Πέτρος Γαϊτάνος

Petros Gaitanos (Πέτρος Γαϊτάνος) is a Greek singer, mainly known for performing Byzantine hymns, church chants, etc. There are many jokes on this topic - "Petros Gaitanos signs with a cross instead of a signature", "Petros Gaitanos keeps the Holy Fire in his lighter", and the untranslatable "ο Πέτρος Γαϊτάνος είναι ανιψιός της Θείας Κοινωνίας", etc. =)
As for Petros himself, he loves and performs different music - Byzantine, modern, folk, including songs of Smyrna, rebetiko, and laiko.

Petros Gaitanos was born on October 31, 1967, in the small village of Kokkinogenia near Drama, where he grew up. His parents were peasant refugees , the family was self-sufficient - milk, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and from a very young age Petros helped them in the tobacco fields. Returning home from the fields, a distance of 2-3 kilometers, the family took different paths. Along the way, the kids would pick wild fruits, drink water from streams, and observe various wild animals. Nature fascinated and still fascinates Petros, and he even went to Larissa to study agronomy, but after a year, he left for Athens.

But that was much later. At the age of three, Petros Gaitanos heard Byzantine music on the radio, and it made such a profound impression on him that he still remembers that sound. Petros has been singing since childhood, as far as he can remember, performing songs by Stelios Kazantzidis, Grigoris Bithikotsis, at any village celebration, at weddings where he was invited he would sing there. At 11, Petros went to a disco for the first time, he really liked it, learned a few dance moves, and often went out, after which he and his friends would dance every day. They danced to Boney M, ABBA, Bee Gees, Tears For Fears, Bonnie Tyler, Michael Jackson - basically all the popular musicians of that time. But at the same time, Petros also listened on the radio and watched on TV Kazantzidis, Marinella, Vassilis Tsitsanis, Haris Alexiou, Yorgos Dalaras. A bit later, Petros and his friends started gathering, playing guitars, and singing songs by Savvopoulos, Loizos, etc. What made Petros believe he had talent was that everyone would fall silent when he sang. And he dreamed of leaving his village and moving to the big city to become a singer. By the way, his family was the first in the village to get a TV because his father temporarily went to work in Germany for the company Schaub Lorenz, which produced televisions. So everyone gathered to watch TV, and this made Petros want to go to Athens even more.

But instead of Athens, Petros began studying agronomy, but "it didn’t work out", he dropped out and went to Athens, where he enrolled in a conservatory to study Byzantine and European music for all five years. His father was somewhat against it, and of course, both parents wanted Petros to get a degree, but things turned out differently. Gaitanos started working in music venues, collaborating with Eleni Vitali, who believed in him greatly and introduced him to Stamatis Spanoudakis. And so, in 1990, the first album of Petros Gaitanos was released (he was, let’s calculate, 22 years old), with lyrics and music composed by Spanoudakis. After that a lot of work, morning shows, collaborations with famous composers and singers followed.

In 2005, Petros performed at the Pyramids in Egypt, where only a select few were allowed to perform: for example, Jean-Michel Jarre was permitted, but Elvis Presley and U2 applied and were denied. So now Gaitanos dreams of singing at the Great Wall of China, in a Tibetan monastery, in the Australian desert, at Petra in Jordan, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and even in Hagia Sophia =)

In 2009, Gaitanos received his first gold record in a church, congratulated by the Archbishop, the Metropolitan of Glyfada, and his conservatory teacher. And then came the gossip. Because after the award ceremony, there was a concert inside the church, organized by the municipality of Glyfada. This sparked outrage over Gaitanos's earnings, which amounted to 33 000 euros. The scandals in the municipality led to the mayor of Glyfada claiming he knew nothing about the price and that the contract was signed by Bessy Argyraki, also a municipal official. The mayor lamented — "We gave Mitropanos only 20 000, how is this possible?" Bessy responded— " Well, of course, but Mitsias got 48 000." Meanwhile, Petros Gaitanos emphasized that the money went to pay the choir, and Manolis Mitsias claimed he only received 4 000.

Until recently, Gaitanos was associated with church music, but many were put off by his sympathies for Chrysi Avgi and his statements about refugees and pirates, sparking debates. This led to jokes online like "Ο Γαϊτάνος τη μεγάλη Πέμπτη βάφει τα αυγά χρυσά" and "Πέτρος Γαϊτάνος, ο ακροδεξιός ψάλτης."

In the internet, they say that in his home office, he has a computer and a library full of religious books, with just a couple of icons on the wall. He himself is kind and simple-hearted, as if he never left his village, he didn't change with years. In summer, Gaitanos drives around the islands in a jeep, hikes in the mountains, listens to his player, and takes lots of photos. He likes beautiful movies with magical worlds, like "Avatar." And Petros also enjoys cooking. That’s how it is.





Text author: Marina Boronina. Use permitted only with a reference to this page or the author.