Rebetiko (, ), plural rebetika ( ), occasionally transliterated as rembetiko or rebetico, is a term used to designate previously disparate kinds of urban Greek music which in the 1930s went through a process of musical syncretism and developed into a more distinctive musical genre. Rebetiko can be described briefly as the urban popular song of the Greeks, especially the poorest, from the late 19th century to the 1950s, and served as the basis for further developments in popular Greek music. The music, which was partly forgotten, was rediscovered during the so-called rebetika revival, which started in the 1960s and developed further from the early 1970s.
In 2017 rebetiko was added in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.
Definition and etymology The word (plural ) is an adjectival form derived from the Greek word (, ), which is construed to mean a person who embodies aspects of character, dress, behavior, morals and ethics associated with a particular subculture. The etymology of remains a subject of dispute and uncertainty. An early scholar of rebetiko, Elias Petropoulos, and the modern Greek lexicographer Georgios Babiniotis each offer suggested derivations, but leave the question open. The earliest known source of the word is a Greek-Latin dictionary published in Leiden, Holland in 1614Ioannes Meursius – Glossarium graeco barbarum 2nd ed. Leyden, 1614 p. 470 where the word is defined as a 'wanderer', 'blind', 'misguided'.
Musical bases Although nowadays treated as a single genre, rebetiko is, musically speaking, a synthesis of elements of European music, the music of the various areas of the Greek mainland and the Greek islands, Greek Orthodox ecclesiastical chant, often referred to as Byzantine music, and the modal traditions of Ottoman art music and café music.
Melody and harmony
The melodies of most rebetiko songs are thus often considered to follow one or more (, Greek for 'roads' or 'routes'; singular is (). The names of the are derived in all but a few cases from the names of various Turkish modes, also known as makam.
However, the majority of rebetiko songs have been accompanied by instruments capable of playing chords according to the Western harmonic system, and have thereby been harmonized in a manner which corresponds neither with conventional European harmony, nor with Ottoman art music, which is a monophonic form normally not harmonized. Furthermore, rebetika has come to be played on instruments tuned in equal temperament, in direct conflict with the more complex pitch divisions of the system.
During the later period of the rebetiko revival, there has been a cultural entente between Greek and Turkish musicians, mostly of the younger generations. One consequence of this has been a tendency to increase emphasis on the aspect of rebetiko as opposed to the Westernized polyphonic components, at the possible expense of perceiving and problematizing the truly syncretic nature of the music.
A considerable proportion of the rebetiko repertoire on Greek records until 1936 was not dramatically different, except in terms of language and musical "dialect", from Ottoman café music (played by musicians of various ethnic backgrounds) which the mainland Greeks called Smyrneika. This portion of the recorded repertoire was played almost exclusively on the instruments of /Ottoman café music, such as kanonaki, santouri, politikí lyra (), (, actually identical with the Hungarian cimbalom, or the Romanian țambal), and clarinet.
Scales The scales used in rebetiko music are the traditional Western major and minor scales, as well as a series of Eastern makams, influenced by the Ottoman classical music. Some of them include rast, uşşâk, hijaz (or "phrygian dominant scale"), and nahawand. The makam system of modes serves as the melodic core of any Rebetiko composition.
Rhythms Most rebetiko songs are based on traditional Greek or Anatolian dance rhythms. Most common are: Syrtos, a general name for many Greek dances (including the Nisiotika), (mostly a meter in various forms) Zeibekiko, a or a meter, in its various forms Hasaposervikos, including various kinds of Greek music. It is also the fast version of hasapiko (like and meter) Hasapiko, a meter and the fast version hasaposerviko in a meter Antikristos or Karsilamas and argilamas (a meter) Kamilierikos (a meter) and aptalikos, broken down into sixteenths, (slow version a and fast version a meter in various forms Tsifteteli, cheerful dance for women (a ) Bolero, in a few songs, mainly for guitar (a )
Various other rhythms are used too.
Taxim There is one component within the rebetiko tradition which is common to many musical styles within Eastern musical spheres. This is the freely improvised unmeasured prelude, within a given /, which can occur at the beginning or in the middle of a song. This is known in Greek as or ( or ) after the Arabic word usually transliterated as taqsim or .
Instruments The first rebetiko songs to be recorded, as mentioned above, were mostly in Ottoman/Smyrna style, employing instruments of the Ottoman tradition. During the second half of the 1930s, as rebetiko music gradually acquired its own character, the bouzouki began to emerge as the emblematic instrument of this music, gradually ousting the instruments which had been brought over from Asia Minor.
The bouzouki
The bouzouki was apparently not particularly well known among the refugees from Asia Minor, but had been known by that name in Greece since at least 1835, from which year a drawing by the Danish artist Martinus Rørbye has survived. It is a view of the studio of the Athenian luthier Leonidas Gailas (), whom the artist describes as . The drawing clearly shows a number of bouzouki-like instruments. Despite this evidence, we still know nothing of the early history of the instrument's association with what came to be called rebetiko. Recent research has however uncovered a number of hitherto unknown references to the instrument during the 19th and early 20th centuries, including evidence of its established presence in the Peloponnese.Kourousis, Stavros (2013) "From Tambouras to Bouzouki" The History and Evolution of the Bouzouki and its first Recordings (1926–1932) Orpheum Phonograph ORPH-01
Although known in the rebetiko context, and often referred to in song lyrics, well before it was allowed into the recording studio, the bouzouki was first commercially recorded not in Greece, but in America, in 1926, when the Peloponnesian musician Konstandinos Kokotis (1878 – after 1948) recorded two Peloponnesian folk songs with the accordionist Ioannis Sfondilias. This recording, reissued for the first time in 2013, reveals a "folk" melodic style never recorded before or since. The first recording to feature the instrument clearly in a recognisable somewhat more "modern" melodic role, was made in 1929, in New York. Three years later the first true bouzouki solo was recorded by Ioannis Halikias, also in New York, in January 1932.
In Greece the bouzouki had been allowed into a studio for the first time a few months previously, in October 1931. In the hands of Thanassis Manetas (1870-ca 1943), together with the player Yiannis Livadhitis, it can be heard accompanying the singers Konstantinos Masselos, aka Nouros, and Spahanis, on two discs, three songs in all.
These early commercial recordings in America and in Greece had however been preceded by a group of documentary recordings, consisting of one shellac 78 rpm disc and five wax cylinders, made in Görlitz, Germany in July 1917, during WWI. The amateur bouzouki player Konstandinos Kalamaras accompanied a professional Byzantine singer, Konstandinos Vorgias, and an amateur singer, Apostolos Papadiamantis. These three men were among 6500 Greek soldiers interned as guests of Germany in an ex-POW camp in the small town of Görlitz at the Polish border, from September 1916 until their release in February 1919.
It was not until October 1932, in the wake of the success of Halikias' New York recording, which immediately met with great success in Greece, that Markos Vamvakaris made his first recordings with the bouzouki. These recordings marked the real beginning of the bouzouki's recorded career in Greece, a career which continues unbroken to the present day.
Other instruments The core instruments of rebetiko, from the mid-1930s onwards, have been the bouzouki, the baglamas and the guitar. Other instruments included accordion, politiki (Constantinopolitan) lyra (sometimes other lyra were used), clarinet, kanonaki, oud, santur, violin and finger-cymbals. Other instruments heard on rebetiko recordings include: double bass, laouto, mandola, mandolin and piano. In some recordings, the sound of clinking glass may be heard. This sound is produced by drawing worry beads () against a fluted drinking glass, originally an ad hoc and supremely effective rhythmic instrument, probably characteristic of teké and taverna milieux, and subsequently adopted in the recording studios.
Lyrics Like several other urban subcultural musical forms such as the blues, flamenco, fado, bal-musette and tango, rebetiko grew out of particular urban circumstances. Often its lyrics reflect the harsher realities of a marginalized subculture's lifestyle. Thus one finds themes such as crime, drink, drugs, poverty, prostitution and violence, but also a multitude of themes of relevance to Greek people of any social stratum: death, eroticism, exile, exoticism, disease, love, marriage, matchmaking, the mother figure, war, work, and diverse other everyday matters, both happy and sad.
Manos Hatzidakis summarized the key elements in three words with a wide presence in the vocabulary of modern Greek , , and (, , : love, joy, and sorrow).
A perhaps over-emphasized theme of rebetiko is the pleasure of using drugs (cocaine, heroin- etc.), but especially hashish. Rebetiko songs emphasizing such matters have come to be called (), although musically speaking they do not differ from the main body of rebetiko songs in any particular way.
Culture Rebetiko is closely related with nightlife entertainment: ouzeri, taverna (Greek tavern) and night centres.
Rebetiko is also sometimes related with the icon of mangas (, ), which means strong guy that "needs correction", a social group in the Belle Époque era'sThe time period in Greek history that began during the late 19th century and lasted until World War I is called Προπολεμική Εποχή "Antebellum era" in the Greek Literature and corresponds to the European Belle Époque. counterculture of Greece (especially of the great urban centers: Athens, Piraeus, and Thessaloniki).
Mangas was a label for men belonging to the working class, behaving in a particularly arrogant/presumptuous way, and dressing with a very typical vesture composed of a woolen hat (, ), a jacket (they usually wore only one of its sleeves), a tight belt (used as a knife case), stripe pants, and pointy shoes. Other features of their appearance were their long moustache, their bead chaplets (, sing. ), and their idiosyncratic manneristic limp-walking (). A related social group were the Koutsavakides (, sing. According to lexicographer Menos Filintas () their name comes from kottabos; according to the Manolis Triantafyllidis Foundation it derives from the surname of Dimitris "Mitsos" Koutsavakis, a notable mangas who lived in Piraeus: κουτσαβάκης.); the two terms are occasionally used interchangeably.
History
Initially a music associated with the lower classes, rebetiko later reached greater general acceptance as the rough edges of its overt subcultural character were softened and polished, sometimes to the point of unrecognizability. Then, when the original form was almost forgotten, and its original protagonists either dead, or in some cases almost consigned to oblivion, it became, from the 1960s onwards, a revived musical form of wide popularity, especially among younger people of the time.