Rembetika
Rembetika (sometimes transliterated rebetika (Greek τα ρεμπέτικα) is a kind of popular urban Greek music.[1] 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.
The music
The musicians and singers
Rembetika's influence
Notes
- ↑ Strictly speaking, rembetika are the individual musical works, rembetiko (Greek: ρεμπέτικο) being the genre, but the plural has come to be the standard form for both.
Reading
- Gail Holst Road to Rembetika: Music of the Greek Sub-culture. Athens: Denise Harvey, 1975. ISBN 960-7120-07-8
External links
- "Rembetika" — L.H. Kritikos