Ρεμπέτικο για λίγους

Η σελίδα Ρεμπέτικο για λίγους δημιουργήθηκε τον Ιούλιο του 2014, ενώ τον Απρίλιο του 2015 δημιουργήθηκε και ο διαδικτυακός, ραδιοφωνικός μας σταθμός, όπου μεταδίδει επιλεγμένα Ρεμπέτικα και Λαϊκά τραγούδια.
Οι φανατικοί φίλοι της σελίδας μας, και παράλληλα ακροατές του σταθμού μας, τόσο στην Ελλάδα αλλά και σε 15 χώρες ακόμα, πιστεύουμε ότι δικαιώνουν την προσπάθεια μας να παραμείνει όσο το δυνατόν πιο ζωντανό αλλά και πάντα επίκαιρο, το Ρεμπέτικο και το Λαϊκό τραγούδι.

Ο σταθμός μας με συνεχή ροή τραγουδιών επί 7 ημέρες την εβδομάδα 24 ώρες το εικοσιτετράωρο, βρίσκεται στην παρακάτω διεύθυνση.

LISTEN LIVE HERE

Rita Abatzi (1906 - 1969)

Rita (Peace) Abatzi, daughter of George and Stella Abatzi born in Smyrna in the year 1906 (as birth dates have been proposed for the years 1903, 1913 and 1914, but on the basis of professional identity that was issued in 1932, resulting in 1906 as the birth year of the artist). She was sister of Wisdom (Fofo) Abatzi-Karivali, known singer in rebetiko scene of "Piraeus school 'during the prewar period.

In Greece family come after the destruction of Smyrna in 1922 and the violent expulsion of the Greek population from the region. Rita Abatzi, orphaned "father" who was lost in the tragic events of Izmir, installed together with her mother and sister in red. Held two weddings, the first marriage took place in 1930 with John Tsipari with whom she had a daughter Anna and the second with her colleague santour player Stelios Cretan,

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Όταν ο πατριάρχης του ρεμπέτικου ταπεινώθηκε και βγήκε στη ζητιανιά

Αν είχε γεννηθεί σε μια άλλη εποχή, όλος ο κόσμος θα βρισκόταν στα πόδια του. Θα είχε φτιάξει μια τέτοια περιουσία που δεν θα είχε την παραμικρή ανάγκη. Αν είχε γεννηθεί, βέβαια, σε μια άλλη εποχή, ίσως να μην ήταν αυτός που ήταν.

Ο πατριάρχης του ρεμπέτικου, ωστόσο, γεννήθηκε σε μια εποχή που η φτώχεια και η ανέχεια γονάτιζαν ακόμα και εκείνους που με την τέχνη τους δώριζαν απλόχερα ανάσες ελευθερίας στον κόσμο.

Με τις δημιουργίες του συντρόφευσε τα όνειρα, τους έρωτες, τα γλέντια, τον πόνο χιλιάδων ανθρώπων. Όταν όμως η μοίρα τον χτύπησε σκληρά, εκείνος δεν είχε σε ποιον να στηριχθεί. Δεν τον βοήθησε κανείς από αυτούς που θα έπρεπε και έτσι αναγκάστηκε να ταπεινωθεί και να βγει στη ζητιανιά.

Η ζωή του αξεπέραστου Μάρκου Βαμβακάρη ήταν μια πορεία από τα χαμηλά στα ψηλά και από εκεί στα… ταρταρα και στο τέλος στην καθολική αναγνώριση! ( source https://www.newsbeast.gr/)

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From the margins to the mainstream

Rebetiko is the urban popular Greek music of the poorest classes of the first half of the 20th century. As of December 2017, rebetiko is inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity created by UNESCO. The list is made up of elements that help demonstrate the diversity of the world heritage and raise awareness about its importance. Rebetiko was chosen by the Intergovernmental Committee who deemed it “a living musical tradition with a strong symbolic, ideological and artistic character”. As an intricate cultural concept, it is linked with music, song, dance and -especially in the past- with a particular attitude and way of life: the life of the outcast, the vagabonds and the displaced, but also of the labouring classes in large cities of newly industrialised Greece of the early 20th century.

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Roza Eskenazi

Roza Eskenazi, arguably the greatest and most renowned Greek diva, was born in Constantinople and named Sarah Skinazi. Roza’s exact date of birth is not known. In her autobiography Auta Pou Thimame (What I Remember) she states that she was born in 1910. Published in 1982, the autobiography is based on interviews Eskenazi gave in 1972. Apart from being forgetful by then, she appears to have deliberately concealed her age, as she probably had done since the 1920s. The Greek musicologist Panayiotis Kounadis is among those who believe that Eskenazi was born between 1883 and 1887, whilst others maintain that she was born between 1890 and 1900.

Roza Eskenazi was a Sephardic Jew. Her father, Avraham Skinazi, owned a storage facility. No documented facts can be found regarding her mother, Flora. She had one sister (name unknown) and two brothers, Sami and Nissim. By 1972 she had outlived all her siblings. by Yaron Enosh

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Marika Papagika - A recording Pioneer

One of the first generation of Greek women singers to be heard on sound recordings, Marika Papagika was born on the island of Kos on September 1, 1890.
Her family moved to Egypt, probably Alexandria, when she was young. She began her career in this country, working in nightspots that catered for the large resident Greek community. It is likely that she made her first recordings here as well.

Around 1915 she emigrated to the USA where she continued performing and recording. By the mid-1920's she and her husband Kostas ['Gus'],  a cembalo player, had their own club in New York. She regularly worked with the fine violinist Athanasios Makedonas. Marika's versatile repertory included folksongs, 'light', European-style songs, but she became a noted exponent of the Smyrnaic style of the rebetiko tragoudi.

She and her husband apparently lost the nightspot in the great financial crisis of 1929, and her recording career ended in the late 1930's. Marika died in New York in 1943; it has been said that she died of disappointment. Full listing of her recordings here

Kostas Bezos on Max Headroom RRR 102.7FM

Con Kalamaras delves into the music of mysterious Singer/Songwriter Kostas Bezo, one of the most enigmatic Greek rebetiko artists of all time.
Renowned for his slide guitar playing in his Hawaiian-style orchestras of the 30s, Bezos also recorded under the secret darker moniker, “Kostis”.
Kostis signatory music embodied black-humor lyrics, chronicling hash dens, prison culture and pickpockets of old Athens. His true identity surfaced after his premature death.

LISTEN HERE https://www.rrr.org.au/explore/programs/max-headroom/episodes/8474-max-headroom-25-july-2019

Amanes: The Legacy of the Oriental Mother

Source - Gail Holst-Warhaft

Read more https://www.umbc.edu/MA/index/number5/holst/holst_0.htm

In his "Journey to the Morea" (O Moreas), Nikos Kazantzakis writes: "In the taverns, at festivals, on holidays, when they have drunk a little, the small businessmen and infantry officers [of the Peloponnese], so logical and selfish, break into melancholy eastern amanedhes (sing. amanes), into a sudden longing; they reveal a psyche completely different from their sober everyday one. A great treasure, a deep longing....". (1965: 325) [my translation]. 

Further on, Kazantzakis expands on the bifurcating nature of the contemporary Greek of his day: "What has the dually-descended modern Greek taken from his father, what from his mother?.. He is clever and shallow, with no metaphysical anxieties, and yet, when he begins to sing, a universal bitterness leaps up from his oriental bowels, breaks through the crust of Greek logic and, from the depths of his being, totally mysterious and dark, the Orient emerges..." (ibid: 326). 

MEMORIES OF THE INNOCENT AGE

A journey back in time to re-discover life's simplicity, purity, and innocence, through mostly the magical art of traditional lutherie and music!

Read more https://memoriesoftheinnocentage.blogspot.com/

Kounadis Archive – Notes on Rebetiko History

https://www.snf.org/en/newsroom/news/2019/03/kounadis-archive-%E2%80%93-notes-on-rebetiko-history/

“What does rebetiko mean? Songs of people who wander around aimlessly, who are dreamers.” Panagiotis Kounadis, a true aficionado of the genre, shares stories of rebetiko with us while guiding us through the treasures contained in his rich collection of rebetiko music, documents, and instruments.

With support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation’s (SNF), all these hidden treasures will come to light, since very soon they will be available through the virtual museum of the Kounadis Archive. 

The project is made possible with support from the University of the Aegean, specifically the Department Product and Systems Design Engineering in Syros. The Kounadis Archive is one of the best organized urban folk music archives of the period between 1900 and 1960. It was founded in 2017 and comprises one of the richest collections of rebetiko songs and documents, capturing the evolution of the times in music composition both in Greece and abroad.

Marginality—A Key Concept to Understanding the Resurgence of Rebetiko in Turkey

Credit DANIEL KOGLIN

At its outset, Greek rebetiko song had been a disreputable genre inasmuch as many intellectual opinion-leaders associated it with urban lowlifes and Turkish music. Today, however, members of the educated classes—in Greece as well as in Turkey—hold this genre in high esteem as one of the great achievements of modern Greek and late Ottoman popular culture, respectively. The author explores the ways rebetiko is perceived and performed in Istanbul and Athens in an era of Greek-marginality. This marginality, however, is redefined in relation to the present thus accounting, it is argued, for the emotional impact rebetiko continues to have on listeners in both countries.

Read more https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mp/9460447.0002.102/--marginality-a-key-concept-in-understanding-the-resurgence?rgn=main;view=fulltext

The Recording Career of Vasílis Tsitsánis (1936-1983)

The Recording Career of Vasílis Tsitsánis (1936-1983) An Analysis of his Music and the Problems of Research into Greek Popular Music Nikolaos Ordoulidis Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of PhD The University of Leeds School of Music August, 2012

Link to Read in full https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/3230/1/Ordoulidis_Final.Thesis.pdf

There is a clear and abundant evidence to suggest that Vasílis Tsitsánis (1915-1984) was a well known songwriter, bouzouki virtuoso, lyricist and singer both in Greece and abroad. The evaluation of his work reveals that he remains a key figure in the history of Greek popular music. Vasílis Tsitsánis as musician and composer was an innovator, his musical roots in rembétiko being transformed through his creative effort is said to have led to the development and establishment of the modern laikó style.

UNESCO adds rebetiko to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list

The Greek musical genre rebetiko was inscribed on UNESCO’s 2017 representative list of Intangible Cultural Heritage during its annual meeting held in Jeju, Korea, between December 4 and 9.

According to the organization’s announcement, rebetiko was selected because it contains “invaluable references to the customs, practices and traditions of a particular way of life, but above all the practice is a living musical tradition with a strong symbolic, ideological and artistic character.”

UNESCO said it recognized rebetiko's “dynamic character” and its development as “a powerful reference point for the collective memory and identity of the Greeks.” READ MORE HERE

To What Strange Place: The Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora, 1916-1929

To What Strange Place collects the work of musicians from Anatolia, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Levant who lived in the U.S. and recorded in New York City between World War I and the Depression (1916-1929), as culled from Nagoski's own collection (according to a recent Washington Post profile, he purchased most of the source records en masse, for $5, from some dudes paid to haul junk out of vacated row houses). None are sung exclusively in English, and nearly all nod to musical traditions likely unfamiliar to casual listeners. It's not particularly easy to absorb, at least at first-- the textures and instrumentation are foreign, the tempos are shifty, the voices often spastic. Read More https://canary-records.bandcamp.com/

GREEK COLUMBIA RECORDS CATALOG 1930

In the Arhoolie Foundation’s Archive are several old record company catalogs. These catalogs are important research tools. Not only do these list the recordings available during the year of publication, but also occasionally have the only known photo of the recording artists.

https://arhoolie.org/greek-columbia-records-catalog-1930/

House of Pan Brighton

Saturday night at House of Pan, we delve into the quirkier Rebetiko Repertoire, the music of Kostas Skarvelis, earlier works of Markos Vamvakaris and Panagiotis Toundas to name a few. Here’s a photo of Wayne with his new Karellas Bouzouki, and I was fortunate to be able to play this beautiful antique guitar ( over 100 years old!). Back again next Saturday at the lovely House of Pan.

A Youtube Channel just in case ...

I remember way back in 2010….whilst playing i innocently pulled out a mobile phone and filmed one of our gigs… little did i know that it would evolve into a weekly obsession, the importance of capturing these performances never cease to amaze me… heres the link to my YouTube Channel….must warn you it’s a rabbit warren of amazing memories . https://www.youtube.com/user/rebetikamusicmelb

Rebetiko Jam - Just keeps on growing!...

The Rebetiko Jam was an idea that Wayne Simmons and I came up with way back in April 2018…remember that? A space for musicians from all walks of life to come together and simply play… no judgment, just fun, supportive… it’s truly grown into something special. This weekly get together is now cemented as something special for all to enjoy… The last one for the year will be the 18th of December… come to think of it…i’ll miss it for a few weeks.

Neos Kosmos Article https://neoskosmos.com/en/150626/rebetiko-jam-get-your-greek-on-every-wednesday-at-the-300/

SBS Radio Interview https://www.sbs.com.au/language/english/audio/rempetika-jam?fbclid=IwAR0Dq-fC4LRZjPllXGg_o0LXJMP0RstqFfmf6KgaDUaqlgk6CJ2acKJN--U