Vasilis Tsitsanis’s Damage, sung by Marika Ninou, is a truly significant rebetiko recording, as it marks the first appearance of accordionist Evangelia Margaroni in the discography.
For 34 years, Margaroni accompanied Tsitsanis in performance and on record as accordionist or pianist. She contributed musical thoughts and ideas to his compositions. She was, in some ways, his musical partner and not just a member of his orchestra.
If that was all she was known for, that would be enough to secure her place in Greek music history. But there was more. At the same time, she was working as a pianist/accordinist for both the major recording companies in Athens (splitting her week equally between them). As well as performing and recording with Tsitsanis, she performed with other composers and singers. After Tsitsanis’s death, she worked and toured with Stelios Vamvakaris. She recorded as late as 1997before retiring.
Margaroni was born in Piraeus in 1928. Her father was a santouri player, who encouraged her to take up first the violin and then the piano. She was performing by the late 1940s. In 1947, Marika Ninou heard her and introduced the 19-year-old to Tsitsanis.
Melos, the Vasilis Tsitsanis Recording Collection at the University of Ionannina, credits Margaroni as a musician on 72 recordings of Tsitsanis songs from 1949 into the late 1970s. (Original in Greek.)
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