"Patrida Xeni" is an elegy for Greece, a land of both longing and exile.

It speaks of the relationship with the homeland for those who were born there or immigrated, who lived and loved it but eventually left, perhaps with the hope of one day returning.

It is an ode to the ambivalent worship and frustration towards the homeland, and to the idealization and nostalgia felt by those who, enchanted and disenchanted, live far away.

The song was written through the personal and collective experience of migration to and from Greece, a country that has left its mark on all who made it the center of their lives.

From Greek migrants of the 21st and 20th centuries to foreign migrants who once lived there and have since left for other countries to escape stagnation, corruption, lack of meritocracy, suicides, and its dead-ends.

Miltos Pavlou:
“The lyrics say, ‘As long as I am elsewhere, I might meet you,’ which was probably the first line I jotted down while waiting at an airport.
I often meet people in Europe who have lived and loved Greece. Young Greek migrants, but also earlier generations of Gastarbeiter, Albanians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, double and triple migrants, and others...

I recognize a shared linguistic and, to some extent, social experience and see in their eyes a dormant, yet ever-present, subtle love for a world, sometimes idealized, sometimes sadly abandoned...
a never-ending arc of return that they keep planning but never quite achieve...

Around 2010, I was working, writing, and speaking in Greece as a social scientist, imagining a new, dynamic Greek society, built on a broader concept of citizenship through the identification with values of equal participation, creating a shared social and political-cultural belonging.

Today, after 14 years of intense and, at times, devastating socio-economic and political crises, some of the children of Greece I once envisioned, I have met elsewhere.
In my own journey back and forth, constantly leaving and constantly returning, we cross paths. In our intersecting journeys, let us share a few words about a homeland that, to some emigrants and foreigners, seems foreign and a relic of another time.”

Credits:
Music & Vocals: Miltos Pavlou
Production: Miltos Pavlou - Sergios Voudris
Arrangement & Performance: Sergios Voudris

Mix & Mastering: Stavros Georgiopoulos @ Diskex Studio
Instrument Recordings: Diskex – Sergios Voudris
Vocal Recordings: Miltos Pavlou's Altāria Studio @Bruckhaufen, Vienna

Cover Art: by Miltos Pavlou

Miltos Pavlou's Social Media:
Website: www.miltospavlou.art (for CD orders)

https://www.facebook.com/MiltosPavlouMusic/

https://www.youtube.com/@miltospavlou

https://instagram.com/miltos_pavlou

Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/MiltosPavlou

Digital Release by Protasis Music on all streaming platforms:

Spotify: https://bit.ly/4eJXSWN

Apple/ itunes: https://bit.ly/3Bq62W5

Deezer: https://bit.ly/3N5nkdM

YouTube: https://youtu.be/to6DBCd93Bs