UNITED KINGDOM: GREEK SINGER NANA MOUSKOURI TALKS ABOUT HER 40 YEAR CAREER IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AND IN POLITICS AS A MEP

Record ID: 472994

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: GREEK SINGER NANA MOUSKOURI TALKS ABOUT HER 40 YEAR CAREER IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AND IN POLITICS AS A MEP
  • Date: 1st May 2001
  • Summary: (REUTERS FILE) (ATHENS ,GREECE) VARIOUS, OF THE PARTHENON TEMPLE, ATHENS (4 SHOTS) (OVERLAID WITH ENGLISH SOUNDBITE OF MOUSKOURI SAYING " they will feel that they are back near to their born space and this will be wonderful for Greece. Believe me, there is no problem with pollution at all and they are not going to be ruined." )
  • Embargoed: 16th May 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
  • City:
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA892TINF39I991JMTMAJBAQ7I7
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  • Story Text: If you ask people who the biggest selling female artist is in the world, many would say Madonna or Tina Turner or Dolly Parton. But they would be wrong. The answer is Nana Mouskouri, the 66 year old Greek singer, a lady with many talents. Until recently, she was a Member of the European Parliament, and is a committed fundraiser for UNICEF. One of her cherished desires is for the Elgin Marbles, housed at the British Museum, to be returned to the Parthenon Temple on the Acropolis in Athens.
    Nana Mouskouri, the world's biggest selling female singer, is celebrating forty years in showbusiness. She's coming to the end of a world tour that has taken in Europe, the Far East and Australia, and she's now on her first tour of the UK for ten years.
    It's been an incredible career. Her first album was produced by Quincy Jones, and Bob Dylan wrote a song, "Every Grain of Sand", for Nana.
    She has also had two other careers : as a fund raiser for Unicef, and as a Member of the European Parliament. She represented Greece for five years - her "tour of duty" ending last year, and which curtailed many of her musical activities.
    Her latest CD, "At Her Very Best", has been another huge best-seller. In the UK, it hit Number One in the Classic FM charts. Her first album, "Nana Mouskouri in New York", produced in 1962 by Quincy Jones, has been re-released and hit was voted "Best Easy Album 2000" in the HMV Choice Awards, based in the UK.
    Mouskouri has always been a distinct celebrity through her choice of heavy, black framed glasses and centrally parted long, black hair. She has been a crossover artist for many years not only mixing musical styles like gospel, folk, country and classical but also mixing languages - she is fluent in English and French, as well as her native Greek, and commonly sings in Spanish, German, and Italian.
    She was forced to chose between classical music, and popular music, by her professor at the Athens Conservatoire who had overheard her singing jazz. He ruled that Nana had to make a choice. The rest is history, and millions of listeners round the world owe a vote of thanks to the Athens institution.
    Success came quickly to Nana (christened Joanna) Mouskouri. In 1960, on her first trip abroad, she won the Mediterranean Song Festival in Barcelona. Around the same time she struck gold, singing the title song in the movie "Never on a Sunday", featuring Melina Mercouri.
    When the male composer of the song, Manos Hadjidakis, was then commissioned to write the music for a German TV documentary, and he asked his friend Nana to sing on the soundtrack. Within six months, her recording of "White Rose of Athens" had sold one and a half million copies.
    In 1962, Quincy Jones invited Nana to New York, where she spent a month hanging out in such haunts as the Village Vanguard. In 1963, she represented Luxembourg in the Eurovision Song Contest : she didn't win, but it led to her being spotted by BBC TV producer, Yvonne Littlewood, and Nana went on to star in a number of specials.
    Harry Belafonte, then in Britain on a concert tour, asked Nana to join him on a separate tour of the US.
    It's thought that Nana Mouskouri has sold up to 400m records. She laughs, modestly "Oh no, it's nowhere near that.
    More like 250 million." She is now joined on stage by her daughter, Helene, a singer and actress in her own right.
    One of Nana Mouskouri's long-cherished ambitions is to see the return to Greece of the Elgin Marbles. Now housed in the British Museum, they cannot be returned without an Act of Parliament. They had been taken from the Parthenon Temple in 1806 by Thomas Bruce, the diplomat and 7th Earl of Elgin.
    Mouskouri wants to see their permanent return to Athens, but is gently calling for them to be shipped over to Greece at least for the 2004 Olympic Games, which are coming to Greece.
    And another ambition is to sing for Unicef in a special concert in Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral.
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