Aktounta
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aktounta (Greek: Ακτούντα) is a village in the Rethymno Prefecture in Crete, Greece. Aktounta belongs to the municipality of Lampi, and it is 35 km away (south) from Rethymno. Population: 90 (2001). Altitude: 640 meters.
 |
This Crete location article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
[edit] History
[edit] Landmarks and Churches
[edit] Notable people from Aktounta
Alekos Karavitis was born in Aktounta, Prefecture of Rethymnon in 1904. A talented child, he fell in love with Cretan music and started learning "lyra" from childhood. At the age of 24 he married "Chryssoula" from the nearby village "Yanniou" and moved to Athens. They had three children; two daughters and one son. He was already a virtuoso in lyra and his ambition was to spread the Cretan music all over the world. Although he was self-employed in various businesses, he held every year in Athens the "annual festival of lyra" with great success. However, his desire and love of the Cretan music urged him to organize and coordinate international manifestations of Greek Folk music and dances with official Hellenic institutions such as the famous schools of the time of "Koula Pratsika", "Dora Stratou" and other well known societies, together with his own Cretan group and others from all over Greece with local folk musicians and dancers. In 1936, with the school of "Koula Pratsika" they won an award performing at the Olympic games in pre-war Berlin Germany. This award included a well organized cruise in north Europe and the North Sea fiords of Norway and Sweden onboard the then famous cruise ship "Oceania". The following year, 1937, he organized another venture with his group to Cyprus and Alexandria Egypt, where they were enthusiastically welcomed by the large Greek community of Egypt at the time. Then, after the war, in the early fifties, he ventured a new crusade with the school of "Dora Stratou" to comprise folk dancers and musicians from all parts of Greece, to the United States of America where in the zenith of his musical triumph he performed at the famous Carnegie Hall of New York to fulfill his childhood and everlasting ambition to spread all Greek folk music and especially this of his own birthplace Crete, as far as he could humanly take it during these difficult pre-war and post-war times.
He died in 1975 and although technology was not yet at today's levels in producing and preserving recorded music, some of his work is still available in vinyl but also in CD format. He had many followers and talented lyra-players who learned from him and his music and some of them are well known in the Cretan communities. There is not one true Cretan over the age of forty who is not familiar with his famous music.
