Rebetika - The Greek Blues
3rd Dec 09
Presenter by Con Kalamaris
In 1923 Greece was faced with the resettlement of over 1.5 million Greeks refugees from Asia Minor. As a result of this, shanty towns grew up around Athens, Piraeus and other cities. These refugees brought their music with them and this had the most pronounced effect on the urban music of Greece.
Rebetiko have always been the music of the poor and the dispossessed, combined different styles of the region and with lyrics describing the joy, the sorrow, the difficulties of everyday life. Often called the Greek blues, since like the blues, it grew out of a specific urban subculture and reflected the harsh realities of an oppressed subculture's lifestyle: poverty, alienation, crime, drink, drugs prostitution, and violence. But rebetiko's subject matter also extends to other subjects: romance and passion, social matters, people such as the mother, death, the difficulties of living in a foreign country, army life, war, trivial matters of everyday life, exotic places, poverty, labor, illnesses, and the minor sorrows of people. Rebetiko have always been the music of the poor and the dispossessed.
In the 1920's and the 1930's Rebetika could be heard in several Tekedes of Athens, Piraeus and Thessaloniki. These were hash dens where the workers, the unemployed and the Manges would meet to drink coffee and enjoy Argiles (water pipes) of the best hashish. Sometimes a lone man would get up and dance a Zebekiko dance.
This Program presented Greek Rebetika recordings from original 78 records, some of which had never been aired on Australian Radio.
Tracks Played
Soura kai Mastoura Markos Vamvakaris
Koustavaki Markos Vamvakaris
When You See Me Go By (1938) Markos Vamvakaris
mikros arrabwniasthka Markos Vamvakaris
Prin to Harama Yiannis Papaioanou
Two Manges In Jail (1935) Rita Abatzi
Enas Mangas Sto Teke Mou Rosa Eskenazi
Zmirneikos Balos (No Hope But You) Marika Papagika
To Mistirio (The Mystery) Ioannis Halikias (Jack Gregory)
Black Eyes, Black Brows (1938) Markos Vamvakaris
O Prezakis (The Junkie) 1936 Antonis. Kalyvopoulos
Eleni the Divorce (1936) Antonis Kalyvopoulos
Trap of Peiraius (1935) Markos Vamvakaris