Kosta Papoulidis released on Tuesday the first ever Pontian EP album to be made by an Australian-born musician titled ‘To Vrad so Ouranon’ (At night in the sky).
‘To Vrad so Ouranon’ is also the first ever Pontian album to come out of Sydney, where Mr Papoulidis is based.
Mr Papoulidis is joined on the album by his fellow musicians and close friends, Peter Tsenkas and Alexander Mountakis, and they combine both traditional and all original melodies with new lyrics.
The proud Pontian Australian said the title for the album has multiple layers of symbolism and comes from a music track which talks about the juxtaposition of the dark night sky with the bright stars which shine through that darkness.
“I thought this appropriate for the title of the album as it can also be used to represent our rich, shining Pontian-Hellenic culture,” Mr Papoulidis explained.
“Living in the diaspora, specifically in Australia, our community is in a position where most of our surroundings don’t understand us, don’t understand our mission, our culture, our language or our music, even amongst the Hellenic population. This is represented by the ‘darkness.’
“By bringing our traditional music and ways of making traditional-style music into the modern age and to the foreign lands that many Pontians find themselves in, we create these ‘stars’ that shine through the darkness.”
In a statement to The Greek Herald about the album, Mr Papoulidis added that his aim was “to inspire the young creative minds of our community to produce their own cultural content whether that be music, films, videos or art pieces.”
“We have an amazingly rich traditional Hellenic culture with music that is compiled of many complex poetic nuances that would make Shakespeare go mad,” the young musician said.
“This traditional music is so undervalued and underrepresented amongst today’s young Greek community. My goal is to bring traditional music to the youth of the diaspora and to inspire them to learn about their culture, music and history.”
You can listen to the album on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music.
