Music: Maria Farantouri sings ’To Yelasto Pedi’ (The laughing boy) at the 1974 concert by Mikis Theodorakis after the fall of the military junta in Greece

"On 21 April 1967 a right-wing junta, the Regime of the Colonels, took power in a putsch in Greece. The celebrated music composer Mikis Theodorakis went underground and founded the Patriotic Front (PAM).

On 1 June, the Colonels published Army decree No 13, which banned playing, and even listening to his music.

Theodorakis himself was arrested on 21 August, and jailed for five months. Following his release end of January 1968, he was banished in August to Zatouna with his wife Myrto and their two children, Margarita and Yorgos. Later he was interned in the concentration camp of Oropos.

An international solidarity movement, headed by such personalities as Dmitri Shostakovich, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller, and Harry Belafonte demanded to get Theodorakis freed. On request of the French politician Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, Theodorakis was allowed to go into exile to Paris on 13 April 1970." For more information see