Rebetiko

Rebetiko or Rembetika is a kind of Greek music, popular among Greek people around the world. Its origins can be found around 1850s. It stems from Smyrni.

Rebetika are eccentric songs that flourished in Greece especially at the time of the Greek civil war [1940s] and were sang by all the social classes. They are full of grief, passion, romance and bitterness. They are melancholic songs telling the misfortunes of simple ordinary men.

After 1950 rebetika songs became very popular but they also started to fall in quality. At the same time, as part of the Greek Diaspora, rembetika began to be sung and danced in other countries, eg the USA and Australia.

Rebetika are the songs of the Greek underworld, the so called rebetes. Rebetes were the unconventional people who lived outside the social order and demonstrated it. They first appeared after the Greek revolution [war of independence] of 1821. They didn’t get married, didn’t hold their girlfriend's hand, didn’t wear a tie, walked in a certain way, hated the polish [neatness?}, despised work, never used an umbrella, smoked hashish, helped the weak, considered prison a sign of bravery etc. They spoke a slang rich in words, expressions and gestures as the Mediterraneans do.

All the rebetika songs are for dancing. Almost half of them are zeibekika and the others are hasapika. Zeibekiko is a personal dance. Only one man can dance it. If another gets up, that is a cause of conflict and fight with knives. Women were not allowed to dance zeibekiko, (except of prostitutes). The dancer of zeibekiko dances looking to the ground. His face is hard, humorless, almost sinister. Hasapika were danced by two or three rebetes. Women could dance too. These two dances came to Greece from Turkey.

Rebetika originated in prison or in hookah houses. There, the rebetes would sing with a slow hoarsely voice, one after the other. Every singer added a distich [?dystich] that often had no connection to the previous. There was no refrain {chorus?). A rebetes accompanied the singing with a bouzouki. After 1955 when Greece began to produce long play [LP] records in large numbers, the [?true] rebetika had vanished. The production of the rebetika songs is done without the underworld [?the music was now produced by the straight non-criminal world?].

Some of the main rebetiko singers and creators include Panagiotis Tountas, Vaggelis Papazoglou, Giannis Eitziridis and Manolis Khrisafakis. Some of the later creators were Markos Vamvakaris, Kostas Skarvelis, Giannis Papaioannou and Vassilis Tsitsanis. A famous Rebetiko song is Misirlou, i.e. 'the Egyptian girl'.

External links

• http://www.btinternet.com/~christopher.blackmore/rebetiko/rebetiko.html
• http://www.rebetiko.gr
• http://www.angelfire.com/folk/rempetiko/