Rembetika

Rembetika (sometimes transliterated rebetika (Greek τα ρεμπέτικα) is a kind of popular urban Greek music. The musicians were known as rembetes (Greek: ρεμπέτης).

The roots of rembetika

Rembetika has its roots in two musical traditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the music of the urban Greek social fringes, especially in the Piraeus (often compared to the blues sub-culture in the United States at about the same time), and the cafe aman (Smyrnaika, or Smyrneika) of the Asia Minor cities of Smyrna and Constantinople. The two forms came together after the influx of ethnic-Greek refugees from Turkey in the early 1920s (see Treaty of Lausanne).

The pre-1920s rembetika of Piraeus, embedded as it was in the lower strata of Greek society, was typified by lyrics concerning drugs, sex, prison, gambling, and persecution. The singers and musicians were almost all men, and they played in tekes and in hideaways, as well as in prison.

Reading

• Suzanne Aulin and Peter Vejleskov Χασικλιδικά Ρεμβέτικα (Hashish Rembetika). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 1991. ISBN 978-87-7289-134-7
• Gail Holst Road to Rembetika: Music of the Greek Sub-culture. Athens: Denise Harvey, 1975. ISBN 960-7120-07-8
• Risto Pekka Pennanen "The Development of Chordal Harmony in Greek Rebetika and Laika Music, 1930s to 1960s", in British Journal of Ethnomusicology 6, 1997: pp 65–116

External links

• "Rembetika" — L.H. Kritikos
• "Hashish Rebetika" — a collaborative translation of the songs collected in Suzanne Aulin and Peter Vejleskov's book (above)