Rebetika: The Double-descended Deep Songs of Greece

Abstract

The Greek intellectual knows nothing of the rebetika, of his earthy companion's ability to lose himself in the bodily pleasure of the dance, but is aware of his insufficiency. In discussing the rebetika, the 'Zorba factor' cannot be discounted. Like many other styles of popular music, including tango, fado, blues and flamenco, the rebetika are commercially successful popular songs. It was in the 1930s that male singers accompanied by bouzoukis began recording in Greece and a different style of rebetika emerged. In this early stage, there seems to have been considerable overlap between Asia Minor style songs and what was to become an increasingly distinct Piraeus-based style. If rebetika could be said to have crystallized as a pan-Hellenic form of popular music in the 1930s, it is only in the post-war period that it was discovered by intellectuals and began to slowly make its way into more ambitious forms of popular culture.

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