Singing as a source of happiness

This is how you want to start a new day: with the sound of a guitar in a cheerful rhythm, which is gradually joined by other instruments, and this voice, which is so full at the top and always a bit smoky, which Nana Mouskouri has been unmistakable for decades has made.

However, contrary to the title, “Good Morning, Sunshine” is not a greeting to the rays of the sun, from whom “the night remained hidden,” but rather a hymn to the darkness in which all sorts of remarkable things have apparently happened.

This song was a hit in Germany in 1977; Rolf Zuckowski adapted the Brazilian “Canta, Canta, Minha Gente” by Martinho da Vila for it. Even today, on her 90th birthday on Sunday, Nana Mouskouri is the first thing people in Germany associate with this song.

She is so much more

But only as a first step. She is so much more: over 1,600 songs in 21 languages. After Madonna, she is said to be the second most commercially successful singer ever, with over 300 million records sold.

Nana Mouskouri was born on October 13, 1934 in Crete, trained at the Greek capital’s conservatory and performed in the jazz quartet “The Athenians”. And it was a plant from this metropolis that gave her her international breakthrough: “White Roses from Athens”, published in several languages ​​in 1961, was her first of a total of three number 1 singles in Germany, 16 years after the end of the second World War.

“The first country where I became a star was Germany. My career began in the very country that had plunged my country into misfortune and misery just a few years before,” she says today.

“But in Germany I was met with this wave of sympathy that I was almost forced to reject the opinion that I had anchored somewhere in me that the Germans were my enemies. And so Germany became a country for me that I still love to this day.”

Nana Mouskouri’s work ethic is impressive; she released albums with great consistency, sometimes every year in the 1970s. In 1980 she had her third big hit in Germany with “La Provence (You Blooming Land)”, written by Ralph Siegel.

With the same consistency, she has worn and has worn her distinctive black-rimmed glasses for decades through all the storms of fashion, even in times when glasses were bad for the image. This made her a stage icon, even in drag shows, because, like Mireille Mathieu or Zarah Leander, she was easy to parody with the least resources.

She stood up against the dictatorship of the colonels

She was also politically active, supported the opposition to the dictatorship of the colonels, and appeared in Greece for the first time in 1984 after 20 years of exile at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens. An interesting parallel to the other great Greek singer who made a career in Germany, Vicky Leandros, who also comes from an island (Corfu, the home island of Nana Mouskouri’s parents) and who was also politically active, although more in the social democratic spectrum.

In the 1990s, Nana Mouskouri’s fame received a late boost with the reissue of the jazz album “Nana Mouskouri in New York”, which was published in 1962. Now, for her birthday, her record company Electrola has once again released her 20 most popular hits in Germany on the album “Happy Birthday, Nana”, including “I look after the clouds” and “Once the south wind blows again”.

Three songs has the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra put into a new, symphonic sound, with Mouskouri’s original voice from the 60s on top. In the case of “Guten Morgen, Sonnenschein”, however, one has to say that with the loss of the simple guitar, some of the magic of the song is also lost. There is even a new recording, “Pios échi Dakria,” sung in Greek, written 30 years ago but not sung at the time.

“We all know that life follows its own laws,” says Nana Mouskouri on the occasion of the album’s release. “My source of happiness throughout my life has been singing. I have always sung tirelessly throughout the decades. That was my work, my calling, but also my passion. Working also means learning.” What a woman.