Friday fun with one of this year’s viral summer songs in Greece – Vibeάρω (I Vibe)
The 24 letters of the Greek alphabet can only produce 25 phonemes (sounds), so it can be a difficult task to incorporate foreign words into Modern Greek. The solution of late has been to just leave modern foreign words and names in Latin script when written in Greek text. How then do Greeks create new verbs using the latest foreign slang? Just sticking the all-purpose Greek verb ending -άρω (-aro) to the word and voilá. An older example: “to flert” in Greek is φλερτάρω (flertaro).
Efi Thodi is one of Greece’s foremost legends of mainland folk song (dimotika), particularly in the style of her native Epirus. She had a bit of a comeback in the mid-2000s when she started gaining a following among young urban Greeks, mainly out of irony, after some of her old songs were remixed as nightclub dance tracks, as well as for her own unique renditions of worldwide pop hits in English.
Apparently in 2009, Thodi made television appearances claiming that she discovered a special spiritual power inside her that enables her to help and heal people, and had seen divine visions. Thodi later was admitted to a mental institution for treatment.
Over time, her candid personality, theatrical stage presence and unpretentious style have kept her in the public limelight, cementing her as a cult pop-culture icon, “celebrated both genuinely for her party atmosphere and ironically in modern ‘trash-pop’ and retro club events.”
As what many Greeks comment: Efi for Eurovision!
Photo credit: Mariamichelle, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
_(8249451687).jpg)
.jpg)
_logo.svg.webp){kind=logo}
.jpg)
