Manolis Rasoulis: The unconventional songwriter who changed the Greek song

An interpreter, author, singer, with dozens of favorite and hundreds of articles, Manolis Rasoulis has been described as one of the best songwriters in Greece. The iconic songs of the songwriter and composer Manolis Rasoulis have been performed by great artists and many of them shaped musically in their time. He was a concerned man but also bright, who throughout his life sought, loved and created. His lyrics have been studied, among other things, Manos Loizos, Stavros Kougioumtzis, Nikos Xydakis, Petros Vayopoulos, Socrates Malamas and Christos Nikolopoulos. She has a daughter, Natalia Rasouli, singer, musician and singer. Manolis Rasoulis died of a heart attack on 5 March 2011 in Thessaloniki and was found dead in his apartment after several days. His autobiography was completed by his daughter Natalia Rasoulis. It is released from the publications “Janos” (2012) entitled “Vervelids of Amalthia – Reference to Homo Sapiens”. Manolis Rasoulis was born in Heraklion Crete on 28 September 1945. In Crete he lived in his childhood, graduated from high school and in 1965, was found in Athens where he started studying film directing. Manolis Rasoulis was born having intensely the fire of the search in him and she did not extinguish even shortly before the end of his life. In Athens he studies film directing, writes poems, scripts, sings amateurly in the Bhuat of Plaka, works in the left-wing newspaper “Republican Change”. During that time he met Manos Loizo, Dionysis Savvopoulos, Theodoros Angelopoulos and others. His action and associations disturbed the regime and on 21 April 1967 he was arrested at the newspaper offices where he was working, however he was soon released, as no evidence was found against him. Immediately after his release, Manolis Rasoulis was in London where he will stay six years. There he does foot jobs to live and at the same time continued to struggle for his ideas. In less than a year, he was found in France and participated in the ’68 uprising in Paris. He actively participated in student protests, was beaten and hospitalized. In Paris a Trotsky poster became the cause of his accession to the Trotsky movement upon his return to London. So she met star Vanessa Redgrave, an active member of the movement. In 1973, a year before returning to Greece, Natalia’s daughter was born. After the fall of Junta in 1974, Manolis Rasoulis returned to Greece and began working at the Andreadis shipyards in Perama, where in danger of being killed daily he enters the strike committee and leads the labor movement. At that time he performed Manou Loizo’s song, “A seabird” and soon afterwards met with musician Nikos Xydakis. In 1978 Manos Loizos invites him to participate with his performance on the album “The Negroes” along with Maria Farantouris. In the same year Rasoulis makes his maiden songwriting appearance with the album “The Revenge of the Gyptia” in music by Nikos Xydakis and songs uniquely performed by Nikos Papazoglu. Manolis Rasoulis in the years that followed collaborated with a multitude of outstanding musicians. He wrote amazing, poetic lyrics that spoke in the heart of the world. Together with Manos Loizos, Nikos Xydakis, Nikos Papazoglu and many others, they created songs over time, Greek and worldwide with the voices of Haroula Alexiou, Nikos Papazoglou, Socrates Malamas, Maria Dimitriadis and many others: “Everything reminds you”, “In the crack of time”, “The dalliances”, “When Buddha, when Kouda”, are only a few of the most famous songs. Harris Alexiou has said: “Rasoulis songs gave me identity”. Rasoulis’ publishing effort began with his companion, Vasso Allyiannis in the late 70s. It was a philosophical sociopolitical magazine that embraced and supported too many people. The first issue came out in 1979, at a time when Vasso Allyiannis has admitted that they did not even pay their rent. All they wanted was to make “The Egg”. His heretic speech in the magazine “Egg”, which he published since the late 1970s, was the cause of being targeted by Security as an anarchist. He prints his first three books: “The Ballad of Isaac”, follows the book with short stories “Big hero in small paper bag” and a mixed with short stories and poems “kvo vantis status kvo”. Manolis Rasoulis’ short stories the articles and all his texts in his books show what man he was. He watched, observed, and was informed of what was happening in the country and in the world. His thoughts and opinions often bothered him. He was often accused of being anarchist and dangerous. They came to blame him as a terrorist, saying he is the brain of the terrorist organization “November 17th”. In 2018, seven years after the death of the great songwriter, singer and writer Manolis Rasoulis, the only daughter of Natalia, had spoken about her beloved father in Helena Katritsis. “He was loving, idealist, sarcastic, erotic, tender… In a strange way, he always redeems in his songs. It doesn’t just illuminate the matter and then leave you unsolved… It gives the answer.” With a verse direct, tender and sometimes extremely illustrative, he changed the Greek song. Even when writing love lyrics, he managed to pass social and political messages and at the same time make people have fun, dance. Unconventional, sensitive, generous and explosive. Manolis Rasoulis risked but was ready to pay the price every time. He was a multi-shade personality, an insubordinate and free spirit. Disarmamently sincere, When he thought he was wronged, nothing stopped him. He also had nothing to do with money as he generously gave it to those in need and without a second thought. His collaboration with Nikos Xydakis in 1978 in the “Revenge of the Gypsies” with an performer Nikos Papazoglu, not only achieved great success but, as they said, “made rockers listen popularly” and “songwriters scare”. The creator of “Ach, Greece I love you” , co-creator Vasso Allayiannis believed, as his daughter says, that “the reason, the Greek is the great power of the country”. “Ah Greece loves you” is a song that some described as a second National Hymn. Vasso Allayiannis had said about the iconic song and how it was written: “We wrote it in Crete, walking on the road, phrase phrase, descending for Plakias on foot, having missed the bus a while ago. It was a dialogue. A melodic phrase, a verse in it. Papazoglu sang it for three years in his concerts and was eventually recorded to Lycavittos.” Manolis Rasoulis admired and respected those who considered his teachers, from Nikos Kazantzakis and Mikis Theodorakis to Vassilis Tsitsanis and Stelios Kazantzidis. Rasoulis considered his Hajitaki teacher. Many phrases, which existed in his texts, then became song lyrics, such as “When Buddha, when Buddha” that was made and the occasion to receive, once again, an attack from the Church. The story of the “opportunity” of two songs In 1979 on the second album of his collaboration with Nikos Xydakis, in “Depthene”, Manolis Rasoulis puts an end to the… institution of “magia” and Nikos Papazoglu sings: “The dudes no longer exist they were run over by the train, with manganese sailed with snarling erased”. The song becomes nationwide known in 1982, when Harris Alexiou sings it again on her album “My life goes round.” Rasoulis’ lyrics provoke the “reaction” of the folk songwriter Vassilis Papadopoulos, who in 1984 responds in his own way, Takis Soukas writes a strong zeibekiko and is sung by the main mangic voice of the track song, Stratos Dionysiou: “Who said it about the dudes how they got lost? Who said their trains were busted? Who said that about the dudes that they were screwed, that they traveled by boat and sank?”