Kostas Hatzis


Kostas Hatzis is a Greek singer-songwriter and musician of Gypsy origin.
Kostas Hatzis was born in Livadeia, a city in central Greece to a Hellenized-Gypsy family. He is considered one of the most significant composers and a pioneer in the Greek social song, popularising the "voice-guitar" style, making ballads with social messages heard.
His grandfather was a great popular clarinetist and dulcimer player. It didn't take Kostas Hatzis long to follow in his grandfather's footsteps. When he was sixteen years old, his father took Ko weddings and christenings and in any other event, in which demotic, mainly, music was necessary. After a five-year itinerancy in the country, he moved to Athens in 1957, and started recording in 1961, while he became popular until the mid-1960s with the Greek New Wave movement in Greek music.
His talent was quickly discovered by the great composers of that time, with whom he has collaborated, performing their songs, adding to them his personal style and particular sensibility.
At the end of that decade, Kostas Hatzis, in one of his tours, visited United States for concerts to the expatriate Greeks. It is worth noting that his fame as a singer for peace had reached the White House when the then US President, Jimmy Carter invited him to meet him and congratulate him. He is one of the only Greek artists who has been invited and congratulated for their morality and their work by a U.S. President.
Kostas Hatzis has sung about love as well as social issues in duets with well-known singers, such as Marinella. Kostas Hatzis married a German woman and together they have a son, Alexandros Hatzis, who is also a singer.

Discography