Greek singer-songwriter Dionysis Savvopoulos buried in a state funeral

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Popular Greek singer-songwriter Dionysis Savvopoulos was buried Saturday at Athens’ First Cemetery in a state-sponsored funeral, four days after his death at age 80.

Savvopoulos had died of a heart attack after battling cancer since 2020.

Thousands came to pay their respects to a well-beloved, if sometimes controversial, artist as he lay in state at a chapel of the Athens Metropolitan Cathedral Saturday morning. Hundreds made the nearly 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) walk behind the hearse to the cemetery.

The presence of a Greek navy band playing mournful music was indicative of the change in Savvopoulos’s status, from someone lionized by anarchist-leaning leftists in the 1960s and 1970s and dismissed by the establishment as a long-haired freak, to a figure embraced by th