"Magical Liturgy": A History of Sound at the Kyttaro Music Club, 1970–1974

TLDR: In this paper, the affective economy and political energy of the live musical performances that took place there turned it into a vehicle of cultural and political contestation for the progressive youth of the time.

Abstract: Kyttaro was an alternative club in the center of Athens during the Colonels' dictatorship. This article demonstrates how the affective economy and political energy of the live musical performances that took place there turned it into a vehicle of cultural and political contestation for the progressive youth of the time. It also challenges dominant periodizations in relation to the dictatorship, highlighting the continuities of cultural practices, group behavior, and youth protest. Lastly, drawing upon a range of sources, including oral testimonies with key figures in the music scene of the time, the article highlights the importance of sensorial and "from below" insights for the study of cultural phenomena.

Figures

Figure 3 From Lakis Papastathis’s tribute to Savvopoulos. One can discern Jimmy the Tiger’s wrestling—an almost Fellinian image culled from La Strada—and a superimposed image of Savvopoulos and Gadedi performing right next to him. The images allude to the pastiche created by Savvopoulos’s show in the club. Source: Courtesy of Lakis Papastathis.

Figure 5 Still image of Stella Gadedi performing next to Savvopoulos. Gadedi, an accomplished flautist, recalls the intense physicality and multisensorial power of the performances. Source: Courtesy of Stella Gadedi.

Figure 1 Dionysis Savvopoulos in Lakis Papastathis’s 1976 tribute film on his career. Portrayed as a wandering troubadour, a metropolitan-walker, but also a Dylan-esque figure with a split, caricatured self, Savvopoulos represents the early habitus of the entire Kyttaro club. Source: Courtesy of Lakis Papastathis.

Full text

This is a postprint version of the following published document:
Kallimopoulou, E. and Kornetis. K. (2017). "Magical Liturgy": A
History of Sound at the Kyttaro Music Club, 1970–1974.
Journal of Modern Greek Studies, (9), pp. 481-511
DOI: 10.1353/mgs.2017.0028
© 2017 by The Modern Greek Studies Association

“Magical Liturgy”: A History of Sound
at the Kyttaro Music Club, 1970–1974
Eleni Kallimopoulou and Kostis Kornetis
Abstract
Kyttaro was an alternative club in the center of Athens during the Colonels’
dictatorship. is article demonstrates how the aective economy and polit-
ical energy of the live musical performances that took place there turned it
into a vehicle of cultural and political contestation for the progressive youth
of the time. It also challenges dominant periodizations in relation to the dic-
tatorship, highlighting the continuities of cultural practices, group behavior,
and youth protest. Lastly, drawing upon a range of sources, including oral
testimonies with key gures in the music scene of the time, the article high-
lights the importance of sensorial and “ from below” insights for the study of
cultural phenomena.
e acclaimed documentary lm Ζωντανοί στο Κύτταρο: Σκηνές ροκ (Live at
the Kyttaro: Rock scenes, 2005) kicks o with a street sequence in black and
white, shot in a super-8 manner, that resembles footage from the 1970s. Rock
musician and actor Dimitris Poulikakos, a signature gure of the 1960s, rides
an old BMW motorcycle with a sidecar, in which is seated the much younger
Antonis Boskoitis, the director of the lm. Clad in Vietnam-style military
jackets, they both sport long hair and beards. e camera follows them as they
traverse the area of central Athens near the Kyttaro—a club created in 1970 and
still running. To the sound of «Οι ηχανέ ου» (My machines) sung by the duo
Lida–Spyros (1972), the two converse in an existentialist, beatnik mood about
motorcycles and the state of being on the road. Poulikakos makes a sudden
stop, his attention caught by a person on the side of the street (musician Yannis
“Bach” Spyropoulos) reciting poetry with Dadaist inuences. Eventually, the
motorbike pulls up in front of the Kyttaro. is carefully staged opening scene
introduces us both to the real and the symbolic role that Kyttaro played as an
urban space in the 1970s, making the crucial bridge with the present.
1

Chronologically closer to the original Kyttaro sessions of the early 1970s
and its habitus is Χαίρω πολύ, Σαββόπουλος (Savvopoulos: Pleased to meet
you), a documentary lm and early tribute to Dionysis Savvopoulos, the Greek
poète-chansonnier of the 1960s par excellence, directed by Lakis Papastathis
(1976). e  lm oers another ins tance of inhabiting urb an space: in a key
sequence, Savvopoulos walks in the center of Athens, o Omonoia square. He
is bearded, with sunglasses and a long dark coat, guitar in hand. Passers-by
look at him, almost apprehensively; he seems displaced, his presence haunting.
He sings his «H ηοσθένου λέξι» (Demosthenes’ word), a directly autobi-
ographical and openly political song sung in rst person, contemplating the
feeling of total alienation that awaits a dissident’s exit from prison:
Κι αν βγω απ’ αυτή τη φυλακή
κανεί δε θα ε περιένει
οι δρόοι θά ’ναι αδειανοί
κι η πολιτεία ου πιο ξένη
τα καφενεία όλα κλειστά
κι οι φίλοι ου ξενιτεένοι
αέρα θα ε παρασέρνει
κι αν βγω απ’ αυτή τη φυλακή
[When I’m out of this prison
nobody will be waiting for me
streets will be deserted
and my city all the more alien
All the cafés will be closed
and my friends in foreign lands
the wind will blow me away
when I’m out of this prison]
All this takes place within an urban space that had undergone a deep trans-
formation. According to Gail Holst-Warha, in Savvopoulos’s eyes, “Greece
had become a ‘hovel,’ its roof leaked, the streets of Athens were full of pimps,
informers, depressed youth. Savvopoulos [i]s the city’s avant-garde muse”
(Holst-Warha 2007). Savvopoulos evokes Walter Benjamin’s âneur: wan-
dering troubadour, metropolitan-walker, at the margins, his allegorical gaze
falling upon the city of the alienated man (Benjamin 1969). His gure is at once
disquieting and grotesque—in fact, purposefully so. At a certain point of the
lm, Savvopoulos encounters his own caricatured self, somebody wearing a
gigantic paper mask, a replica of his own face. As the two cross paths, Savvo-
poulos turns and grins at the camera (Figure 1).
2

Figure 1 Dionysis Savvopoulos in Lakis Papastathis’s 1976 tribute lm on his career. Por-
trayed as a wandering troubadour, a metropolitan-walker, but also a Dylan-esque gure
with a split, caricatured self, Savvopoulos represents the early habitus of the entire Kyttaro
club. Source: Courtesy of Lakis Papastathis.
Besides the central role of both Poulikakos and Savvopoulos in the dis-
cussion that follows, the two scenes described above share a common theme:
the inhabiting of the fragmented public space and the radical transforma-
tions in the musical topographies of youth during the years of the Colonels’
dictatorship (1967–1974).
e present article focuses on a legendary moment of the music reception
of youth under the authoritarianism of the dictatorship: the sessions at Kyt-
taro, performed in the period 1971–1974. ese were events of extraordinary
countercultural energy in the very middle of the regime’s reign, constituting
a response to the growing demand of young audiences for alternative music.
Socrates’ guitarist Yannis Spathas describes the shows as containing “the
spirit of protest” and remembers the exhilaration of the young people present
(Ζωντανοί στο Κύτταρο—Η ποπ μουσική στην Αθήνα [Live at the Kyttaro—Pop
music in Athens [1971] 1996, sleeve). e music performed there was a fusion of
progressive, folklorist, and acutely political elements. Dynamic representatives
3

of the emerging rock scenes—such as Exadaktylos, Damon and Feidias, and
Socrates—performed alongside Dionysis Savvopoulos. Greek folk tunes were
mixed with psychedelia and plenty of references to the international pop scene,
especially the emblematic Woodstock festival, with its merging of the political
with the countercultural.
rough a detailed description of the musical sessions that took place at
Kyttaro, this article explores the intersections between the musical politics of
urban youth and the sensuous experience of live performance. Our approach
builds upon recent critical work that foregrounds the sensorial and aective
power of cultural performance. Popular culture theorist George Lipsitz draws
attention to the oppositional potential of culture (2001, 17) suggesting that pop-
ular music in particular has the “ability to conate music and lived experience,
to make both the past and present zones of choice that serve distinct social
and political interests” (2001, 104). e fact that music represents “a remark-
able meeting point of intimate and social realms,” in the words of media and
culture researcher David Hesmondhalgh (2014, 2), may in fact account for its
heightened ability to articulate alternative as well as dominant social relations.
In this vein, Lawrence Grossberg, a pioneer in the study of aect and politics in
popular music, describes popular culture as “an important site of people’s pas-
sion” (1992, 78), as something that is “always more than ideological,” providing
“sites of relaxation, privacy, pleasure, enjoyment, feeling good, fun, passion and
emotion” (1992, 79). is suggests that any ideological work at play is rst and
foremost inscribed on the body.
In parallel, our analysis draws on the recent theoretical discussion on the
senses, which argues for their interconnectivity and for integrated approaches
of multisensoriality. In his important examination of archaeology and the
senses, Yannis Hamilakis renounces the Western sensorium, with its ve
clearly delimited and regimented senses, as being largely a construct of moder-
nity. Instead, he argues for the innity of sensorial modalities that are multiple
and heterogeneous, since they link dierent senses in countless combinations,
depending on the varied contexts in which the sensorial experience occurs
(Hamilakis 2013, 113–114). We argue that during the period in question Kyt-
taro constituted a distinct sensorial eld activated by a multiplicity of sensorial
ows: the combined experiences of hearing and seeing, the “hear-by-feeling”
sensation generated by very low sounds (Friedner and Helmreich 2012), the
kinaesthetic experience of moving in close proximity to other bodies, and—in
the case of many members of the bands and audience—intoxication.
In this article, we approach the world of Kyttaro as a distinct multisenso-
rial modality and ask how it aected (rather than what it represented for) the
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Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions mentioned in the paper "“magical liturgy”: a history of sound at the kyttaro music club, 1970–1974" ?

This article demonstrates how the affective economy and political energy of the live musical performances that took place there turned it into a vehicle of cultural and political contestation for the progressive youth of the time. Lastly, drawing upon a range of sources, including oral testimonies with key figures in the music scene of the time, the article highlights the importance of sensorial and “ from below ” insights for the study of 

Q2. What was the role of the Kyttaro nights in promoting antiregime associations?

Apart from forging antiregime associations with folk music, the Kyttaro nights were also key in introducing the rebetiko genre in the form of tribute nights, further augmenting the political energy of the club. 

Q3. What was the first thing that came to the forefront of the music scene?

As the musical itineraries of political expression changed once again, spreading out and going public, it was the concerts in big stadiums that came to generate the public soundscape of freedom, bringing young and older people into a community that momentarily, perhaps, appearedto dissolve generational—and social—differences. 

Q4. What were the factors in rendering the experience powerful and meaningful to the young people who attended them?

The affective nature of the experience—shaped by bodies in close proximity and the electric sound and high volumes which hit body and senses16—and the countercultural element were important factors in rendering the experience powerful and meaningful to the young people who attended them. 

Q5. What was the role of music in Kyttaro?

Music played a key role in transforming Kyttaro into a space that permitted the imagining, and even the fashioning, of new collectivities in an embodied and affective manner. 

Q6. What was the main idea of the song?

Savvopoulos communicated through this song one of his major ideas at the time: that tradition, a typical tool of the Colonels’ propaganda mechanism, as mentioned before, and hence traditional songs could be inverted and subverted, thereby being used against the regime’s own hypocritical use of it. 

Q7. What was the sonic scene like in Kyttaro?

And with the absence of political song, which circulated only in a subterranean way—it was only whatever arrived from Mikis from abroad—the rock scene was their pedestal («το βήμα μας»). 

Q8. What is the key to understanding the bridge from music to politics?

(Koch 2013, interview)The phrases “pedestal” (το βήμα μας) and “a way to howl” (Ο τρόπος να ουρλιάξεις) are key to understanding the bridge from music to politics. 

Q9. What was the only way for young people to listen to them?

He also explained that those sounds were fresh and novel, and the only way for young people to listen to them was in live performance. 

Q10. Who did they all leave completely enchanted?

Mike Wadleigh, who directed the film Woodstock came, Cat Stevens came, Richie Havens, the black performer who sang “Freedom” at Woodstock, came, and they all left completely enchanted. 

Q11. What is the significance of the word “touch”?

. . . People could touch Savvopoulos”), thus indicating a particular kind of connectivity and a powerful intimacy between performers and audience. 

Q12. What was the role of music in the creation of the Kyttaro space?

At this particular historical juncture, the performance events at Kyttaro produced an “affective empowerment” that involved “the generation of passion [and] the construction of possibility” (Grossberg 1992, 86). 

Q13. What is the significance of the discourse?

Aronitis’s discourse, on the one hand, focuses on the tactile elements inextricably connected to the experience of listening at the space of the Kyttaro (“you were very close. 

Q14. What was the effect of the junta?

It was as if they took away from the junta establishment, as if they took away the very power of the song, so that [the junta establishment] wouldn’t use it.