Idra Kayne

Putting Soul into the Greek Music Scene

December 7, 2020

Ms. Kayne, known throughout Greece as a soul-funk-jazz-popp singer-performer, talks about her sources of inspiration, career, relationship with audiences, Black Lives Matter, Greek identity, and what it was like growing up African-Greek.

Idra Kayne has filled the Greek nightscape with her rich voice and inspiring stage presence for nearly 20 years. The daughter of a Ugandan father and Greek mother, she discovered her passion for the performing arts at a young age. Since 2000, her performances at popular venues, music awards ceremonies, and music festivals such as the Meet the Streets Festival in Rotterdam (2007) have been extending her style repertoire and expanding the sound of the Greek music scene. Her first album, Don’t Walk Away (EMI Records, 2011) produced the title hit single, “Don’t Walk Away.” Her second album was Mic Drop (Universal Music, 2017). She has performed in the Greek operetta “The Daughter of the Storm”(2011) and musicals Rent (2012), Fame (2012), Annie (2013), Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (2014), Sweet Charity (2016), Paw Patrol Live (2018) and Βουτιά στη Βυθούπολη (2019). She has collaborated with many artists, including Giorgos Dalaras, Yannis Kotsiras, Lavrentis Maheritsas, Helena Paparizou, Panos Mouzourakis, Zak Stefanou, Hannah Williams & the Tastemakersm and the British jazz-funk-soul band Incognito. She is preparing a new album of songs in Greek.

Giota Tachtara has been writing for women’s magazines, newspapers and websites since 2002. She was trained in Greece and in the US and has a MA in Print and Broadcast Journalism from UCLA. Fluent in Greek and English she has also studied Turkish and lived for a year in Istanbul. Her monthly column in VOGUE Greece explores feminism, style, inspiration and women’s everyday lives through her generation's nostalgic optimism for the future that is still yet to come.

Margarita Pipinos is a LSA student (Class of 2022, BS expected in Neuroscience, Modern Greek minor) who has published translations of articles from Greek to English in The Press Project and won a Contexts for Classics 2020 Translation Prize.

Subtitling by Giota Tachtara, Margarita Pipinos, and Artemis Leontis.

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