song industry, Dimitris Mitropanos collaborated with leading artists of the Laïko and Éntekhno music. Giorgos Zampetas, Mikis Theodorakis, Dimos Moutsis, Apostolos Kaldaras, Takis Mousafiris, Christos Nikolopoulos ("Pare Apofaseis" with lyrics by Lefteris Papadopoulos), John Spanos were composers with whom Mitropanos collaborated, building a career intertwined with the Laïko tradition, until the late 80s.

In 2010, Mitropanos performed a North American Tour for the first time in over 10 years since his last visit to the United States. During his tour, he performed a concert on July 1, 2010 at Radio City Music Hall in front of a near capacity crowd. He performed many of his famous songs that were written in the earlier stages of his career as well more recent songs that continue to be popular among Greeks, such as "Ρόζα," "Πάντα γελαστοί,"Tα Λαδαδικα," and many more. It was at this concert that he was accompanied by Greek folk singer Margarita Zorbala, whose music is well known in Greece. Mitropanos concluded his concert with a passionate performance of his famous song "Αλίμονο," with all in attendance giving him a standing ovation as he walked off the stage. As is commonplace among Greeks to show appreciation for a singer's performance at the conclusion of a concert, chants of "kialo" followed, meaning "more."