On Air - On Site : 48 Hours of Radio Art

Aired on May 25th 08:00 CEST 2025
Panegyrica
Genre: Radio Documentary, Soundscape Composition
Duration: 45 min
In the summer of 2022, I roamed the Greek countryside with Yannis Michalopoulos, directing an artistic research project on the culture of Greece’s rural folk feasts, known as panegyri. The word, which initially meant “gathering,” lends its name to this piece.
These feasts typically take place in village squares near a local chapel, or in fields razed to host hundreds or even thousands of visitors—mostly farmers. The music is always heavily amplified, drenched in delay. In some villages, more than one folk band plays at the same time, competing in volume and in the size of the crowds they draw. A typical panegyri involves plenty of alcohol and dancing, beginning around midnight and ending at dawn.
Panegyrica combines different sonic realities we encountered during our research, forming an imaginary route through a feast day: from the crops under the scorching midday sun to the nocturnal lake, the irrigation sprinklers, the countryside road, a famous local folk singer, a legendary neofolk composer and guitarist, endless soundchecks, and a marching band during a religious litany. The panegyri is just about to begin.
I composed this piece using audio recordings I made together with our team’s audio engineer and sound designer, Kostas Chaikalis. I approached it as an alternative diary or a testimony—a result of an ongoing research process that blends ethnographic and documentary methods with a personal artistic, and even autobiographical, quest. The research period 2022-2023 was funded by the Onassis Stegi, coordinated by the Amsterdam-based company I/O.

Featuring:

Thanasis Deligiannis

Thanasis Deligiannis is a Dutch-based transdisciplinary artist, director and composer, born in Greece in 1983. He grew up in a family of folk musicians, dancers and farmers, moving to Amsterdam in 2007. In 2024 he was a featured artist at Venice Art Biennale with the work Xirómero/Dryland, created along with a team of artists for the Greek Pavilion. He has been collaborating with music ensembles, theatre companies and cultural institutions across Europe, North America and Asia.

Thanasis has been artistic coordinator of the music-theatre research platform RE-FUSE, an initiative of the Greek National Opera in collaboration with Gaudeamus, and he has been assistant artistic director for the Nieuw Ensemble and artistic coordinator of the intercultural music platform Atlas Lab.

Since 2018 Thanasis has been teaching at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam of the Amsterdam University for the Arts, while giving workshops to educational institutions in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe. He is artistic director of the Amsterdam-based company I/O, focused on the creation of crossover performances and immersive installations.