Anti-global monks eye global charts

Greece’s most famous boy band, the black-robed Orthodox monks of the Saint Augustine and Seraphim Sarof monastery, are aiming to break into the English-singing music world. Like Latin stars Gloria Estefan in the 1980s and Ricky Martin in the 1990s, who dropped their Spanish tunes for more mainstream English vocals, the monks of «Free» have now released their first album containing both Greek and English songs. «By Your Side,» the group’s third CD in just two years, which includes a English-language club remix of their chart-topping «I Learned to Live Free,» was unveiled at a concert in a packed trendy Athens theater late on Monday. It tops a remarkable rise to fame for a group of monks from central Greece who initially shot to Greek stardom and world attention with the anti-globalization hit «I Learned to Live Free» in 2000. «We don’t know how to sing, we don’t know how to dance… but we are free and we are by your side,» the monastery’s abbot and the group’s manager Father Nektarios Moulatsiotis said as hundreds of screaming youngsters urged the band to perform. Father Nektarios, the man who convinced his young monks to play music, said the group was using the same tools as the devil to save young people from the temptations of modern life and bring them closer to God. «We are by your side with our website, our radio shows, our music,» he quipped. The group’s first CD stormed into the charts and in just a few weeks went platinum with over 60,000 sales but also ruffled the feathers of the Greek Orthodox Church which unsuccessfully made efforts to rein them in. Father Panteleimon, a 30-year-old monk who joined the monastery four years ago, then took the stage with the new English version of their biggest hit. «I don’t want to be their fool no more, to be another living ghost, I’ll stand and fight for my soul,» he sang as more than 700 people joined in. «We want to let people outside Greece know what we are about. That’s why we translated it into English,» he said.