This book discusses the relationship between Greek Orthodox ecclesiastical music and laiko (popular) song in Greece. Laiko music was long considered a lesser form of music in Greece, with rural folk music considered serious enough to carry the weight of the ideologies founded within the establishment of the contemporary Greek state. During the 1940s and 1950s, a selective exoneration of urban popular music took place, one of its most popular cases being the originating relationships between two extremely popular musical pieces: Vasilis Tsitsanis's "Synnefiasmeni Kyriaki" (Cloudy Sunday) and its descent from the hymn "Ti Ypermacho" (The Akathist Hymn). During this period the connection of these two pieces was forged in the Modern Greek conscience, led by certain key figures in the authority system of the scholarly world. Through analysis of these pieces and the surrounding contexts, Ordoulidis explores the changing role and perception of popular music in Greece.

Nikos Ordoulidis is an Academic Scholar and Lecturer in music at the University of Ioannina, Department of Music Studies, Greece. His research interests revolve around the condition of musical syncretism in popular music, in the networks of Eastern Europe, Balkans, Mediterranean and Middle East. Since January 2020, he has been undertaking postdoctoral research, titled 'the eastwards heterotopias of the piano', funded by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation. He is an active composer with six discographical works. He is a member of the Modern Greek Studies Association, the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, and the Hellenic Musicological Society.