After our visit to the Meteora we stayed in Preveza for the weekend as there was a festival of music, dance, art and photography. Jolli Jumper, Sue and Al, had returned from the UK and were still in Preveza so they joined us all for the weekend too.
The Friday night free musical concert was held at a ruined castle several kilometres out of town. The information we had been given turned out to be more vague than we thought and we only found the right place when Sue asked a lady rushing along the same road where to go. It transpired that she was Russian, married to a Greek man, with four children, some of whom were in the concert, hence the rush. She found seats for most of us once we arrived before disappearing to join her family.
The concert was held inside the ruins, completely open to the night sky, with the stage lights lighting up the castle walls very effectively. The iMake festival was a celebration of six months’ work in different arts with young people of Preveza. The musical performance consisted of very short pieces as there were so many young people to perform. Some of them were really enjoyable but they seemed to stop short just as they got going. We couldn’t understand the rush really.
However, more people started arriving at about 22.30hrs and as we looked around the castle we could see it was now packed. A band appeared to be setting up on stage and they looked older than the other participants. Little did we know that Babis Stokas was about to perform! Babis who, I hear you ask? So did we! Later research confirmed that he is well known much loved Greek rock singer and that explained why the audience knew 80% of the words to the songs and sang along.
The music was rock, the guitarists were ‘awesome’ and the bouzouki player was just amazing and added a really different, particulary enjoyable, tone to the overall sound. We wish we could have understood the words to the songs as the audience obviously ‘lived them’ so rock ballads they must have been!
Babis was full of energy; he played continuously for over three hours, as did the musicians, hardly pausing for the applause to finish before launching into the next song! This was such an unexpected treat and probably explained the speed with which the other performers had to play. We thoroughly enjoyed the whole event, the surroundings were spectacular and we just felt so lucky that we had persevered and found the location !
The long walk back to town went quickly and this being Greece the waterfront bars were still open at 01.45hrs so a cold beer and snacks were well received! I think we got back to Max at 03.30hrs eventually, what a night, an unexpected bonus and so memorable.