Dena and her great-great grandfather's bouzouki

May 08, 2020

Dena and her great-great grandfather's bouzouki

Once upon a time !

Once upon a time there was a special, sweet, little girl, named Dena!

Dena, has always been fascinated by the bright stars shining upon the clear evening sky, and always wanted to become a fearless astronaut when she grows up. To her, this meant discovering new planets and galaxies, by skateboarding in space!

Dena with great-great grandfather's bouzouki

Dena's great great grandfather was John Peter Trohatos. He immigrated to Chicago from Arna, Greece and owned a grocery store.

John Peter Trohatos with his bouzouki

Eventually he moved to Dayton, OH where Dena's family has since lived.

Dena's mother, Anna, vividly remembers as a child an old Greek bouzouki that hung in her grandparent’s living room.

However the back part of the bouzouki bowl was smashed so no one was able to play it.

Fast forward, Anna moved to Boston in 2002 to go to the North Bennet Street School to become a violin maker.

The North Bennet Street School

At this time, she asked her grandfather if she could take the old broken bouzouki in hopes of finding someone to restore it.

That’s how Anna found in Chris’s Pantazelos workshop in 2002!

Anna ended up not becoming a luthier, but she continued to have a love for stringed instruments.

The bouzouki was fully restored back to its original condition by Chris Pantazelos and kept in the family for the next 18 years.

Dena often liked to pretend that she was playing the old Greek bouzouki of her great great grandfather and with her mother Anna, had decided that at some point they would both learn to play Greek music with it.

Labels from original maker Giorgos Grachis and Chris Pantazelos who did the restoration

Recently, during one of my long late-night conversations with Chris, I asked him if he ever had restored any Dimitrios or Giorgios Graschis bouzoukia.

Back in 2017 I did intense research regarding the Grachis family from Chicago and I wrote an informative article after coming in contact with Mary Grachis Metropulos, the family historian, and daughter of Giorgios Grahis

Accordingly to the information I had collected , Giorgos (George) Grachis considered by many musician who had immigrated to US, as the most famous luthier comparing him as the Stradivarius of the Greek lutherie in United States.

It is no accident that two of the top musicians in New York, Manolis Karapiperis and Ioannis Halkias used in their recordings, bouzoukia made by Grachis and not from the other famous Greek luthiers of NY.

George Grachis was the president of the Association of Greek Musicians of US under the name Apollo and his workshop had the name TERPANDROS.

Chris Pantazelos negatively replied to my question regarding if he ever had restored a bouzouki made by the Grachis family . . .Until a recent email by Anna reached his mailbox, thanking him for the restoration work he had done 18 years ago on the papou's old bouzouki which was closing the 100 years of existence.

That is how I met Anna, her beautiful little girl Dena, and the 1920s Model 1 bouzouki ( the smaller/narrow mold, carrying the mandolin step on sound-board, an oval sound-hole and white sea shell flower decorations on the sound-hole) made by none else than Giorgios Gretchis himself!

Cataloque of 1915. Grachis manufactures two types of bouzouki: bouzouki in mandola style with soundboard carrying Neapolitan step , entirely made by rosewood, and bouzouki in laouto style (misolaouto) with a flat soundboard, which appears in greater size of the former one.