"Rebetiko manages with a wonderful fusion to combine speech, music and movement. From composition to performance, the conditions for this triple expressive coexistence are instinctively created, which sometimes seems to reach the limits of perfection - morphologically reminiscent of the ancient tragedy...
The composition of the song is based on the dance movement, with three characteristic rhythms, the zeibekiko, the hasapiko and the serbian"
Manos Hadjidakis,1949
Rebetiko first appeared in prisons shortly before the mid 1900s. During the reign of Otto and George I, in Plaka, in the Medrese’ prison, a place of executions, the first Rebetiko songs were born, the so-called "murmurika", which are sung by the convicts. Sevdalitika and protorebetika - the so-called "gialadika", from the often repeated word "giala-giala" or "gialeleli" - appear in Piraeus and grow in neighborhoods where the poor working class lives.
As a music genre, the term "rebetiko" first appeared between 1910 and 1913 on the labels of two gramophone records, recorded in Istanbul. The Rebetes themselves call their songs "folk songs". After the arrival of the Asia Minor refugees in 1922, the Smyrnaean songs of the refugees with oud and santouri became very popular- with Rosa Eskenazy being the leading figure, the most famous and beloved rebetiko singer. The most famous composer of the Smyrnaean School, Panagiotis Tountas belongs to the group of musicians from Asia Minor who further cultivated the spread of Rebetiko in Greece.
The next decade is the golden age of rebetiko, with the company "The famous Piraeus foursome", Markos Vamvakaris and especially Vassilis Tsitsanis, the godfather of modern Greek folk music, in whose hands the bouzouki becomes the national instrument. Other composers, but also lyricists, performers, players, orchestrators & conductors were Manolis Chiotis, George Mitsakis, Giannis Papaioannou, Panos Petsas, etc. This decade, a thematic renewal of the lyrics is taking place. Now the subculture is receding, that is, drugs, crime, jail, vendetta, etc., topics which dominated Rebetiko’s first period. Poverty, social injustice, labor, immigration, pain and suffering of life emerge as topics. A constant theme in Rebetiko is the woman - love, especially unrequited, but also songs about beauty and love are the dominant theme in the lyrical repertoire.
After WWII and especially after the liberation, Rebetiko is recognized as a mainstream popular folk music. New singers appear, the extraordinary Sotiria Bellou and Prodromos Tsaousakis. Some music scholars believe that by the mid-1950s, Rebetiko, in its original form, died, but reality is that it was fused creatively, for example with Nikos Skalkotas, who fused Rebetiko music and Greek symphonic creation. In the ‘60s, the research interest in Rebetiko resurfaced, musicologists and music historians published studies and anthologies and re-recorded past successes, while during the last period of the military dictatorship in Greece, the youth suddenly began to love the urban folk songs. "Rebetiki Istoria" is released, a collection of six records of Rebetiko music, which sells hundreds of thousands of copies.
The Rebetiko now officially makes it to Unesco’s intangible cultural heritage list.
