For over 60 years, George Bouras’s hands have known the bouzouki the long-term lovers know each other. At 81, the self-taught musician and a “tradition bearer”, a title the Smithsonian Institution itself might bestow, has poured a lifetime into the instrument.
Last week, five of the bouzoukis he loved most were stolen. Bouras is one more name added to the list of Melbourne residents caught up in the city’s crime wave, but for him the loss cuts much deeper than property. These were not just instruments. They were history, craftsmanship, and memory, strung together and stolen in a single break-in.
A targeted theft
“I have a bungalow in the back of the house which I use as studio, that is where they broke in and stole my bouzoukia,” he said. “Five of them, all on a stand, as they aren’t meant to be in a case for too long.”
The thieves did not take the amps, PAs and recording equipment from the converted bungalow studio which convinces Bouras that it was a targeted event.
His daughter, Helen Tsioutsias, also believes the burglary was no random act. “Mum and Dad recently sold their house as they are downsizing, and it seems that whoever broke in was observing and casing the place,” she told Neos Kosmos.
Among the stolen instruments was one that can never be replaced: a rare, handmade bouzouki more than 60 years old. “That bouzouki belonged to Yiannis Paleologou, a monster player, considered one of the greats at the level of Manolis Chiotis, Vassilis Tsitsanis,” George said. The rest, bar one, were custom-made for Bouras in Greece — instruments built to his hands, his sound, his life’s work.
“They jumped over the fence, went into the studio and took the instruments, nothing else, they knew what they were doing,” Bouras said.
A small victory
In the days since, the family has fought to get even a piece of that history back. They alerted pawn shops across Melbourne, and it was a family friend, a pawn shop owner in the area, who spotted one of the missing bouzoukis and tipped off Bouras’s another daughter and his brother.
Police caught the culprit. “They caught the guy trying to sell the bouzouki and the police questioned him, and they’re charging him,” George said.
That bouzouki, 35 years old, wasn’t the priceless antique, but its recovery offered a rare flicker of relief in an otherwise painful week.
“It was a bouzouki made specifically for dad, I rember going to Larissa in Greece with him to pick it up,” his daughter Helen said.
Helen explained that databases now give families a fighting chance: “like Cash Converters at the end of the week they go through the database to look for any stolen goods.”
Life’s melody built on bouzouki
George Bouras came to Melbourne in the 1960s aboard the Patris, one of thousands of Greek migrants starting a new life in a new world. He started out playing rock guitar with Melbourne outfits of the era like Sherwood Green, featuring Brian Cadd, and pop group New Dimension, before Greek laiko music of the 1950s and ’60s claimed him for good.
“I now only really listen to Greek laika and especially of the 1950s and 1960s like Vamvakaris and Tsitsanis,” he said. He described the era as “unmatched in Greek musical history.”
“Many of those musicians would tour the United States to play for Greeks there, and when they came back to Greece they introduced elements of jazz, rock and even country and western, to develop a new form of laika Greek popular music.”
He adds, “there were also many other influences of the time like Indian music incorporated into Greek music.”
At the Copacabana
It was at the Copacabana, the fabled Greek nightclub on the corner of Sydney Road and Phoenix Street in Brunswick, and a social and cultural heartbeat for Greek migrants from the 1950s until it closed in March 1978, that Bouras found his real calling. He was part owner of the club, then became the main owner, It was there, among visiting musicians from Greece, that he cut his chops.
“The building is still there, in Brunswick, in Phoenix Street,” George said. “It was the biggest Greek club in Australia.”
He recalls some players guarded their secrets closely: “We had lots of great singers and musicians from Greece performing and I was taught bouzouki by them, and some did not want to give away any of their trade secrets, but I am a good thief of music styles.”
At 81, George still plays. “It is like riding a bike,” he says, “and when someone has passed away or can’t make it they call me.”
Most of the audiences he once played for are gone now “either in aged care or in the grave,” as he puts it but he takes comfort in a new generation of venues drawing third and fourth generation Greek Australians back to the music.
“I hear about them mostly as I am too old to go out late, but it is good that Greek music is still alive.”
*George Bouras and his daughter Helen are asking anyone in the community with information or who spots a bouzouki turning up at a pawn shop — to come forward and contact Neos Kosmos editor@neoskosmos.com.au
