Rebetika music has sometimes been called the Greek blues, and although musically it's not like the blues at all, the comparison is an apt one in that, like the blues, rebetika music grew out of a specific urban subculture and was associated with a certain type of life-style, in which poverty, oppression, sex, alcohol, drugs, and violence played prominent roles. Rebetika music basically grew out of the culture of the Greek refugees from Asia Minor in the early 1920s. These people were settled in Athens and other areas and continued to live for the most part in their own communities, often under conditions of great hardship. They created, through the fusion of the Anatolian musical modes they brought with them with native mainland Greek musical traditions, a unique new type of music called rebetika (no one really knows where the name came from, and English spellings vary) which reflected both the rough, oppressed condition of their lives and the resilience, toughness,and good humor which enabled them to survive.

Rebetika is also similar to the blues in the development of its social position. In the twenties and thirties it was popular with the urban poor who created it, later it became scorned as "low-class" music, and then in the sixties it experienced a revival, becoming immensely popular among young people, some of whom formed their own rebetika bands to revive the music of the great rebetika artists of the past.

Many of the books and recordings of rebetika are issued in Greece; they tend to be of variable quality and to go in and out of print frequently. This posting attempts to give a short list of materials readily available (with a couple of exceptions as noted) in English-language countries which can be especially recommended as introductory. Most are available from major on line merchants; for recordings, the issuing companies often have web sites for ordering. Some of these recordings may now be available in whole or in part as MP3 downloads, but since the CD packaging often includes valuable notes and pictures, it's better to get the CDs.

CDs:

GREEK-ORIENTAL REBETICA SONGS & DANCES - Various Artists Arhoolie Issued twenty years ago and fortunately still in print, this disc forms an excellent introduction not only musically but historically, since it concentrates on very early rebetica and even includes some proto-rebetica styles.

REMBETICA: HISTORIC URBAN FOLK SONGS OF GREECE. Rounder Records. An excellent anthology including both old standards by famous artists and some interesting rarities, for instance, Agapios Tomboulis's Horos Dervisikos (Dervish Dance), a really wild Middle-Eastern style piece sung in Turkish. Very good notes, and all lyrics in Greek and English.   

ROUGH GUIDE TO REBETIKA An anthology with music and notes that maintain the high standard of the RG Music series, this particular CD is apparently out of print, but still available new and used from many vendors.

MARKOS VAMVAKARIS, BOUZOUKI PIONEER, 1932-1940 Rounder. Good anthology of perhaps the greatest of Rebetika artists.

ROZA ESKENAZI: REMBETISSA Also from Rounder; Roza is considered by many the greatest woman rebetika singer, and her songs will appeal especially to those who like the earlier, Anatolian-influenced rebetika.

WOMEN OF REMBETICA Another good anthology from Rounder.            
   
Books:
   
ROAD TO REMBETIKA : music of a Greek sub-culture : songs of love, sorrow and hashish by Gail Holst Published in various editions in Greece and elsewhere, of which I believe the most recent was 1994, this is one of the few books on the music available in English. Probably out of print, but seems to be readily available from on line vendors.
   
THE ROUGH GUIDE TO WORLD MUSIC: EUROPE, ASIA & PACIFIC, 3RD ED. 2009. This of course has become the standard guide to world music; the section on Greece includes brief but useful notes and cd recommendations for rebetika.

Special note: The most important collection of rebetika recordings is undoubtedly the six volumes of REBETIKI ISTORIA, originally issued in Greece, I think around 1970, on LP and subsequently reissued in cassette and CD forms. Though the liner notes are minimal and apparently no remastering has been done, this is still the collection to get for anyone seriously interested in the music, and in my opinion remains the best introduction to it. Unfortunately, it seems long out of print, but it may be possible to get copies of it from vendors specializing in used recordings. What is greatly needed is for this set to be reissued in remastered form with extensive and knowledgeable notes in an accompanying booklet giving background and lyrics, preferably in both Greek and English. If anyone reading this is involved in the recording industry and is looking for projects, this one would be a major contribution to world music, and might even have some commercial potential.
   
[This posting incorporates a revised version of material I've previously posted elsewhere on the internet, so if you find something similar somewhere else, it just means I'm plagiarizing myself.]

Jon Corelis
Kaleidoscope: Great Poems Set to Music