Antonis Diamantidis (Greek: Αντώνης Διαμαντίδης)(1892, Istanbul-1945, Athens) was born in 1892 in the Arnavutköy suburb of Istanbul. He took up music from an early age, learning to play both the guitar and the oud, and by 1910 he began to work professionally as a singer. Because of the unusual and stirring "waves" in his voice, he was given the nickname Dalgas ("Νταλγκάς" which means "passion" in Greek, and "ripple" in Turkish), by which he would be known for the rest of his professional career. In 1919, he married Argyro Nikolaou in Istanbul, with whom he had one daughter, Anna. From 1920 to 1922, he and his band entertained Greek immigrants to America on the ocean liner "King Alexandros." It was during one of these voyages that he learned of the Catastrophe in Asia Minor, and he afterwar