<p>-
- Greek singer-songwriter Dionysis Savvopoulos buried in a state funeral</p>
<p>DEMETRIS NELLAS October 25, 2025 at 9:35 PM</p>
<p>0</p>
<p>Greek singer-songwriter Dionysis Savvopoulos, performs at the Athens Concert Hall on Sept. 1, 2020. (InTime News via AP) ()</p>
<p>ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Popular Greek singer-songwriter Dionysis Savvopoulos was buried Saturday at Athens' First Cemetery in a state-sponsored funeral, four days after his death at age 80.</p>
<p>Savvopoulos had died of a heart attack after battling cancer since 2020.</p>
<p>Thousands came to pay their respects to a well-beloved, if sometimes controversial, artist as he lay in state at a chapel of the Athens Metropolitan Cathedral Saturday morning. Hundreds made the nearly 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) walk behind the hearse to the cemetery.</p>
<p>The presence of a Greek navy band playing mournful music was indicative of the change in Savvopoulos's status, from someone lionized by anarchist-leaning leftists in the 1960s and 1970s and dismissed by the establishment as a long-haired freak, to a figure embraced by the same establishment and cultural mainstream.</p>
<p>Savvopoulos never changed his musical style — a blend of rock, folk-rock, jazz and Greek popular music — to conform to mainstream tastes. Always a political animal, he didn't shy away from criticizing the left and its illusions, especially on his 1989 album "The Haircut," whose sleeve showed him beardless with long locks. A few of his songs drew the enmity of some of his longtime admirers. The beard grew back but his politics remained moderate.</p>
<p>Conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the first of many who eulogized Savvopoulos during the funeral service, used the lyrics of the 1972 song "Messenger Angel" to portray the artist as a speaker of uncomfortable truths that many did not want to hear. "If he had no pleasant news to tell/better tell us none," he quoted the song's ending.</p>
<p>Others who joined in eulogizing Savvopoulos were former President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, fellow musicians, artists and literary figures, some from his hometown of Thessaloniki, and one of his two grandsons.</p>
<a href="https://data852.click/5a32cd58501e613bf372/ee0a75caf0/?placementName=default" class="dirlink-1">Original Article on Source</a>
Source: "AOL Entertainment"
Source: AsherMag
Full Article on Source: Astro Blog
#LALifestyle #USCelebrities