By Catherine Tsounis
“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” Plato
Music is the language of the Love. In the summer of 2025, I visited the Greek speaking villages of Magna Grecia in southern Italy. Grecia Salentina is in the Apulia region. The villages that we saw were Sternatia, Calimera, Lecce and Otranto.
In the heart of Salento, in Puglia, there is a community called “Grecìa Salentina”, so called in this way because its inhabitants still retains Hellenic customs and customs, in particular the language, inherited in particular in the Byzantine era. The Griko is a cultural heritage left by the Greeks first and then by the Byzantines, emigrated to Salento because of the strong penetration of the Normans in southern Italy. While these, along with the later Swabian conquerors, Angevins, Aragonese and Spaniards were Catholics, the Byzantines still practiced the Greek Orthodox religion. Since the 90s these small villages have come together in a consortium to preserve and promote the language, culture and traditions of their ancestors, and, though laboriously, try to carry them out with honor.2
In 1999 the Italian parliament recognized the Graikaniki community of Salento as “Greek national and linguistic minority”. The Graikanoi themselves (inhabitants of Greek-speaking villages) say that on paper they are Italians and Greeks at heart.3
We stayed and beautiful hotel called Hermitage in Galatina. On our last evening, July 29 we attended a Griko concert at our hotel, Hermitage in Galatina. They played the traditional Griko song of lost love, KALINIFTA, that is internationally famous. The words are the following: How sweet and beautiful this night is
I don’t sleep thinking about you
and behind your window my love
I open to you the pains of my heart.
I always think of you
because you, my soul,
I love: wherever I go, wherever I flee, wherever I stay, I always carry you in my heart.
The stars look down on me and talk secretly with the moon and laugh and say to me:
“All your songs are lost to the wind.”
Good night I’m leaving you and going away
but you sleep because I’m leaving in pain but where I go,
I always carry you in my heart4
A romantic song of lost love and memories that are never forgotten. This is the state of mind of a wounded man, resigned by a love stronger than his own reason.5Listen to this beautiful song at https://www.youtube.com/
Special appreciation to the following persons: the exceptional work of Kosta Tsioros and Maria Papalou, owners of Tsioros Travel; Guide Konstandina Savvopoulou, who worked one year with us to make this trip happen; Guide Dimitrios Mitsopoulos whose knowledge of Southern Italy was exceptional; George Paraskevakos, who was helping us with his friends Christina and Constantine Vastis and John and Georgia Colovos.
References
1. https://www.goodreads.com/
2. https://www.visititaly.eu/
3. https://omilo.com/greek-
4. https://video.salento.it/en/
5. https://commons.wikimedia.org/
6. https://video.salento.it/en/
https://commons.wikimedia.org/
