Greek researcher Konstantinos Kalaitzis releases a book on Indian music
The Hindu
Greek researcher Konstantinos Kalaitzis’ book on Indian music is set for English translation and his collection of Indian music instruments will soon be housed in a museum in Greece
Greek researcher and Indophile Konstantinos Kalaitzis has visited India 45 times in the last three decades.
He has visited every state and Union Territory in search of classical and folk music, and dance forms to document and learn. He sings Carnatic music, bhajans, ghazals, qawwali, plays the tabla and has given concerts in India and other parts of the world. He eventually plans to set up a museum in Greece to house his collection of 180 Indian classical and folk musical instruments.
Kalaitzis was in Hyderabad recently for his ongoing research on tribal traditions of music and their instruments. He is set to get his book on Indian music in Greek published in English.
Titled Indian Music, the nearly 500-page coffee table book on Indian classical and folk music, composers, poets and instruments has 700 rare photographs by Kalaitzis as well as 181 sound samples of the instruments embedded.
The cover is a photograph of Tyagaraja that Kalaitzis found painted on a stone in Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh. “I visited the ashram in 1994 and stumbled on this painting on the stone. I don’t know who the painter is but I found it fascinating and clicked a photo and decided to use it on the cover of my book,” says Kalaitzis.
Kalaitzis’ curiosity and love for Indian culture started in his childhood. He first heard his parents play Indian songs with Greek lyrics at home in 1961. “These were popular folk songs sung by famous Greek singers of that time in Greece. Most people did not know about the Indian origin of the music... we just liked these songs and sang them,” says Kalaitzis.
At school, while all the other children sang those simple rhymes, six-year-old Kalaitzis would sing Indian-Greek songs. “I started listening to the Beatles around 1970. I thought it was an interesting coincidence that although I had no connection to India at that time, I particularly liked George Harrison, who was Ravi Shankar’s disciple on the sitar and whose music had many Indian elements,” adds Kalaitzis.