Haralampos Garganourakis

Forty years ago, an eighteen year-old brave young man, Babis Garganourakis, went to Athens to record his first ever vinyl, going through all the difficulties of those times. Nobody then could imagine the future of this musician and the importance of his work for the music of Crete.

Some years later the distinctive Cretan figure of Babis Garganourakis was on stage of a theatre in Vienna (where the notes of Beethoven’s music were heard for the first time) executing the “Concerto for Lyre” of Giannis Markopoulos and he was the first traditional artist entering such a place ever!

Since then he has visited seventy times the United States of America, ten times Australia, he has given uncountable concerts in Europe, he lived more, countless, fascinating moments, together with his lyre…

Through a forty year artistic career, Babis Garganourakis, the country boy from Agios Thomas, who “didn’t know what the sopranos are…”, and with the help of the other great Cretan, the composer Giannis Markopoulos, managed to bring the music of Crete into another dimension, making people of each nationality rave to the sound of his lyre!