Gidiki, at the front of the Greek folk revival, bring gaida, lute and clarinet to Brixton Jamm for the only London date of their British tour.
The folk revival now running through Greek music reaches south London on Friday 6 November, when Gidiki bring the gaida, the lute and the clarinet to Brixton Jamm.
Gidiki, pronounced ghee-dee-key, take their name from an instrument rather than a place, and they draw on the repertoire of the whole country rather than one island tradition. Three albums in, they play songs from Crete and the Aegean and from the villages of Epirus and Macedonia on lute, violin, clarinet, percussion and the Greek bagpipes. Their singles Αφούσης and Το Γλέντι, named for the village feast, became viral hits in Greece across 2024 and 2025, carrying a village instrument to a streaming audience.
What sets the revival apart is arrangement. Tradition supplies the tunes and the instruments, and the shaping is progressive folk. The band’s own nearest English comparison is Dead Can Dance, had Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry come from the Greek islands. That balance of keeping a tradition alive while reshaping it has drawn a young audience in Athens.
London is the second night of a six-city British tour played over seven nights, and the band’s only London date. They play the venue’s Back Room. Brixton Jamm has been on the Brixton Road for twenty years, in a building standing since 1750, and it is the room where Adele played her first gig.