Dirty bread runs through my veins like blood. And through my arteries as well. I was only fourteen when I first heard Savvopoulos at Kyttaro. November ’72, dictatorship. He was performing Dirty Bread live. We were witnesses to a birth. The record was released two months later.

It never crossed my mind that dirty bread symbolized death, as Savvopoulos has claimed. For me, dirty bread was a way to see the world around you differently. A code, a password. And a cry of protest.

The circumstances demanded that our terrible speech be unleashed like a black spirit. Kyttaro was a catacomb and Savvopoulos was – still – a guru. Dirty Bread was and remains a bouquet of precious oracles.

Christoforos Kasdaglis is an author and journalist. He has written nine books, lives in Athens, escapes to Trikala Korinthias, and dreams of Kythera and the Appalachian Mountains.