World Music
V.A. : A Rough Guide to Rebétika (pub.2004)***°°
A couple of years back Buddha Music released a fantastic compilation on Rebetika / Rebets, showcasing very early recordings, and there have been other great compilations too. This one has a wider span, and even while the later Rebetika are less emotionally expressive, a bit different in style, and while Rough Guide usually goes over areas like an informed tourist, here it almost becomes like a good documentary, with many unique moments, with interesting, and even essential information. The release listens also like a good overview, with many entries for deeper perspective and experience.
First of all I need to explain what Rebétika is.
Since Greek independence in 1830, rebétika was a socially marginal music style, which was a mixture which originated from Ottoman and Greek (Slavic-influenced) folk style, with some Byzantine liturgical and a few other influences, but expressed with a more personal emotionality. What made it so unique for me, especially before the world war, is that it was originally sung somewhat like an old Greek tragedy, but mixed with or expressed from a true life energy, with some essential aspect of the inner need for freedom of expression arising from a hashish narghile pipe dream.
After some civil conflicts (combined with a struggle for independence and revolts against the Ottoman regime), this time stimulated by Ataturk, reacting to a Greek military push deep into the interior of Turkish Anatolia, the Greek and Turkish governments agreed to a "population exchange", forcing all ethnic Greeks to leave the areas of Smyrna (now Izmir) and the Black Sea (and many ethnic Turks to leave Greece). These new refugees from Asia Minor became part of an oppressed minority, barely surviving at the edge of society. These refugees brought to Greece a renewed mixture of music with Turkish and Arabic influence, called Smyrnaika. Usually were featured the violin, accordion, lauto (oud), and santouri, but not the bouzouki. From 1922 on, this Smyrnaika school enriched the original even much more outcast Rembetika style, which now became popular in the cafe-amans, and this included belly-dance like improvisations called 'tsifteteli'. The style became more mainstream from the forties until the fifties, but this resulted as well in a new change in style, making it a much more stylistically Greek, without as much singing variation, and without the original emotional transformation behind it. -Remember also that the Greek tyrannical government, that spanned many years, in its turn abandoned during these years all other influences which were not considered "typical" Greek, resulting in something in taking some repetitive patterns as styles on their own, -something which I have noticed in Irish music too-, giving ridiculous style-cuttings a superior importance which is quite poor compared to all earlier stylistic combinations and musical evolutions and inventions, that came very naturally.
Nowadays Rebétika has again become one of the so-called “purely Greek” traditions, especially after rediscovery by some popular Greek musicians, reintroducing some songs and filtering out stylistic changes. This “new rebetika” is of course very different. It is still a very logical evolution, that after years of enforced abandoning of all that what was oriental, the re-adaptation of rebetika, would occur - much more from a need to expand something of the repetitive character, of what has almost become boring within Greek music, as something to open the Greek style up a bit. And therefore the new rebétika sounds likewise “uplifting”. (Never the less the readaptation of it was widely accepted and became an inevitable part of Greek music). Examples for this approach are Manolis Dimitrianakis (track 2), Mario (track 3), Glikeria (track 5), and Theodosia Stinga, whose performance sounds already much more like evening club background music (track 20). Nena Venetsanou (track 20) I consider to be a different character in Greek Music, because she reinterpreted as a composer, and as a singer with great voice, a lot from her Greek heritage. With her contribution as the last track in this compilation, it gives the impression of some kind of sad good bye. Because who remembers all that happened, and who reinterprets it ? I personally think the highlights of the Rebétika style still are mostly all very old recordings.
I’m very glad to see several well-known classical voices listed, such as like Roza Eskenazi (on the first & ninth track), and Rita Abatzi (2nd link ; 3rd link) (on the 10th & 13th track). But also many other incredible older performances are on this compilation, like Andonios ‘Dalgas’ Dhiamandidhis, a beautiful Constantinopolitan voice, who sadly stopped with music and life input, and receded a terminal depression and a destroyed life, after the German invasion in 1941. Further we have Grigoris Asikis, an oud master and a singer with another golden voice. Very special is also the almost Arabic baritone with a very personal touch, on the first contribution by Efstratios Payioumdzis, who also has a second, very different track, showing more a poor man’s folk voice, the track closest in energy to earliest American blues. Although Rebetika, only nowadays, after all purifications in thinking, often is associated as "the Greek blues". Styllistically this is very confusing. When we see the influences of Constantinople and the Ottoman in personal expression, such a a direct comparison except for some background aspects, becomes fairly inappropriate, with some exceptions, like on the Payioumdzis track. Also Markos Vamvakaris has a more street-singer like folk style. Very different is also Stella Haskil, who shows the Jewish influence into the Greek side of styles, and a political side of rebetika. Her song is accompanied by some minimal repetition, which is here perhaps half Greek, half Jewish. Two musicians who recorded in the US, like Yiorgos Katsaros (who did concerts until he was 100), or the almost inhumanly beautiful Turkish-like voice of Marika Papagika, I like as well. Then we also have Kostas Roukounas, who stands a bit between two worlds. He is a tenor who became a famous Greek folk and song music composer, and later also the artistic director for Columbia Records in Greece. The few left over voices for me show much more the more typical Greek folk influences. Yiannis Papaïoannou first contribution is much more Greek folk styled compared to the others, while a second is in a mixed folk style. Also Marika Ninou (2nd link) sounds much more like entertaining folk song, with accordion and such, taken away from the earliest emotional depth of rembetika.
This compilation gives a wide range of how rembétika is performed. It is an enjoyable overview with many documentary-like explanations and with interesting small biographies, showing the world with a deeper,
insightful view. Well worth investigating.
Thank you for editing and help with this article to L.Blumenthal
Other Rembetika releases (with sounds !!) :
