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Boris Voutsinos – Street Blues Along the Race Course!
Along the route of our international race, amid the pulse of the runners and the rhythm of the city, the sound of the Blues finds its rightful place.
Boris Voutsinos is an authentic street musician — an artist who carries in the strings of his guitar, his voice and his handmade percussion instruments decades of experience, travel and musical exploration.
From the early Gospel influences of his childhood in Germany to the Country Blues, Ragtime and Urban Blues of the streets of Athens, his music is born where life meets the street.
During the race, his “Portable One Seater Orchestra (POSO)” will accompany the runners, offering a live, raw and deeply human sound — a musical breath that blends seamlessly with effort, endurance and the joy of participation.
Biography
Boris Voutsinos was born in August 1961 in Vienna, to Greek parents who had emigrated there and who, as aspiring opera singers, were in many ways cultural “exiles” from the Greek musical education system, market and reality of the time.
Following the birth of his brother in 1962 and due to his father’s professional relocations, he lived in several cities across Germany. There, in 1972 (at the age of 11), he began to “learn” the guitar — largely by putting his father’s instrument through considerable strain.
In 1976, the family of “cultural migrants” returned to Greece, and the strain soon extended — this time — to several classical guitar teachers.
His early exposure to Gospel music (which he sang during music classes in German primary and secondary schools), combined with chance encounters with street musicians across various European countries during school holidays, played a decisive role in his falling in love with the Blues at around 17 years of age.
There were many reasons. He had already spent two years “back in Greece,” both literally and figuratively. From alternative, progressive, co-educational schools with workshops, exhibitions and departments devoted to skills, sciences and the arts, he found himself in a rigid, all-boys school environment, with morning and evening shifts, strict dress and grooming codes, and even monitoring of students’ behavior outside school hours.
An ideal setting for calling upon the Blues for protection and release.
He then focused on the acoustic guitar. From 1980 (at the age of 19), when he first dared to sing in front of an audience, he began expanding to other instruments, including harmonica, mandolin, banjo, kazoo, spoons, percussion, piano and accordion — a process which, as he notes, “is still ongoing.”
“From the very beginning, I felt at home — in my element — listening to, singing and playing the Blues. I tried to learn them wherever and however I could, with open ears and eyes, with the help of a few friends and a lot of luck. I think I managed something — slowly, but steadily.”
From his early performances with the Lost Wandering Blues Band — an American-British street band in Zurich during the winter of 1980/81 — he went on to participate in numerous Athens-based ensembles, including Klika 1–3, Mystery Train, Blues Trick, Blues Duo, Drunk Trunk, Rags & Old Iron and Congo Square Blues Band, collaborating with musicians such as Manolis Angelakis, Giannis Monos, Dimitris Ioannou, Christos Polydoros, Mikis Pantelous, Spilios Kastanis, Sakis Tsinoukas, among others.
Between these periods, he frequently returns to the format of a one-man band, where vocals, guitar (6- or 12-string), harmonica and kazoo are supported by a trunk-mounted DIY percussion system, constructed from household, craft and industrial objects, tools and… discarded materials.
He calls this solo project “POSO” (Portable One Seater Orchestra).
Among his large-audience appearances, beyond his many performances in public spaces throughout Athens (Ermou, Athinas, Dionysiou Areopagitou, Apostolou Pavlou, Panepistimiou, Akademias, Rizari Park, Tritsis Park, Zappeion), are a concert in Ikaria that famously left several listeners fainting from the surrounding atmosphere, the Busker Bus Festivals in Poland (2015, 2016, 2017), and his participation as a street musician in the Poseidon Half Marathons of Athens (2023 – 14th edition, 2024 – 15th, 2025 – 16th, 2026 – 17th).
His repertoire draws inspiration from Country Blues, Ragtime and Gospel, as well as their musical continuations, including Dixieland, Swing, Urban Blues and Soul.
Today, Boris Voutsinos is widely regarded as one of the most distinctive and enduring figures of the Greek street blues scene!
