Stelios Foustalieris

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Born on a Sunday evenfall at about three o’clock– as he liked to point out - June 19, 1911. Stelios Foustalierakis was born and raised in Rethimnon; his father was Stilianos Foustalierakis and his mother Kiriakoula. He went to night school till the third grade and at the age of 11 he started learning the craft of making watches. The latter was to become his second greatest passion after the bulgur.

Two years later, on New Year’s Eve, he received his first paycheck that was no more than 100 drachmas (approx. a third of a Euro). He already knew where he was going to spend his money. With the help of his father and 75 drachmas, he bought a small bulgur that had been left to a tavern by one of the clients.

“Those days, there were a lot of bulgurs in Rethimnon. Each tavern had one. It was there that I first listened to music. I used to watch the others play and – honest to God- I used to cry!...” Those days playing the bulgur with Antonis Kareklas, a known lyrist, was Giorgis Agioutis or Vladimiros. Later on Foustalieris, still a beginner, started playing with them.

Soon after Foustalieris started playing a little bit of everything: ‘sirtos’, ‘pentozalia’, ‘pidihta kastrina’, ‘taxsimia kathistika’ even ‘rempetika’. So he started creating his own “school of characteristic playing” thus allowing the bulgur to surface as an instrument of pure melody and at the same time being regularly used when recording 78 albums. Among numerous works and collaborations with many artists, the one that proved to be the most fruitful was with Giannis Bernidakis - known as Baxsevanis - from Rethimnon (1910-1972). From 1937 to 1992 that Stelios Foustalierakis died, he lived in Rethimnon and devoted his time to his two great passions, watches and the bulgur. “Because these two crafts share a common characteristic, they both require delicate work…..”.