He was born in the city of Xanthi (a town in northern Greece) on October 23rd, 1925. His father was a lawyer from Crete, while his mother came from Andrianoupolis, which is now modern Edirnes in Turkey. The boy was playing the piano and composing music since the age of four. His family was well to do and moved to Athens in February 1932. In 1938, he lost his father in an airplane accident. Growing up during the harsh years of Italian and German Occupation was difficult and resulted in irregular studies at the University, and the same was for music. Nevertheless, these difficulties did not prevent him from developing a very distinctive and personal musical technique and style.

In 1942, Manos Hadjidakis met the poet Nikos Gatsos, as well as a group of highly-esteemed intellectuals and artists, who endowed him with the insight and understanding of the mysteries of the times: Tsarouchis, Elytis, Seferis, and other intellectuals of the famous mid-war generation. At that time, Hadjidakis was also hailed by three great personalities of the period: the music critic Sophia Spanoudi, the actress Marika Kotopouli, and the poet Angelos Sikelianos. Before the end of 1943, when he was still only eighteen years old, Manos composed the music for a play by Solomos entitled The Last White Crow, as well as for three other theatrical productions. In 1946, he composed his first score for the cinema and in 1947 he produced his first piano collection, For a Little White Seashell. In the spring of 1948, he caused uproar when he gave his lecture on "rebetico", the contemporary urban popular song, as part of the series "Talks at the Art Theatre". Two months later, he boldly introduced these same popular elements in his music for Lorca΄s Blood Wedding (produced at the Art Theatre, under the direction of Karolos Koun and translated by N. Gatsos), in the midst of tremendous controversy, as well. In 1949, Hadjidakis, together with Rallou Manou, founded the Greek Dance Theatre (Elliniko Chorodrama) for which he produced four works: Marsyas (1949), Six Popular Paintings and The Accursed Serpent (1950), Desolation (1957).

Manos remained a close associate of Karolos Koun and his Art Theatre (where he had taken drama lessons during his adolescence), writing music for many of the productions - including works by Lorca, Tennessee Williams, Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw, as well as ancient greek dramas. This professional association lasted for 15 years and many of the songs he wrote for those plays, such as "Paper Moon" for the play A Streetcar Named Desire, became popular throughout Greece. Hadjidakis composed also music for six comedies by Aristophanes, among which the famous Ornithes (Birds). The first performance of that work at the Theatre of Herod the Attic under the Acropolis, in the summer of 1959, was a terrible flop, but the following summer, Karolos Koun staged The Birds with great success, and in 1962, the audience at the Theatre of the Nations in Brussels received it with an even greater enthusiasm. The same happened, later, in London, at the International Theatre Festival, where critics and public praised it again. Although Hadjidakis had initially made a recording of this music the way it was written for the play in 1960, he made a new recording of the revised score in 1962. The same year, he presented live the revised version of The Birds at the debut appearance of the Experimental Orchestra of Athens, which he had just founded. Finally, in March 1965, the work was performed at the Brussels Opera House as an operatic ballet, directed and choreographed by Maurice Bejart and under the musical direction of the composer.

Earlier, in 1960, had come the awards for the movie Never on Sunday: first, the award at the Cannes Film Festival, and then, the Oscar for Best Original Musical Score at the Academy Awards Ceremonies in Hollywood. (In March 1981, Polygram Records International of Hamburg gave a glamorous gala to celebrate the ten most popular songs of the century. Among the composers honoured was Manos Hadjidakis for his song Never on Sunday, which had taken the world by storm twenty-one years earlier).

In 1961, he composed the music for Pirandello's Tonight we Improvise, for which he used a small orchestra and two actress-singers. The songs became hits, but his final triumph of the year came in the autumn, when he wrote the music for The Thief of London, a work by Georges Neveux performed at the Theatre Gymnase in France with Marie Bell. Following this success, he staged Odos Oneiron (Dream Street) in the summer of 1962, with a score that once again created tremendous controversy because the lyrics were remarkably frank for the standards of the day and were considered by many as being almost immoral.

In 1962, Manos Hadjidakis, in association with the Technological Institute of Athens, financed an international competition to promote new music. To this end, he invited the internationally renowned American composer Lukas Foss to preside over the jury. That year, the prize was awarded to composer Iannis Xenakis, who was yet unknown.

In 1964, Hadjidakis founded and subsequently directed the Athens Experimental Orchestra, as a vehicle by which he would be able to introduce to the public such great contemporary Greek composers as Nikos Skalkottas and Iannis Xenakis. The orchestra was active until 1966, when Manos Hadjidakis left Greece for the United States. In the short period of its activity, the orchestra gave 20 concerts premiering the works of no less than 15 Greek composers.

Manos Hadjidakis remained in the United States until 1972. There, he worked mainly for the theatre (Jules Dassin΄s Ilya Darling, with Melina Mercouri) and the cinema (after America-America by Elia Kazan and Jules Dassin's Top Kapi, he composed music for three Hollywood motion pictures: Blue, Fade-in, The heroes) and discovered the world of western pop music.

His absolute commitment to the world of song began with Mythology, in 1965. Since then, he wrote great songs, which retained the pure sounds of rebetico, as well as symphonic, byzantine and even ancient elements in his music. Returning from the United States in 1972, he completed his Magnus Eroticus, a work for two voices, choir and orchestra, based on classical poetry. Pantelis Voulgaris was asked to produce a film, as a commentary on Hadjidakis΄ songs and the result is probably the first attempt to make a video-clip, certainly the first such attempt in Greece.

In 1975, after the fall of the military dictatorship, Hadjidakis became involved with public affairs, in the firm belief that after all the disasters and national crises, this was the right moment for institutional revisions and new acts of legislation. Now, a mature composer with clear musical views, he started to play an active role in the formation and the development of modern Greek culture. Between 1975 and 1981, he was appointed Director General of the Athens State Orchestra and at the same time, Director of the Third Programme in Greek National Radio, aiming at a standard, equivalent to that of BBC classical Third Programme. This highly original radio station played an influential role in Greece. He was also appointed Director of the National Opera House (resigned from this position in 1976). His ideas were too revolutionary for the mass media, and he was soon to be involved in fierce disputes and arguments with the leading advocates of what was then considered to be acceptable as politically and culturally correct. In 1980, the heads of the Hellenic Radio and Television Organization decided they had enough of his provocative programmes and they, finally, replaced him.

After his departure from the Radio, Hadjidakis started publishing some of his writings. For one year, he also directed an exceptionally successful cultural magazine, To Tetarto (The Fourth). In 1978, with the help of private sponsors, Hadjidakis established a very successful Music Festival in Anogia, Crete -- his father΄s birthplace. The following year, the festival moved to Heraclion, Crete, with a variety of artistic activities, and by 1981, it already hosted a large number of foreign artists, including Astor Piazzolla and Susan Rinaldi from Argentine, Reiner Winters from Germany, the Hungarian Gyorgy Sandor, as well as others from France and Greece.

In 1985, Manos Hadjidakis founded an independent record company, Sirios, aiming at very high standard of recorded performances. In 1989 - five years before his death - Hadjidakis founded the Orchestra of Colours, with which he conducted not only works by Greek composers, but also works by many foreign composers such as Gian Carlo Menotti and Aaron Copland.

When in November 1993 - eight months before his death - his old friend and colleague Maurice Bejart presented a choreographic interpretation of The Ballads of Athina Street at the Athens Concert Hall, Manos Hadjidakis was already very ill, suffering from a serious heart problem, which had troubled him for more that ten years.

He died on June 15, 1994.