Greek & Greek-related (even super-vaguely-Greek-related-like songs from "Grease") music suggestions

My friends have a huge New Year's Eve themed dinner party every year. This year's theme is "Greece" (because it might be the last year that Greece exists), and my job is to come up with about six hours of music from, about, or in any way related to Greece (including songs that are barely related to Greece, like songs from the musical Grease). I need all knowledge available from MeFites!

I am in charge of the music for playlists are wildly eclectic. For example, apart from standard Greek music (bouzouki stuff, the Greek national anthem, etc.), I can use music and/or sound bytes that are barely tenuously related to "Greece" (the theme from Kojak, the cheese shop routine from Monty Python's Flying Circus, the sound byte "THIS! IS! SPARTAAAAA!" etc.) Of course, I'd like the bulk of the playlist to be relatively standard Greek or Greek-inspired music, such as akritic and klephtic folk music; paraloghes; etc.), but any ideas you have would be most welcome.

(Please—no Yanni. I will use one song of his, but IMO that is already one song too many.)

For examples of previous years' themes and music suggestions, I point you to some previous years' playlist suggestions:

2010: Scandanavia!

2009: Delmonico's New Year's Eve menus from the early part of the 20th Century!

2008: Hawaii and pigs! (Yes, we, in fact, had an entire pig roasted on a spit, among other things.)

2006: Blue-state pickups in the 2006 mid-term elections!

2004: When We Were Kids! (most of us are around 40 years old, so we're talking early-to-mid 70s.)

I need about six hours for drinks, dinner, dessert, and the champagne 10-second countdown, plus coffee.

All help appreciated!

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thaccian

These are all so obvious that I'm sure you have them listed already, but:

"Never on Sunday" theme song was written by Manos Hadjidakis originally in Greek with the title "Ta Paidia tou Peiraia" (The children of Piraeus). The original Greek version featured lyrics also written by Hadjidakis, and was performed in the film by Melina Mercouri.

"Never on Sunday" version by Pink Martini is on their SYMPATHIQUE CD

Kander & Ebb's "Zorba the Greek" (b-way)

"Zorba the Greek" film soundtrack

The "I Spy" soundtrack CDs put out by Film Score Monthly have some of music written for the episodes filmed in Greece

klia

There are some really good Greek indie rock bands. A fellow fan of the Aussie band The Church pointed me to this, which has samples of 7 different Greek bands (singing in English), because the band called Closer sounds quite a bit like The Church, only with female backing vocals. The same user also posted V2.0 featuring different bands (several of which I liked). Unfortunately, I have no idea if they're easy to track down.

There's a FB page listing a bunch of bands, too.

It's kind of a given you'll play George Michael, Frank Zappa, and Zorba, right? *g*

ETA: I found an interesting list of celebs of Greek descent, so you can add stuff by Jeff Buckley, Tommy Lee, Kelly Clarkson, Hank Azaria, Maria Callas, and others.

Edited Date: 2011-11-02 10:58 pm (UTC)

nigeltde

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VangelisVangelis!. The only thing of his I listen to is the Jon and Vangelis album Friends of Mr Cairo, which is a legitimately awesome album, but he's done a ton of music -- I think his non-soundtrack albums might be "greekier" than some of the more familiar stuff.