Demetrio Stratos

The early years, 1945–1971 Demetrio Stratos was born as Efstratios Demetriou in Alexandria, Egypt, on 22 April 1945 to Greek parents Janis Demetriou and Athanassia Archondoyorghi. He spent his first 13 years in Alexandria where he studied piano and accordion at the prestigious ''Conservatoire National d'Athènes'' ("National Conservatoire of Athens"), In 1962, he and his family moved to Milan, Italy where he attended the Politecnico di Milano University at the Architecture Faculty. In 1963 he formed his first musical group and performed live at the "Casa dello studente" ("Student's House") Festival in Milan, then in some of the local pubs such as the Santa Tecla and the Intra's al Corso. Fortuitously, the original singer of the group was unable to sing one night due to a minor car accident, so Stratos stepped in to replace him, which began his venture into singing. In 1969, the band released their self-titled studio album, I Ribelli. His interest in this research started when he observed his daughter, Anastassia (who was born in 1970), during her "babbling" phase, when a child is not yet able to speak correctly. Stratos noticed by watching his daughter that a child initially "plays" and "experiments" with her or his own voice, but then the richness of the vocal sound gets lost in the acquisition of verbal language. "The child loses the sound in order to organize the words". This observation by Stratos was fundamental for his poetry. This language-voice connection and his experimentation with it was the hallmark of his entire artistic career. Area, 1972–1978 In 1972, Demetrio Stratos and drummer Giulio Capiozzo founded Area, an Italian progressive rock, jazz fusion band. The original line-up included Eddie Busnello (saxophone), Patrick Djivas (bass), Leandro Gaetano (piano) and Johnny Lambizzi (lead guitar). Soon after, Busnello and Djivas left the group, and Patrizio Fariselli and Paolo Tofani joined the group. Djivas joined Premiata Forneria Marconi (PFM), and he was replaced by Ares Tavolazzi. Stratos recorded many records with Area, as well as in collaboration with Gianni Sassi, the owner of Cramps Records, on solo artist albums. In 1973, Stratos took part in the eighth Biennale de Paris, and Area released their first studio album, Arbeit macht frei ("Work Brings Freedom"), taken from the inscription that was on the gate at the entrance of Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp. founders of the group Zaj (an experimental music and performance art group formed in 1959), in the context of the Fluxus experience (an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines), and he then became involved with John Cage's music when he recorded Cage's "Sixty-Two Mesostics Re Merce Cunningham" in a version for a solo voice and microphone, In 1976, Stratos released his first studio album as a solo artist, Metrodora, which was the result of his vocal studies and research. Its title and the single lyric that was included were inspired by Metrodora, a Byzantine woman physician of the 6th century. ("Institute of Glottology and Phonetics") at the University of Padua, in Italy, formulating his own and true "pedagogy of the voice". In Padua, he worked together with Ferrero and Lucio Croatto from the Centro Medico di Foniatria ("Medical Centre of Phoniatrics"), on research related to language and vocal techniques. Stratos underlined the link between language and the psyche, and he highlighted the connection between them with the sounds made by his own vocal cords, which he considered to be a musical instrument. a study that produced two scientific publications. He also found the time to do some live performances at the "Arsenale" Theater and at the Marconi's Gallery in Milan. Albert Hera asked Tran Quang Hai in an interview, "What do you think about Demetrio Stratos?" Tran Quang Hai answered: }} live in Castelmassa (Rovigo), Italy, August 1978 In 1978, Area left Cramps Records and moved to Ascolto, a record label owned by CGD. For Ascolto, they released their sixth studio album, 1978 Gli dei se ne vanno, gli arrabbiati restano!, the last one that included Demetrio Stratos. In the meantime, Stratos continued with Cramps and Gianni Sassi as a solo artist, releasing Cantare la Voce. On 2 June, Stratos was in Bologna for the second International Week of the Performance. On 4 July, he was on stage with Grete Sultan and Paul Zukofsky for a John Cage concert at the Margherita theatre in Genoa. In February, he was in Paris to perform the Antonin Artaud character in a theatrical review organized by France Culture. is at the Cemetery of Scipione Castello (), a little village that is a fraction of Salsomaggiore Terme, a town in northern Italy, which is located in the province of Parma, in the Emilia-Romagna region. Every year since 2000, Scipione Castello organizes a musical festival in memory of Demetrio Stratos. == Legacy ==

to have haD the idEa his Music would nEver sTop the Range of hIs vOice would have no limitS nexT foR him to leArn was in Tibet after that Out into vocal Space— John Cage, Mesostic for Demetrio Stratos (1991) Area, Demetrio Stratos, Patrizio Fariselli, and Paolo Tofani were included in the Nurse with Wound list, a list of musicians and bands that accompanied the first album by Nurse with Wound, entitled Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella and released in 1979. Shortly after his death Italian progressive rock band Premiata Forneria Marconi dedicated to Demetrio Stratos "Maestro della voce" ("Master of the Voice"), a song that is featured on their 1980 album Suonare suonare. The auditorium of Radio Popolare, a Milan-based radio network, was entitled to Demetrio Stratos. In 2002, the Italian progressive rock band Picchio dal Pozzo discovered the tape recordings made in 1979 by the band with Stratos performing at the IPPAI Theatre (Institute for Youth's Protection and Assistance) in Genoa, Italy. Stratos' performances were featured on Picchio dal Pozzo's 2004 album, Pic_nic @ Valdapozzo, whose songs are built around Stratos' voice. The effect is particularly striking on the song "Epitaffio", in which Stratos creates a sweet melody with his "Flautofonie" technique, while a subtle beat, harmony and night sounds are provided very gently as not to shadow the voice. The "Demetrio Stratos" International Prize for experimental music, established in 2005 and promoted by his wife Daniela Ronconi Demetriou, Area's member Patrizio Fariselli, Claudio Chianura, Walter Prati and Gerd Rische, awards emerging musicians and new projects for music experimentation, and career achievements in experimental music. The award for the emerging artist best project has been assigned to Romina Daniele in 2005. The Career Awards have been received by Diamanda Galás in 2005, Meredith Monk in 2007, Fred Frith in 2008, Fátima Miranda in 2009, and Joan La Barbara in 2011. La voce Stratos ("The Voice Stratos") is a book and a documentary on the life and career of Demetrio Stratos released in 2009 and directed by Luciano D'Onofrio and Monica Affatato, and with the collaboration of Stratos' wife Daniela Ronconi Demetriou. It includes over thirty interviews with Stratos' collaborators, musicians, artists and phonetics researchers, as well as photos, videos, and previously unseen footage. The second edition of Suonare la voce: tributo a Demetrio Stratos ("Playing the Voice: Tribute to Demetrio Stratos") was held in Genoa in the same year. The two days of seminars and concerts culminated with a performance by Spanish artist Fátima Miranda. On 25 August 2009 in Siena, the remaining Area members, Patrizio Fariselli, Ares Tavolazzi, and Paolo Tofani together with Capiozzo's son, Christian on drums, and Mauro Pagani on vocals and violin reunited for the first time in over a decade during the ninth edition of the festival La Città Aromatica ("The Aromaric City"), dedicated to Demetrio Stratos thirty years after his death. On 29 and 30 January 2010, there was another tribute to Stratos and another reunion of Area with UT Gandhi (Umberto Trombetta) on drums. They played at the San Lazzaro di Savena (Bologna) theatre as part of StratosFerico: Omaggio a Demetrio Stratos ("StratosPheric: Tribute to Demetrio Stratos"). Demetrio Stratos' life perfectly incarnates the spirit of the '70s. Recently, the Italian director Gabriele Salvatores announced his intention to produce a movie exploring music and politics in Italy during those years through the life of the charismatic singer. == Phonetics research studies ==

Vocal gimmicks aside, Stratos' mission was to free vocal expression from the slavery of language and pretty melodies. From the observation of his daughter Anastassia, he concluded that humans have enormous expressive potential that is progressively reduced to just a few socially appropriate functions during verbal development, such as language and harmonic singing. He considered the exploration of vocal potential as a tool of psychological and political liberation. He, literally, wanted individuals and social groups to find their own voice. }} Besides the official Area discography, for which Stratos is remembered, it is important to remember his solo works, a massive set of productions full of experimentation and vocal research. His study of the voice used as a musical instrument carried him to reach for the limits of human capabilities. Stratos was able to reach 7,000 Hz, when a tenor normally reaches 523 Hz and a woman soprano 1,046 Hz (C6). He would hold notes for long periods of time, modulate them vibrato-like, and leap and dive from low to high and back again, with pinpoint accuracy. Using various overtone singing and other extended techniques, he was able to perform diplophony, triplophony, and also quadrophony, the ability to produce two, three, and even four sounds simultaneously (multiphonic) using only the human voice as the musical instrument. In collaboration with the CNR of Padua, he has released many studies in ethnomusicology, vocal extensions and Asian music chant. the voice tends to be declined plurally, it whispers, it moans, it imitates, it becomes diplophonia and triplophonia. It is a polyphonic vocalism without a subject, androgynous, where both genders, masculine and feminine, coexist. Stratos sings the voice, mere appearance, pharmakon, poisonous, and curative, without anything else except the voice, a pure ludic act, only voice as voice itself. "By this way the subversive sovereignty of the voice as an event, pharmakon communication challenge leaves the subject somewhere between unconditioned enjoyment and consumption." The praise of the voice signifier supports an epistemology of the perception, it states "the error of Descartes" who reduced reason to conceptual word. It's in line with the "Praktognosia" (practical knowledge) of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which sets the starting pointing the sensible perceptions of our bodies. there are two not harmonic voices that cause to the listener a state of trance, similar to the trance during the religious rites, and a sense of estrange. So, the Stratos' voice-music is a sort of lay rite that produces to the listeners the ability to reach their primordial origin. "The Stratos' flute-voice plays a circular theme, a modal inspiration that brings us filler to an experience of communion, ritual interaction and sacrifices. That repetition suggests something of hypnotic that should be propitious to the trance state. Stratos seems to wish a participated, spontaneous and also generous listening. Through these, always different, repetitions, he aimed to abolish, to dissolute, to dissolve the "ego", as the basic element for the sacrifice. In this dissolution of the identity we (the group of listeners) are in communion with gods (divinities), Earth and life." — Janete El Haouli (translated from Spanish to Italian to English) In the years of the desecration and secularization of the Christianity, Stratos proposed a new lay sacredness, in the name of the ancient Greeks, a return to the true rituality. The binomial voice-music had forgotten that rituality because in today's world it is only used to propose human's thoughts, ideas, and ideologies rather than the sacred experiences of the intimate communion between humans and the nature that surrounds us. The search of the triplophonies and quadriphonies is used by Tibetan's monks and some knights of Mongolia. "It is a ritual use of the voice", wrote Stratos, and this purpose is maintained in his works. There are four ritual elements: the repetition, the escape from the ordinary, the loss of the ego, and the communitarian dimension. Perhaps, reading Gilles Deleuze, Stratos had been convinced that the repetition was not the ill-famed co-action to repeat the obsessive neurosis, but it should become a technique to escape from the ordinary, from the temporary flux, to access to another order of truth. Therefore, the trance with the abolition of the ego and the known world increased the horizon on other worlds. The result was a collective scene, an estranging and mystic performance at the same time. In Stratos' works, we can find the standard-bearer of the lay rituals in the rock mega-concerts, where the audience is not exhausted by the spectacular of the mimetic model of the super star, but in the nearly to religious fruition of the voice-music that allows to feel us in the scene the ice cold shiver chilling of our belongings to life. Because of his great ability, his acquired techniques and his studies with the CNR, he was able to produce results that are still unattainable by others. Daniel Charles has described him as the person who decimated monody by the demultiplication of the acoustic spectrum. He achieved a diplophony which is triplophonic, even quadraphonic. His vocalization became micro orchestrations (voice instrument) without any technological amplification or manipulation. He elevated rock singing to new heights with his vocal gymnastics. == Discography ==

Demetrio Stratos has released several studio albums and singles as a solo artist, and is featured on several albums recorded by other artists. Albums Compilations and lives Singles Videos == See also ==