51��������

Course Description

Summary

Rebetiko was an urban underground music genre that flourished in Greece in the early 20th century. A kind of outlaw blues, rebetiko emerged from the poorest quarters of Athens in the 19th century, its songs typically dealing with themes of exile, wandering the streets after dark, taking drugs and drinking to excess, loving the wrong person, imprisonment, death, and the harsh lives of people displaced by war. The word “rebetiko” derives from the Turkish word “rebet,” meaning rebellious or disobedient and the songs revolve around the lifestyles of the “manghes,” people living by their wits, wheeling and dealing—classic antiestablishment gadabouts. Held in deep suspicion by the police, manghes, their songs and musical instruments were often banned for their blatant antiauthoritarianism. The genre evolved again after the 1923 Population Exchange Between Greece and Turkey, when a million and a half Greek refugees from Asia Minor poured into the urban centers of Greece, particularly Athens, finding themselves on the fringes of society. These newly arrived musicians—Jews, Armenians, Roma, and others— brought the rhythms, singing styles, and melodic modes of Turkey with them and developed a new genre of rebetiko called smyrneiko. Ultimately, rebetiko, its composers and performers became wildly popular through recordings and live performance, making an indelible mark on the evolution of Greek music. In this ensemble, we’ll learn the instrumental and vocal hits and hidden gems of rebetiko, focusing on iconic composers like Vassilis Tsitsanis, Markos Vamvakaris, and Apostolos Kaldaras, and magnetic performers like Roza Eskenazi, Rita Abadzi, Giorgos Mouflouzelis, Sotiria Bellou, and many more. We will develop an understanding of rebetiko performance practice—the singing and playing style, the feel of the rhythms, and the character of the songs. Along the way, students will learn about the colorful lives of rebetiko masters and the turbulent history of Greece in the first half of the 20th century.