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The song refers to Antonis Katsantonis (Agrafa 1775 - 28/9/1809?), son of Sarakatsani shepherds, who acted as a Kleftis during the Turkish occupation in the years before the revolution.
Alexis Politis writes about Antonis Katsantonis and the relevant cycle of songs (Alexis Politis, To Dimotiko tragoudi, Ta kleftika, Hermes Publishing Co. Ltd, Athens, 1976, p. 61-63):
"With the passage of time, the fame of Katsantonis grows and spreads, and he becomes renowned all over Greece. The more the other kleftes and armatoloi are gradually forgotten, the more the echo of their own achievements is concentrated on Katsantonis. It is not only his great glory that creates this centrifugal accumulation of widespread fame, but also the spur of the popular imagination from the official education and - perhaps even more - from the puppet theater of Karagiozis, to whose repertoire Katsantonis was quickly added.
However, this increase in fame is inevitably followed by a purification of the hero. Katsantonis is now presented as an honest and pure man – unlike his Turkish opponents, but also himself; because we should not forget who Katsantonis really was: a very cruel and vindictive thief. Makrygiannis, who was a child at the time of his earlier activity, remembers him in his memoirs with disgust: 'Not even the Katsantonises, who were thieves, were that cruel' (Apomnimonevmata [Memoirs], second edition, 1, p. 202).
With this transformation, however, the real Katsantonis lost not only his true dimensions but also his own ideals. The cruel and fearless thief, whose first concern was to survive and who is admired by his contemporaries only because they are impressed by the force with which he imposed himself on those around him, transformed himself according to the desires of his successors into an inanimate idol, polite and altruistic, that the only reason to exist was to flatter his creators retrospectively. The false quality of this idol is more clearly manifested in the popular drama of the same name, that is, Karagiozis.
The songs of the circle of Katsantonis abound in older and newer collections; their quality, however, is very poor. [...] We have to imagine that all the songs would be sung in the local dialects: Even though poetic language tended towards a common one throughout Greece, the pronunciation, of course, differed from place to place."
The label of the record reads "Kleftiko".
The song was released by the record label "Panhellenion Phonograph Record Co.", which was founded in New York in February 1919 by singer Mrs. Koula (Kyriakoula Antonopoulou) and her husband, lute player Andreas Antonopoulos.
For more on Mrs. Koula and the Panhellenion record label see Steve K. Frangos’ article "Madame Koula (circa 1880-1954)" in Tina Bucuvalas (ed.), Greek music in America, University Press of Mississippi, 2019, Antonis Boskoitis’ article "Sta ichni tis Kyrias Koulas: H zoi kai to ergo tis protis rempetissas tis Amerikis" posted on the website www.lifo.gr, and Aristomenis Kalyviotis’ article "Kyria Koula Kapsali-Antonopoulou: Apo tin Konstantinoupoli katagotan i megali ellinida tragoudistria" ("Laiko tragoudi" magazine, issue 25, March-April 2009) posted on his blog https://kaliviotis.wordpress.com/.
The song refers to Antonis Katsantonis (Agrafa 1775 - 28/9/1809?), son of Sarakatsani shepherds, who acted as a Kleftis during the Turkish occupation in the years before the revolution.
Alexis Politis writes about Antonis Katsantonis and the relevant cycle of songs (Alexis Politis, To Dimotiko tragoudi, Ta kleftika, Hermes Publishing Co. Ltd, Athens, 1976, p. 61-63):
"With the passage of time, the fame of Katsantonis grows and spreads, and he becomes renowned all over Greece. The more the other kleftes and armatoloi are gradually forgotten, the more the echo of their own achievements is concentrated on Katsantonis. It is not only his great glory that creates this centrifugal accumulation of widespread fame, but also the spur of the popular imagination from the official education and - perhaps even more - from the puppet theater of Karagiozis, to whose repertoire Katsantonis was quickly added.
However, this increase in fame is inevitably followed by a purification of the hero. Katsantonis is now presented as an honest and pure man – unlike his Turkish opponents, but also himself; because we should not forget who Katsantonis really was: a very cruel and vindictive thief. Makrygiannis, who was a child at the time of his earlier activity, remembers him in his memoirs with disgust: 'Not even the Katsantonises, who were thieves, were that cruel' (Apomnimonevmata [Memoirs], second edition, 1, p. 202).
With this transformation, however, the real Katsantonis lost not only his true dimensions but also his own ideals. The cruel and fearless thief, whose first concern was to survive and who is admired by his contemporaries only because they are impressed by the force with which he imposed himself on those around him, transformed himself according to the desires of his successors into an inanimate idol, polite and altruistic, that the only reason to exist was to flatter his creators retrospectively. The false quality of this idol is more clearly manifested in the popular drama of the same name, that is, Karagiozis.
The songs of the circle of Katsantonis abound in older and newer collections; their quality, however, is very poor. [...] We have to imagine that all the songs would be sung in the local dialects: Even though poetic language tended towards a common one throughout Greece, the pronunciation, of course, differed from place to place."
The label of the record reads "Kleftiko".
The song was released by the record label "Panhellenion Phonograph Record Co.", which was founded in New York in February 1919 by singer Mrs. Koula (Kyriakoula Antonopoulou) and her husband, lute player Andreas Antonopoulos.
For more on Mrs. Koula and the Panhellenion record label see Steve K. Frangos’ article "Madame Koula (circa 1880-1954)" in Tina Bucuvalas (ed.), Greek music in America, University Press of Mississippi, 2019, Antonis Boskoitis’ article "Sta ichni tis Kyrias Koulas: H zoi kai to ergo tis protis rempetissas tis Amerikis" posted on the website www.lifo.gr, and Aristomenis Kalyviotis’ article "Kyria Koula Kapsali-Antonopoulou: Apo tin Konstantinoupoli katagotan i megali ellinida tragoudistria" ("Laiko tragoudi" magazine, issue 25, March-April 2009) posted on his blog https://kaliviotis.wordpress.com/.
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