Yiannis Dragatsis, known as Ogdontakis, was a violinist. Yiannis was born in Smyrna in 1886 into a musical family who were well known in Smyrna as “The Ogdontakides” (hence his nickname). The group consisted of many relatives including Yiannis’s father George, uncles, cousins and his two brothers. Little is known of Yiannis’s early life but he became involved seriously in music in the early part of the century and became well known in Smyrna as a virtuoso violinist. It is believed that he wrote many of the first tranche of Smyrnaic songs that were sung and recorded in Smyrna in the early part of the 20th century. Yiannis was captured during the catastrophe in Asia Minor in 1922. The Turkish soldiers admiration for his playing saved his life, and he was released in 1923 and went to Greece. Yiannis started work in tavernas along with his compatriots Spiros Peristeris, Antonis Dalgas, Kostas Karipis and others. He swiftly became in demand both as a composer and a violinist (indeed, Semsis and Dragatsis were the greatest Greek violinists of the day and have retained that status to date). Due to his musical expertise, Yiannis became a recording director at Columbia, a position he kept throughout the 1930s. He worked with the greatest musicians and singers of the era. He made hundreds of recordings, including many in which he played violin that are now classics - particularly in the Smyrnaic repertoire (e.g. “Manolis Hasiklis”, “Mera Nihta Methismenos” and “Elenitsa”). Yiannis was a member of the Musicians Guild “Alilovoithia” and took an active part in the struggle for artist’s rights. He was elected as president of the Athens-Pireaus branch several times. Yiannis stopped performing and recording during the war, as did many of the musicians from Asia Minor (in part due to the blanket banning of Amanedhes and other eastern influences in music in 1937 which many artists found intolerable). After the war Yiannis did not return to recording or composing, but played violin at weddings and other social gatherings, and taught violin to students. He lived with his wife Athena until his death in 1958.