Oi Pontoi

About

Oi Pontoi features three young Greek American musicians who are keeping rarely heard, centuries-old sounds from isolated villages in northeastern Greece alive in America’s Greek diaspora. Diaspora communities are, ironically, sometimes the best keepers of tradition. Far from the homeland, heritage becomes more precious; maintaining traditions sustains and nurtures the spirit of family, community, and cultural identity.

The band’s members—Kostas Fetfatsidis, Evan Karapanagiotides, and Vasili Ikonomou—trace their heritage to Pontus, a region in present-day Turkey near the Black Sea. Pontian traditional music has a Near Eastern flavor, a reminder of centuries of cultural domination by the Ottoman Empire, and the connections that bridge long-contested political boundaries between Greece and Turkey and Albania. This music strikes Western ears as haunting and mysterious, recalling its remote origins.

Tewksbury’s Kostas Fetfatsidis grew up in a large Pontic Greek community in South Boston. His grandfather and father played kemenche, the Pontian lyra, while his mother’s family maintained an ornamented singing tradition called epitrapezio (“you sing it around the table”). Kostas began playing kemenche at 14. Later, he picked up the tulum—a double-reed bagpipe made from a sheep’s belly—after hearing it at dances at Boston’s Pontian cultural societies, and in Greece.

Evan Karapanagiotides and Vasili Ikonomou hail from a close-knit Greek diaspora community in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. Evan learned to sing in the Laiko style, popularized in the 20^th century by Stelios Kazantzidis, whose records played frequently in his parents’ home. Evan also plays guitar. Vasili’s immigrant parents instilled in him deep pride in his Pontian heritage. Surrounded by music in the community, he taught himself to play the Pontian daouli (drum). “Whenever I play,” Vasili explains, “I feel like Pontian culture flows through me and through its listeners and thus, has made me who I am today.”

Playing at weddings, christenings, parties, and events at Pontian cultural societies, Kostas, Evan, and Vasili are leaders in their diaspora communities, encouraging the next generation to maintain Pontian traditions.