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popular Greek Singer-songwriter Dionysis Savopoulos was buried in a state-sponsored funeral at the First Cemetery of Athens on Saturday, four days after his death at the age of 80.
Savopoulos died of a heart attack after battling cancer since 2020.
Thousands of people came to pay their respects to a beloved, sometimes controversial, artist as he lay in state in the chapel. Athens Metropolitan Cathedral Saturday morning. Hundreds of people followed the hearse on foot to the cemetery, a distance of about 2 kilometers (1.2 mi).
The appearance of a Greek Navy band playing mournful music signaled a change in the status of Savopoulos, who in the 1960s and 1970s had been admired by the anarchist-leaning left and dismissed by the establishment as a long-haired eccentric, to an image adopted by the same establishment and the cultural mainstream.
Savopoulos never changed his musical style – a mix of rock, folk-rock, jazz and Greek popular music – to suit mainstream tastes. Always a political creature, he did not shy away from criticizing the left and its delusions, especially on his 1989 album “The Haircut”, the sleeve of which showed him with long hair and no beard. Some of his songs attracted the hostility of some of his old fans. His beard grew again but his politics remained liberal.
conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos MitsotakisThe first of many who eulogized Savopoulos during the funeral service, used lyrics from the 1972 song “Messenger Angel” to portray the artist as a speaker of inconvenient truths that many did not want to hear. He quotes the end of the song, “If they ain’t got no good news to tell / They’d better tell us nothing at all.”
Others joining in the praise of Savopoulos included former President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, fellow musicians, artists and literary figures, some of whom were from his hometown. THESSALONIKIand one of his two grandsons.