Evangelismos, Tempi Valley, Larissa, Greece, 11:18 p.m., February 28th, 2023.
Α tragic train collision lead 57 people (passengers and staff) to death.
What can unite us in such a big national mourning? What can soothe our collective drama regarding the violent and unfair loss of 57 people? How can we express our unspeakable pain for the relatives and friends we lost? How can our voice be heard, asking for justice for the unfair loss of 57 of our fellow citizens and citizens of a European country in the 21st century?
Our story began with the tragic incident at Tempi, which killed numerous people.
- Who are we? We are simple people, citizens with empathy who share the unspeakable mourning of the families who lost children, siblings, parents, friends, and colleagues.
- What unites us? Our love for singing and the various ways of its cultural expression.
- How do we participate in the Tempi Tragedy? With our wailing song. With the communal singing expression of our pain, sympathizing with our fellow human beings.
- What do we express? Our solidarity in the pain of those left behind and fighting for the causes of the destruction to be found. Our agony that state negligence and omissions of such a high degree never happen again.
- What do we hope for? For the grieving families to feel that we are standing by them. To convey the message that our wailing is a voice of remembrance for our unfairly lost fellow citizens.
- What do we envision? To learn to express our pain again by singing with extroversion. Not to hesitate to articulate the injustice against us in singing, claiming our rights as European citizens.
We are a small urban singing community. We have taken tunes and melodies from our places of origin, as well as from every cultural corner of our country, which inspire us and touch us emotionally. On these tunes and melodies we expressed in verse our pain, our grief, our agony, and, sometimes, our frustration. Always politely, and always with an afterword that only hopes for good. Moreover, this is customary in the anonymous Greek folk poetry of our folk songs. The result? Sixteen (16) wailing songs in the Greek language.
Our story aims to highlight at a European level the benefit of Communal Wailing. Combined with other collective practices, the wailing expression empowers us and gives us the ability to express our pain based on our cultural identity. And, finally, through our different wailing expressions in Europe, we ascertain how similar our values are for man and his communities.
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