RFI: Greek Hashsmoking Hooker Folk: Rebetiko aka Rebetika aka Rembetiko

I'm reading about this stuff and it sounds amazing. Where to start?

sorry for the reductive offensive thread title, Greeks

There's some discussion on here:

Greek Music: RFI

I still like the Rounder collection I have, but it's the only old rembetika collection I own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s91MBFwc4Bs

Late artists have continued to record rembetika, though some overlook the likes of Stelios Kazantzidis in favor of the rawer 1930s singers, an unfortunate decision, in my view:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBBkieUbi38

Look, a BBC documentary on the subject that I didn't know existed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cPbCXWGJMo

(That should have been "later" not "late" though that is the late Kazantzidis.)

that bbc doc has some great interviews if I recall

I have a two CD Trikong thing that is utterly amazing.

Trikont, ahem

that mortika double LP is great. beautiful music, great liner notes. honestly, the packaging is cheap--feels cheap, looks cheap. but otherwise amazing.

(honestly if you could find a download that includes the liner notes you'd be fine.)

hopa

http://www.trikont.com/basics/cgi-tdb/basics.prg?a_no=121&r_index=10.1

This is the Trikont thing.

19. BAJIANDERAS: Panda me gliko Hassissi [03:18]

"always with sweet weed"

:D

which is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT16-Q2pKlk

Rosa Eskenazi's Yato Fumaro Kokaini {Why I smoke Cocaine) from 1928......

Actually there's a Rounder comp of her stuff which is great.

I've got these two comps (both are great)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41SCS5D12WL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/510ZD08pSQL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

This book is worth tracking down too...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51DSNLGoUiL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

It *does* read like an expanded version of someone's dissertation, but it covers the basic players, songs, and connects the lines to what was concurrently happening in Greek politics and socio-culture. If anything, the book is what got me, er, hooked on the music.

there are surprisingly many (dozens) of rembetika comps. and there are now like four or five 4-CD sets on JSP.

i've seen these comps before - is this music actually fun to listen to if you dont understand greek? i mean beyond the cool subject matter, are they good songs/musicians?

Yes. Or at least the Trikont one is. I think there is a lyric sheet IIRC.

i've seen these comps before - is this music actually fun to listen to if you dont understand greek? i mean beyond the cool subject matter, are they good songs/musicians?

i speculated about this somewhere on I Love Vinyl. some of it is definitely very beautiful, lyrics or no, but i feel like i'm missing much of it. very lyrics-driven music. it would be like listening to, i dunno, merle haggard or something without understanding a word of english.

OTM - that's what's held me back from getting really nuts about this stuff. even w/ a translated lyric sheet it does feel like you're missing something pretty important. As great as the music and the atmosphere of it all is, it's still music about sex and drugs that I can't understand... I can handle not knowing what Francoise Hardy is on about but this is different.

I know I should be able to get past this - I'm sure I'd dig Ethiopiques and Jorge Ben etc. more if I got the lyrics but it's never really been a concern... but for some reason this stuff is more frustrating. Just really intriguing subject matter I guess.

i have the women of rembetica disc, which i like a lot. and yeah it's fun to listen to. it helps to know the context obviously.

Rebetiko: The Music and Culture of Greek Bohemians Amidst a City in Ruins
http://www.thehydramag.com/archives/946

ya i mean i listen to a lot of brazilian music and prob understand 25% of what is said (tho i often look up lyrics)... but i like the way it sounds

Yeah I am probably the wrong person to ask since I usually don't care much about lyrics in any language.

ya it's just the attraction to this stuff seems in no small part based on the transgressive lyrics... no?

a lot of brazilian music is groove music. often lyrics are extremely pared down, simple, even functional. rembetika is based, often, on a rush of words, often including references, wordplay, etc. i think there's a bit of a difference, at least potentially.

xpost

ya.

a lot of brazilian music is groove music. often lyrics are extremely pared down, simple, even functional. rembetika is based, often, on a rush of words, often including references, wordplay, etc. i think there's a bit of a difference, at least potentially.

― by another name (amateurist), Tuesday, February 16, 2010 5:16 PM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that could be it. also, brazilian portuguese just SOUNDS beautiful sung.

also there are some songs where knowledge of the lyrics deepens my appreciation of the song, like chico buarque's "a banda" frinstance. this great celebratory singalong-sounding song with lyrics that are a complete contrast to the music. i'd love it either way but now i love it more.

"ya it's just the attraction to this stuff seems in no small part based on the transgressive lyrics... no?"

I don't think the transgressiveness is the main thing, no.

you think you'd still have heard about/be interested in it if it wasn't "hashsmoking hooker" music?

Sure. I mostly thought of them as being more these amazing arab-influenced bluesy ballads than anything else anyway. The drug thing is pretty secondary to my appreciation of it. The original Aquarius review which piqued my interest only barely mentions hashish hah.

^^^what Alex said basically.

love the feel of this music so much. i have to take it in small doses. sumptuous, dark, broken, heart rending.

i don't get the blues connection.

its a shorthand that lazy american critics used when they were exposed to this stuff. made in the 20's, ghetto music, lyrics that focus on the sadder elements of existence etc.

Haha yeah its just me being lazy.

I think it's an OK comparison

But yeah in my description above bluesy is shorthand for sad, mournful, despairing, whatever.

so is arvo part bluesy?

yeah i think blues has some correspondence with this stuff, so i meant "lazy" in the sense that many of my greek friends dont dig their culture's music being called greek blues. different histories, different tragedies, they just want the music to be recognized on its own terms, feel me ? it would be like me calling mexican trio music, which also deals with many of the same themes "mexican blues".

"so is arvo part bluesy?"

Who cares?

But yeah in my description above bluesy is shorthand for sad, mournful, despairing, whatever.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Tuesday, February 16, 2010 3:45 PM (1 hour ago)

so is arvo part bluesy?

― by another name (amateurist), Tuesday, February 16, 2010 3:50 PM (1 hour ago)

If you add something like "street-level" to Alex's sets of descriptors, you eliminate Pärt. (I sympathize somewhat with the annoyance with blusey as shorthand, but only somewhat. It is a useful shorthand. Rembetika, fado, (old school) bachata: all "bluesy" in some sense.)

i still don't hear it. "blues" isn't necessarily sad, mournful, despairing in the 1st place.

I don't feel much connection to the honest to goodness blues, so I don't feel prepared to debate the point.

How about "Greek garage band music of the 20s and 30s?"

I agree with those who are saying (to paraphrase) that the musical side alone isn't enough to hold my attention for long, and that I feel I am missing a lot of the interest by not knowing the lyrics.

It seems like people are relating to the street energy, the "rock and roll" attitude in rembetika. (I still wish people would pay more attention to possibly more respectable, and generally more virtuosic, Greek popular music that came later, but I'm not very good at making a case for it, and it doesn't help that I don't know much about it.)

""blues" isn't necessarily sad, mournful, despairing in the 1st place."

bluesy /= blues.

actually the thing i like most about this stuff is the really haunting instrumental parts, slow and mournful and keening--not rock and roll at all.

i admit that the drugs/sex angle really doesn't mean anything to me.

would you believe me if i said that i first read this thread title as Geek Haberdashers Hooker Frolic?

yes

As my ILX handle might convey, rembetika takes up a huge chunk of my musical life. I've been performing in a rembetika "kompania" for the past 15 years, performing mainly in Canada but also in Greece. "Greek blues" as shorthand doesn't bother me, partially because of the similarities in lyrical themes - poverty, dislocation, heartache - but also because the place of the blues as the bedrock for so many 20th century American musical styles mirrors rembetika's place in 20th century Greek music.
The drug lyric angle is predictably somewhat overemphasized. Censorship before and after WW2 limited the number of drug-related songs that were released.
In my experience, the biggest problem Western listeners have with rembetika are that the various 9/8 grooves confuse people trying to follow the melodies. Singing in a unfamiliar language just complicates matters.
The JSP. Rounder and Trikont compilations are all suitable places to start. The JSP is the most comprehensive, but a lot of their choices are somewhat run-of-the-mill, IMO.
Among individual artists, I'd rcommend: Andonis Dalgas for 'amanedes'; Roza Eskenazi and Rita Abatzi for prewar female vocalists, mainly in the 'Smyrnaic' style (more violin/kanoun-driven); Markos Vamvakaris, Stellakis Perpiniades and Stratos Pagioumitsis for prewar 'Peiraias' style (more bouzouki/baglama-driven); Vasiilis Tsitsanis, Marika Ninou, Sotiria Bellou and Ioanna Georkapoulou for post-war rembetika, and Stelios Kazantzidis and Grigoris Bithikotsis from the 50s and 60s. Among modern practitioners, I appreciate Elefteria Arvanitakis, Glykeria, Babis Tsertos and Agathonas Iakovidis.

Thanks! I would love if you posted more about Greek music generally, since you obviously know a lot about it. (I don't even recognize the last two names you mention (and Grigoris Bithikotsis), and I readily admit my own knowledge of Greek music is extremely patchy. I had a leg up with Arab music thanks to having an Arab provide me orientation and cassettes.)

If I haven't responded to some of your past posts it's been because I haven't always known what you were talking about. (For instance, you reeled off a bunch of different Greek genres, some of which were not familiar to me at all.)

Following up on the recommendations ρεμπετις made, I like the sound of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfweEHiQVog

I can't decide if the high-pitched instrument I am hearing in the background is a kanun or something else.

Yes, that's kanoun. Stellakis even gives a shout-out to the kanoun player at the 2:12 mark. It sounds like guitar is the only other instrument.

Stellakis sang a number of songs by the great Smyrnaic writer of this song, Vangelis Papazoglou, who died in the famine during WW2. These include two of the most enduring rembetika songs: "Kato Sta Lemonadika" (down by the lemon shops), also known as "Oi Lachanades" (the cabbages or the pickpockets) and "Pente Chronia Dikasmenos Mesa Sto Gentikoule" 5 years sentenced in Yenti-koule prison, also known by the title "Ι Foni Tou Argile" (the Voice of the Hookah)...

Oi Lachanades" (the cabbages or the pickpockets)

wait, this is the same word for both? is there somehow ambiguity as to which the song's about?

o papatzis is great

"Lachanades", literally, means cabbages. It's also old Greek slang for poor common folk, the "salt of the earth". In the song a policeman arrests some pickpockets at the lemon market, who call themselves "cabbages", complain that they're just doing their job too, and if they weren't around the cop would be out of work.

O Papatzis, by the way, is about a con artist who operates the three-card trick on the sidewalk, who gives all his earnings to a woman he reveres, but she's double-crossing him. He's pissed.

thank you, you're a scholar

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2011/11/18/greek-songs-from-hash-dens-to-cafes-to-glen-echo-town-hall/

NYC singer Carol Freeman has been singing this music since 1979 or so, with a particular emphasis on 4 Jewish Greek women singers from the 1930s (two who lived in Turkey/Asia Minor and two who immigrated to the US).

Mostly instrumentals, p great