AN INTRODUCTION TO REBETIKO

It is not easy to accurately define rebetiko. Many who study and research the subject would prefer to give a description rather than a definition. One may say that Rebetiko (singular) or rebetika songs (plural) are songs written during the period of the late 1800’s to mid 1950's that express the musical folklore of the urban centers. Others may describe it as songs of the Greek underworld, while a subjective description, as expressed by the early rebetes (rebetiko musicians and aficionados), is that rebetika songs are songs written by rebetes for rebetes.

Rebetiko reflects the social history of modern Greece (from the end of the 1800' s until the mid 1950s) and particularly the development of that segment of the population that was underemployed and was kept outside the system, the institutions and mechanisms of the newly developing Greek State. This segment of the population was concentrated in the outskirts of urban centers and had limited social and geographical movement r lack of opportunity, their own rules of social behavior, their own slang, all of which bonded these groups into a unique subculture. Through this cohesion they created also a unique lifestyle, and the need to seek some kind of social identity and express themselves through music. Similar phenomena can be seen in the case of the urban blues of the African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans and Chicago, the Samba music out of the poor neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro and the Reggae music of Jamaica and various other types of music associated with groups and populations living in the margins of society.

Although rebetiko is relatively recent, we do not precisely know its place of origin, but most likely it is attributed to port cities of the Eastern Mediterranean, Smyrna (Izmir), Constantinople (Istanbul), Thessaloniki, Piraeus, Ermoupolis. Its evolution is intertwined with the music of the Café Aman, or Smyrnaic style music, the music of teke, or smoke dens, and that of the prison population.

The cafe-amans were popular night clubs in major port cities of the Eastern Mediterranean from approximately 1900 to 1930. The music was happy and lively and the atmosphere festive. In these night clubs one would find musicians performing on stage and women singing and dancing. Smyrna and Constantinople had the most famous cafe-amans.

The musical instruments used by the groups (or mousikes kompanies as they were called) are the oud or outi, the violin, the tambourine, the nei or nai (a long flute), the canonaki or canoun (a trapezoidal instrument with 72 strings that are plucked), the santuri (similar to the hammer dulcimer) and the tumbeleki or dumbek. The bouzouki and baglama are not yet into the picture.

At the cafe-amans we see dances such as karsilamas, tsifteteli, syrtos, balos, hasapiko, zeibekiko / and even dances of Slavic origin such as hora, alegra and kazaska. The hasapiko dance was the characteristic dance of the butchers of Constantinople and together with the zeibekiko would become exclusively the dances of rebetiko.

The zeibekiko was the dance of the zeibeks, a group of warriors, possibly of Thracian descent. The zeibeks never obeyed the Turkish authorities. The Sultans, in order to have them under some kind of control, would give them certain privileges, by using them as paramilitary units helping the police. They, very often, would abuse their power and clash with the police. In 1833 the Sultan sent his army to disarm and disband them. The zeibekiko dance at the cafe­-amans was danced by two men facing each other.

The music of the cafe-amans identifies the era of the Smyrna style song, (the Smyrneiko style) of Asia Minor.

While the music of café-aman was popular entertainment music and open to the public, the music of the smoke dens and the prison cells was private and directed only to a limited segment of the population, which operated close to the limits of the law and lived on the margins of society. With lyrics referring to the darker side of life, injustice, alienation, prison life, hashish, repression and disdain for the law, this was the music of the underworld. The songs were sung exclusively by men and the instruments were, initially the baglama, and later the tzoura and bouzouki.

The two styles, although initially were evolving independently, they later formed a musical fusion, where, with the influence of certain political and world events, the Pireaus style of rebetiko evolved.

Three milestones influence the rebetiko to evolve from a marginal song to a popular song (laiko tragoudi):

(1)               The 1922 Asia Minor Catastrophe and the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey that followed.

(2)               The Metaxas dictatorship in 1936.

(3)               World War II with the Nazi Occupation and the Civil war that followed.

After the revolution of 1821 the Greek population at that time can be classified into three groups:

The first group includes the Greeks who lived within the borders of the newly Greek independent State.

The second group includes the Greeks who lived within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire.

The third group includes the Greeks of the diaspora who lived in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Right after independence, the population of Greece was only 750,000. However, four times that was the Greek population of groups two and three who lived within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire and the Greeks of the diaspora. By the early 1900's and after the incorporation of Thessali in 1881 and Crete in 1908 into Greece, the country's population reaches 2.6 million. After the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, Macedonia, Epirus, Western Thrace and the Aegean Islands are incorporated into Greece and the population increases to 4.7 million. This is a very important milestone in the evolution of the rebetiko, and particularly the liberation of Thessaloniki in 1912, since it was a major port and urban center.

But the most important milestone in the history and evolution of rebetiko is the year 1922 and the population exchange between Greece and Turkey the following year. We won't go into the specific events and politics of the time, but the fact is that, after the defeat of the Greek army in Asia Minor, Greece and Turkey signed the Treaty of Lausanne, where, each country was obligated to accept its nationals who lived on the other side. The only criterion was religion: the Greek Orthodox population of Turkey was to be relocated to Greece, and similarly the Muslim population of Greece was to be relocated to Turkey. An additional 1.5 million people came to Greece, increasing the population to 6.3 million, and as it can be expected, 1.5 million refugees without shelter or prospects of employment could easily bring economic and social crisis to a small country with limited resources. Although the government tried to settle them uniformly throughout the country, many of them settled near the major urban centers of Athens, Piraeus and Thessaloniki. They lived in substandard housing under overcrowded conditions with bleak prospects of employment. They brought, however their music and musical styles and professional musicians began to perform in night clubs and café-aman similar to the ones they left behind.

The Smyrna style song was accepted by the public and became quite popular for the next decade following 1922. During this decade, we see the first recordings in Greece, with songs from Asia Minor or new songs by refugee musicians. Well known musicians of the time were Gavriel Marinos, Kostas Karipis, Panagiotis Tountas, Kostas Skarvelis, Kostas Roukounas, Agapios Tomboulis, Kostas Nouros and the three women singers Marika Papagika, Rita Abatzi and the legendary Rosa Eskenazi. We also see the two styles of rebetiko influencing each other and a new style emerging with elements from both styles. This fusion of the two styles identifies the new rebetiko era, known as the classical era of the 1930's.

In the meantime, recordings arrive in Greece with rebetika recorded in other parts of the world, in such “hot rebetiko spots”, as New York City, Chicago, and other urban centers of the United States.

Based on documents from the Statistics Agency of Greece, from 1824 to 1889 there are roughly 2,200 Greek immigrants in the United States. By 1907 this number reaches 36,500 and by 1922 there are 400,000 Greek immigrants in the United States. These numbers reflect only the Greeks that came from independent Greece and do not include Greeks that came from areas still under the Ottoman Empire, (Asia Minor, Constantinople, and the Aegean Islands). For those Greeks we don't have reliable data because they were arriving in the United States as Turkish citizens. Also many Greeks were arriving illegally, therefore, we can confidently say the Greek population in the United States at that time was more than half a million. The majority of the immigrants had little education or training and were working in jobs with low wages and under difficult conditions. One way to ease their hardships, and to entertain and express themselves was through their music and their songs. With a market of more than half a million people, European recording companies started importing Greek recordings around 1910. But by the start of World War I these recordings stopped coming, therefore, in 1917 we see the first Greek recording by a singer known only by her artistic mane "Kiria Koula". She recorded for Columbia Records in New York City using violin_, lauto and santuri. Other recordings followed by Marika Papagika in 1918 and this trend continued until the mid 1930's. In the early 1930's recording studios had been established in Greece and recordings featuring artists like Rosa Eskenazi and Rita Abatzi were imported in the United States on a regular basis.

In the 1920's the bouzouki was absent from both the Greek and American recordings, because it was not a respectable instrument. It was still considered to be an instrument of the underworld. In 1928 Colombia Records issues the first bouzouki recording in Chicago played by a musician named George Kasaras (not to be confused with the legendary guitarist George Katsaros). Other recordings by Manolis Karapiperis, Vasilis Deniakos and Yiannis Halkias (known to Greek Americans as Jack Gregory) were made in New York the following years and by the early 30's these recordings had reached Greece where they became very popular. Some Columbia executives in Athens wanted to duplicate that sound. After many attempts Markos Vamvakaris_, who used to play bouzouki in the smoke dens of Pireaus_, secured the rights to record his own songs. Markos recorded in 1933 the first bouzouki recording in Greece. It was a record where the lyrics on both sides of the record were in reference to smoke dens and hashish.

In the next few years more recordings followed_, the rebetiko was gaining popularity and was moving out of the smoke dens and into popular tavernas. Markos Vamvakaris and his group that included the other three pioneers of rebetiko_,  Stratos Pagioumtzis, Giorgos Batis and Anestis Delias_, were now working in tavernas instead of the smoke dens. This style of rebetiko_, played by a bouzouki_, one baglama_, one guitar and sometimes an accordion will prevail during the 1930's. The Smyrna style songs of the cafe-aman were played by one or two violins_, one oud (or outi) one santuri_, one doumbek and sometimes a canoun.

Things are about to change with the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas in 1936. The government passed a law authorizing the Ministry of Press and Tourism to censor all new recordings and reject songs that make any reference to smoke dens, hashish and rebetiko life style. The police started cracking down and closing the smoke dens and the bouzouki night clubs. Many musician were forced to leave Athens and seek work in other cities and particularly in Thessaloniki where things were much calmer. In Thessaloniki they felt more comfortable, because the chief of police, Vasilis Moushountis, was a fan of rebetiko and was allowing them more freedom.

Other popular musicians of the 1930’s were Mitsos Bayianderas, Apostolos Hatzihristos, Spyros Peristeris, Yiannis Papaioanou, Mihalis Genitsaris, Yovan Tsaous, and women singers were Stella Haskil, Rita Abatzi, Marika “I Politissa” and Sevas Hanoum.

After 1936 we see a change in the lyrics of the rebetiko, because of censorship. The new songs talk about love, jealousy, poverty, wine, good times, life in the night clubs. But during the Nazi occupation years of 1941 to 1944 most of the night clubs had been closed because the Nazis had imposed a curfew. The few clubs that remained open were frequented by German officers, prostitutes, black marketeers and Nazi collaborators. These people were the only clientele with money for entertainment that kept a few clubs open for business during the hard times of the occupation.  

Right before the war, we start noticing the first signs of stagnation in the rebetiko. We see a lot of repetition of the same themes, and for some time the rebetiko was not evolving. The governmental policies to suppress it seemed to be working. But as it is often the case, suppression results to innovation. It was this time that a new face appeared into the rebetiko scene to give it a new feeling, a new style and to take it to a higher level for the next fifteen years. His name was Vasilis Tsitsanis

Tsitsanis was born in Trikala, in the province of Thessali. At age ten he started playing with his father’s mandola, where he had replaced the short neck with a long neck and made a bouzouki out of it.

Tsitsanis was not part of the underworld. He himself claims that he played only for a few nights at the smoke dens and he wrote very few songs in reference to hashish. While most of the other rebetes had barely finished elementary school, he was a high-school graduate, who came to Athens to attend law school.

He recorded his first song in 1937. He wrote many of his greatest hits during the occupation years but he could not record then until 1946, because the recording studios were closed during the occupation years.

He was able to foresee that the old style rebetiko wouldn't suit the new era that was about to emerged after the war and that people wouldn't be able to identify with it. He wrote songs with lyrics that reflected the feelings of the people. About the mother who patiently waits for her son, to return from xenitia from the foreign land; Or the nurse who falls in love with the wounded soldier. These are themes out of the working class neighborhoods that touch the common folk.

After the war, recording sessions resumed in 1946 and continued through the civil war period of 1947 to 1949. Other musicians such as Giorgos Mitsakis, Kostas Kaplanis, Apostolos Kaldaras, and the virtuoso of all times Manolis Hiotis helped reshape and refine the post war rebetiko sound. The rebetiko of the 1940's is now a popular urban song.

The decade of the 50's brought many changes to the musical climate. Influenced by Latin and Western music and motivated by the increase in sales of records, many musicians create music for purely commercial reasons. People's taste in music is changing. Social values are changing. The old rebetiko does not adapt to this new changing world. Less and less tavernas are featuring live rebetiko music. Many of the old rebetes that refused to participate in this new climate, kept on working in the few clubs that remained dedicated to the old style, but barely surviving. By the end of the 1950’s the rebetiko musicians are sidelined, the night clubs become flashy and expensive and the new music features a mixture of Indian and western sounds as its “new sound”.

Perhaps this generation of rebetes had exhausted their potential and could not advance the rebetiko any further. It would take another decade until Manos Hatzidakis, Mikis Theodorakis and young Stavros Xarhakos would start writing music using rebetiko as their inspiration along with lyrics by prominent Greek poets, that would  refine the sound of Greek music. But this is another era. This is not rebetiko any more.

Kosmas Vrouvlianis,  September 2008

1.        Ilias Petropoulos: "Rebetika Tragoudia"/2nd edition/ Kedros publications/ Athens/ 1983.

2.        Maria Constandinidou: "Kinoniologiki Historia tou Rebetikou", Medusa-Selas publications/ Athens/ 1994.

3.        Tassos Shorelis: "Rebetiki Anthologia"/ Volumes A/B/C/D/ Plethron publications/ Athens/ 1977.

4. Gale Holst: "The Road to Rebetiko" Greek- English publications/ Athens/ 1977.