Sofiadelis Antonis

Place of birth: Plomari, Lesvos

Year of birth: 1913

Short biography: 

Dimitris Sofiadelis was born in 1913 and was an amateur singer. When he finished primary school, he began working as an assistant in a store in Plomari, upon his father’s encouragement, to help support his large family. He then spent 15 years working in one of the two oil extraction factories that operated in Plomari in the past. He also worked in olive oil transportation, a position for which he received his pension: “then we started working down at the union (of Olive Oil transportation). We went and registered. We formed a union of olive oil workers. Twelve warehouses… I worked there, at the Ladadika (the olive oil warehouses) for around 25-30 years, I got my pension from it… We’d fill the barrels, metal barrels. We had to wash them, fill them up, we painted them on the outside, we marked them, and when we filled them up, (we had to) take them down to the market, to Aghios Nikolas, to the pier. A ship stopped by and they loaded them onto it. They took them up North, Thessaloniki, Volos, Kavala… We got paid by the barrel. We carried the oil in touloumia (bags made out of animal hide), from animals, touloumia from goat hide. We went to an agency, 10 touloumia, 3 drachmas apiece. We loaded the barrels onto cars. It takes 5 people to load a barrel onto a car, 3 at the top and 2 at the bottom, for 3 drachmas, 1 barrels for 3 drachmas.”
He sang mostly at spontaneous parties with his friends, without the accompaniment of musical instruments, which is why they usually chose the cafés of the neighbouring village of Trigona, which tended to be quieter: “Yes, yes, we danced, all sorts of things, in short (we lived) rebetika (a Greek bohemian lifestyle, associated with rebetika music). […] When we got into the mood, there was singing! In high spirits… We had musicians too, sometimes, but it was 3-4 of us who got together, to sing, drink some raki, and we’d forget to get up again. We had this good lad, a good singer… It was a select group that got together. We went to the cafés in Trigona… There were youngsters there, doing serenades (with musical instruments). We didn’t do serenades, but we went and sang. If I had a lady, we went and sang. They liked listening to us… But the police chased you if you sang.”
In addition to the above, he also sung at friends’ and acquaintances’ wedding parties, held in private homes, because, as he explained himself, hiring musicians to play at wedding parties was expensive: “We just sang. There were mo musicians. The bride’s friends would come and sing…”
His repertoire included the local songs of Plomari, such as Eri-pale (a Carnival song with “erotic” and “nautical” lyrics), the songs “of the swings” (songs for spring and Easter), the couplets “of sorrow and love”, sung to the tune of “parapounikos” or “Plagiotikos” or “Plomaritikos” (all names of a local tune): “We mostly sung the plagiotikos, the plomaritikos.”
He also sung “giemitzidika” (nautical) songs, and “kontrabatzidika” (from “contraband” – songs about contraband traffickers of the early 20th century), on which he said: “They sung those in the old days. There were many contraband traffickers around here. Tobacco, matches. They went to Kalymnos, they went down south. They were locals. I had a cousin who was a contraband trafficker…”. He also sung certain songs that have become ingrained in the local tradition, such as “i trata mas I kourelou”, “to trechantiraki”, etc.