Confidential - Mykonos Confidential Luxury Magazine - Summer 2023
Law & Chanter: Maria Daktylidi
George Papaioannou 2023-07-20 04:58:28
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LAW & CHANTER
Maria Daktylidi
After graduating from law school, Maria worked in the family businesses on the island, but if you ask her what she finds really fascinating, she will tell you that it is the Psaltic Art.
—How long have you been chanting "professionally" and where?
I started becoming involved in the Psaltic Art – empirically, so to speak – in 2016, but soon felt the need to take this interest a step further by studying Byzantine music under the guidance of the internationally acclaimed singer of religious and traditional music, Nektaria Karantzi. Since 2019, I have been singing as a chanter at the church of Agia Kyriaki on busy Matoyianni street, in the centre of Mykonos town.
—What emotions does this experience evoke?
Psalm singing is a lived experience, an expression and elevation of the human soul from the earthly to the heavenly. Byzantine music becomes a path of purification for the psychosomatic totality of human existence. In the human mind, which suffers from the constant interference of modern-day sensual secular music, along with the pressures of aggression, anxiety, sadness, competition, dominance, and the inevitable impasses, Byzantine music is the most suitable medicine for restoring internal balance and harmonising the higher spiritual centres.
In place of inner clutter, Byzantine music is able to introduce the unique values of repentance, humility, thanksgiving and gratitude, thereby instilling the precious state of inner harmony.
—Do you believe that if you were in a place with completely different attitudes, you would be accepted in the way you have been as a female chanter?
Nowadays yes, particularly after the initiative of my teacher, Nektaria Karantzi, to establish the Byzantine Female Chanters Association in 2013. Thanks to Nektaria and the association, the value of the female voice in the Psaltic Art has been greatly highlighted.
In recent decades, the growing number of women wishing to learn the Psaltic Art and the emergence of quite a number of female holders of degrees and diplomas in Byzantine music who now offer their services and knowledge not only in a teaching capacity but also by singing in churches, increasingly in the provinces, have significantly raised the status of female chanters.
—What is your favourite piece of ecclesiastical music?
That’s a difficult question to answer, because Byzantine music is an array of sounds, melodies and colours which create numerous and different emotions in each particular period of the Church calendar. I must say, though, that my strong desire to learn the Psaltic Art, in 2016, began in the period around the feast of the Dormition on 15 August with supplications to the Mother of God. The fact is that as one delves deeper into the world of Byzantine music, the more one discovers all the manifestations and beauty of this liturgical art form.
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