Subject: RE: A new Rebetiko in both English & Greek
From:
George Papavgeris
Date: 24 Oct 06 - 09:16 AM
It's a particular type of (Greek) song. Its history goes roughly as follows:
The Ottoman empire was dissolved in the early 1900s, and in 1921-2, Greece made an ill-advised and abortive attempt to recreate the "Greater Greece" (Byzantium) by re-conquering parts of today's Turkey including "Konstantinople" (Istanbul), Smyrna (Izmir) and a number of places in Asiatic Turkey, or Asia Minor as it was referred to; and trying to "liberate" the ethnically Greek populations that lived there especially in seaside towns on the Mediterranean or on the northern coast of Turkey, on the Black Sea (or "Pontos"). Anyway, the attempt ended with Greece being soundly defeated, and in tha aftermath there was a hasty exchange of populations: Greeks living in Turkey repatriated to Greece and the reverse. It needs to be pointed out that those "expatriate Greeks" had lived in Turkey for anything up to 2-3,000 years, and the "expatriate Turks" had lived in northern Greece for at least 1,000 years. In other words, it was quite a wrench - though necessary from the newly formed Turkish republic's point of view.
So, Greece was overrun quickly by expatriate Greeks from Asia Minor (commonly referred to as "Pontian Greeks"; these people brought with them their customs (some mixed with Turkish ones), their language (zealously preseved so that it resembled ancient Greek) and their music (definitely influenced by their Turkish and Ottoman neighbours). They also brought with them some instruments hitherto unknown in Greece, such as the bouzouki.
Nowadays it is recognised that Pontian Greeks have always been hard working and also very bright, but at the time Greece could not assimilate such an influx of refugees, so some joined the thriving underworld in Greece (temporarily giving a bad name to all Pontian refugees). Being bright they quickly became masters of it, and their entertainment (and music) was tarred by the same brush, so that it was thought as the music of the underworld. Indeed, possession of a baghlama (a mini-bouzouki) became illegal, and the police would confiscate and break them - but the offenders were quick to replace them with new ones, fashioned out of any piece of wood they could get hold of. The songs they sang - and wrote - would talk of their problems with the police, of imprisonment, of how hard it was to get hasheesh, of fate giving them its rough edge while others lorded it, of love and expatriation. Within a few years they had fashioned the genre of "rebetiko", which really was a mix of the music they brought from Asia Minor with the themes they were writing about. I don't know where the term comes from, but I do know that "rebettis" referred to a gangland "heavy" who fought hard and played hard.
The genre thrived, gaining popularity amongst the rest of the Greeks, and diverging from typical Asia Minor music mainly because of its themes, but also because it increasingly used more and more bouzouki (easier to play and to make) and less and less fiddle or other instruments. By the time of WW2 some rebetiko songs would use exclusively bouzouki.
During the German occupation (1941-1945) the Greek populace turned even more to rebetiko song as a medium for rebellion against the occupying forces and weaving all sorts of allegories into their lyrics. One of the best rebetiko songs ever, known and loved by every Greek, is "Cloudy Sunday" (Synnefiasmeni Kyriaki) by Manolis Tsitsanis. It was written in 1942 (or -3, don't remember for certain), when Athenians were dying on the strees from starvation, and was held to have a number of references to that fact (though they are so oblique as to be unrecognisable, and Tsitsanis never admitted to it). Others were written during the 1945-47 Greek Civil War (between Britain-supported royalists and Tito-supported communists).
Through to the early 1960s, it was still considered a lesser form of entertainment and received no support from the various arts bodies, yet it continued gaining popularity. By the late 60s it broke through into the mainstream and a lot of the old recordings of artists such as Roza Eskenazy were re-issued (though it has to be pointed out that Eshkenazy did not sing exclusively "rebetiko" songs, she was rather a singer of Asia Minor music that included some "rebetiko" in her repertoire.)
In the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s the grand dame of rebetiko was Sotiria Bellou, a woman who had been there and done that, with a voice of one thousand cigarettes and ten thousand joints - and several barrels of wine -, who became as romantic a figure in Greece as Edith Piaf had been in France (but without the looks, I have to say). She is still played regularly on radio, and her recording in the 70s of a "new" rebetiko by Dionyssis Savopoulos ("Me aeroplana kai vaporia" - "With aeroplanes and ships", about the changing world) became a classic, in many ways "out-classicking" the old ones.
M.Ted's entry above alerted me to the fact that I gave some slightly misleading info: I referred to the 9/8 rhythm as being characteristic, and he referred to "Hasapiko", which is a different one; in fact, we are both right and wrong: Both of those rhythms exist in rebetiko, which borrowed elements from the music of Asia Minor. Indeed, some of the earlier rebetiko songs would have been 8/8 or 11/8, but 9/8 gained in popularity over time, so that most of the new rebetiko songs written nowadays follow that.
A modern rebetiko could be about drinking and drugs, about government and politicians, about poverty or emigration. It would be danced singly (not in pairs or a circle). It would have complaint and defiance in it. It would use bouzouki and its variants, though no longer exclusively. The chances are it would use a 9/8 rhythm (though again not exclusively). And it would pose as a song of the downtrodden (increasingly difficult nowadays).
|
sj
