Long after the War was over: time to sing (together) again
Manos Hadjidakis writes in the bilingual pamphlet of ROMAN AGORA (c. 1985):
There is a story worth telling, since most of you will be hearing for the
first time North Wind, South Wind. During the German occupation, we
listened to a song that I, personally, found deeply moving: Lily
Marlene.
It was about a girl who every night visited the barracks, and everyone
called her by her name. Until one evening the soldiers on leave couldn't
find her anywhere. "Lily Marlene" had died. And the sorrowful soldiers
sang her song, knowing they'll never see her again. I liked the song so
much that I learned to play it on the piano, as though relating the girl's
story. And everyone wanted to hear me play it, both my teachers and my
friends. With my friend Yangos Aravantinos (who was sixteen at the time),
the two of us enchanted by the voice
of the girl who sang it, Lale Andersen,
we decided to compose a Mediterranean song -- in answer to the northern
Lily Marlene -- and give it to her to sing once the war was over.
So we
wrote North Wind, South Wind, exactly as you heard it on the ROMAN
AGORA
record. The war ended, and we forgot all about Lily Marlene and
Lale
Andersen. In 1961, when just about everyone was singing Never on
Sunday,
I received an official invitation from Frankfurt to receive the key of the
city from the hands of the Mayor. I arrived on a four-engined plane,
wintertime, at seven o'clock in the evening. Three thousand people turned
out to meet me, a large band that played my song, and all European
broadcasting stations. From the time I got off the plane, a smiling lady
in a grey-white fur coat stood beside me, whom everyone addressed with
respect.
At one point I heard a reporter asking her: "Ms. Andersen, after Lily
Marlene was A Ship is Arriving (the title of the song in
Germany) your
greatest hit?" To which another added: "Was A Ship is Arriving your
triumphant comeback?" I interrupted my conversation, and before the
microphones of the broadcasting stations I asked her if she was Lale
Andersen. "Of course, I am", she answered sweetly. And so I began telling
her my wartime story. We became friends; she expressed the wish to sing my
song, which was granted, earning her a second gold disc.
As I said, with Lale we became very good friends and traveled together on
various occasions. In fact she came to Athens for a French television
production to do with my life, and we were 'shot' together outside my old
house in Manou Street, where I had first heard Lily Marlene.
Lily Marlene, apparently more of a love song then a war song -- so
much
so that Marlen Dietrich did dare sing it in Israel in 1960, and my late
father used to sing it as well ("piso ap' to stratona, piso ap' to vouno,
ena fanaraki fotizi to steno"), despite one year in the Nazi labor camps
(and a freedom song
he also used to sing)...
Anyhow, below I cite Aravantinos's lyrics of North Wind, South Wind
as translated into English (like Hadjidakis's text above) by Yannis Goumas:
My love, I looked for you
In every dawn and in the moonlight,
Blindly I looked for you
Up in the clouds.
But then came the time, came the rain
And your loveliness
My love, I looked for you
Because you were the sky.
And if God in His mercy
Created you
With a star in your hair
And with a heart of gold
In the fields grew tall
The golden wheat
And my love fell for you
Because you were the sky.
My love, I lost you
And my heart stood still,
The birds carried you off
In the torrential rain;
The south wind blew, the north wind blew,
Came a wave and swept you away;
My love I lost you
Because you were the sky.
Manos Hadjidakis and Lale Andersen