Nana Mouskouri

About Nana Mouskouri

Early Life

Nana Mouskouri, born Ioanna Mouskouri on October 13, 1934, in Chania, Crete, was raised by parents who both worked at a local cinema; her family lived behind the outdoor screen of their open-air theater, and she has said she first fell in love with music listening to film scores from the age of three or four. The family relocated to Athens when she was three. She began singing lessons at twelve and enrolled at the Athens Conservatory around 1950, spending nine years studying classical singing while also performing jazz, pop, and folk in Athenian nightclubs, a divide that put her at odds with her professors. When forced to choose between classical and popular music, she chose pop, and her passion for jazz eventually led to her expulsion from the conservatory.

Musical Style & Sound

Mouskouri built a career spanning jazz, pop, folk, and world music, known for a distinctive, angelic soprano voice made possible in part by asymmetrical vocal chords that allow her to reach high notes with unusual clarity. She became known for recording in more than fifteen languages, having learned several of them specifically so she could speak directly to audiences on tour.

Career Rise

Mouskouri won the first Greek Song Festival in 1959 and released her first record that same year. She recorded her first song, "Fascination," in both Greek and English in 1957, and met composer Manos Hadjidakis in 1958, a partnership that quickly made her a national hit. Hadjidakis wrote songs including "White Rose of Athens" (1961), her first release to sell over a million copies. She signed with Philips-Fontana France in the early 1960s and moved to Paris, where her international career accelerated; in 1962 she released a jazz album produced by Quincy Jones. In 1965, Harry Belafonte invited her on tour, a partnership that also became a notable early moment in her international profile. Over her career, she has sold between 250 and 300 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling artists in history. From 1994 to 1999, she served as a member of the European Parliament representing Greece's conservative party.

Diaspora Impact

Mouskouri became a quasi-official ambassador for Greece internationally, performing at official state visits for figures including Robert Kennedy, the future King Juan Carlos of Spain, and Aristotle Onassis, with the backing of Greek prime minister Constantine Karamanlis. Her decades of international touring and record sales across Europe, the Americas, and Asia have made her one of the most globally recognized Greek artists ever, giving diaspora communities worldwide direct access to her multilingual catalog.