Jack, I can sympathise, because I played a little trick; but it would be recognised as a contemporary rebetiko, indeed it has already been recognised as such by a couple of Greek rebetiko groups in New Jersey and Melbourne plus some friends in Greece, so I feel safe in asserting that.

Rebetiko, as far as I know, is defined by the time signature (9/8), the beat (accent on 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9), the subject (crimes of passion, imprisonment, emigration, drugs, underworld and of course "lurve") and the language (liberal use of slang terms, no fancy literary convolutions, tell-it-like-it-is).

The trick I played, on purpose and in order to "sucker in" the untrained listener, was to de-emphasise the beat in verse 1; and to use a couple of chord sequences in the 2nd half of the verse that would be more reminiscent of other musical forms (even some western ballads) - but chord sequences don't define rebetiko, indeed traditional rebetiko uses chord changes very sparingly to say the least.

Ah, Roza Eshkenazy was THE traditional rebetiko voice of course. But the genre has moved quite a bit post-WW2, with Sotiria Bellou a major exponent until the 80s. And all the time new songs are written in the style, sometimes with more contemporary subjects.

One nice thing about the Greek music scene is that the various styles, be they traditional or regional or whatever, while revered, are not "locked", but people still write in them, and also occasionally feel free to mix them; the concept of "don't touch this, it is traditional, and you should do it in such a way only" doesn't exist.

This makes the scene very vibrant and produces some astonishing results (Dionyssis Sovopoulos' "Let the dances continue" comes to mind, a song that mixes 3-4 different styles and has become a firm favourite with Greeks of all ages and a mini-showcase of what the Greeks themselves enjoy about their various music styles).