The “opening” from the rebetiko repertoire to laïko

Positions & oppositions
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The bouzouki players hold the power in the bands; basically, they call the shots, along with the singers. If the bouzouki player knows the song (and someone sings it), it will be played. If the guitarist suggests something and the bouzouki player or the singer won’t play or sing it, the song is dead in the water!

Quite a few musicians who start out with “hardcore” or purely rebetiko repertoire later, after a few years, “branch out” in other directions as well. Where once you would hear the player play Markos, after a few years he becomes ecstatic playing some popular syrtoroumbes from the ’60s, some entechno numbers, some cheesy PASOK-era skyladika songs, and so on and so forth. And the singer who used to give it everything on stage with Abatzis suddenly closes her eyes and lets “My Own Sins” pour out through the microphone…

Of course, the descriptions above are not intended to “belittle” this particular repertoire (which, in my opinion, is dreadful compared with other rebetiko gems), nor to criticise the musicians, but simply to give you an easy-to-understand example.

Of course, life moves on and new compositions emerge which I believe can aesthetically be viewed as an extension—for example, some by Korakakis and Emmanouilidis, which are 100% centred on the trichordo. But that’s not what we’re talking about here.

I understand that some possible excuses / reasons why musician-performers / singer-artists might do this are:

  1. They start getting bored of playing the same things over and over again

  2. They seek greater virtuosity/technical ability in terms of speed and showmanship

  3. People ask for other things as well

  4. They can’t find work playing only rebetiko

  5. They don’t have blinkers on

  6. Their aesthetic sensibilities become diluted

Could some members add, either based on their thoughts or their own experience, what they think?

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Something that also ties in with all six you mentioned, Babis:

  1. The hardcore pre-war three-string-bouzouki kids are growing up!

Brilliant expression!

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They come from another species

and return to their roots

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I think all six of the reasons you mentioned could apply. If they’re professional musicians/singers, 3 and 4 may carry particular weight.

As for the “PASOK-style skyladika”, I imagine you mean something like this beloved song by Andreas! :slightly_smiling_face:

To tell you the truth, I like this song too, perhaps because it reminds me of celebrations from days gone by!

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Following the recent death of Savvopoulos, I was watching some videos from his show featuring Harry Klynn, Savvopoulos and others, and I was thinking that future historians and philologists will study the 1980s in the same way that they study the Golden Age of Pericles.

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Oh, come on…

(1234567890-=)

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Not quite like the Golden Age, perhaps, but it has indeed been studied “in its small and great details, by 145 experts who, with thoroughness, academic rigour and voluntary work, have produced 264 entries and 770 documents”

GREECE IN THE 1980s
A SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND CULTURAL DICTIONARY

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Well, all right! Of course it has been studied, as was of course demonstrated—and in precisely the manner in which it was of course demonstrated. That would be the last straw…

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I’ll speak as a music listener, but I believe that, to some extent, something similar applies to musicians too. I would consider it absurd, and perhaps even a dead end, for someone to spend their entire life listening to, studying or playing only one genre of music. Especially for a musician who plays an instrument to limit their relationship with that instrument to just one particular sound. The more they learn about their instrument and its capabilities, the more they will want to try it even in genres that seem, on the face of it, incompatible (e.g. Latin music on a three-stringed instrument). I think it’s a natural instinct that drives us towards self-improvement. Even as a listener, I can’t imagine keeping only certain parts of my brain stimulated exclusively by specific types of music. And the most important thing for me as a listener is that I connect music with emotions and mental states. In every state, I’m drawn to listen to something different, and if I had the ability to play music whenever I wanted, I would play according to my emotional and mental state. For me, a characteristic example is Dalaras, who has changed musical genres many times—not, I believe, so much out of a need to make a living, but because of his personal experimentation and musical exploration. Of course, making a living also plays a role for a professional musician. For example, I know drummers and bass players who used to play in bouzoukia venues, and when the night was over, they would sit down and play a bit of rock among themselves. And with my father-in-law, who played the bouzouki in bouzoukia venues and laïká nightclubs, when he played with his friends, they would play rebetiko and laïkó music from up to around 1960–65.

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What Babis describes is very familiar. I should point out that things don’t necessarily have to sink to the depths of light-pop-and-dog-song trash, etc. The distance may be from the Tetράδα to Tsitsanis, and I say this as someone who has taken part in a 24-hour revelry without a single Tsitsanis song. What follows is more about that subtle difference, which may not be perceptible to an “outside observer”.
To avoid adding more numbers, for (1) I’ll cite a lack of connection with the songs as the cause. Because if you really love a song, you’ll play it every time as if the lyrics were unfolding at that very moment, adding your own little contribution to the interpretation and feeling every moment of it.
I would also add the transition from music functioning as a community tradition to credited, original creation — Periklis analysed this brilliantly at one point, and I’m borrowing the idea from him. Entire generations have expressed themselves in every aspect of life through one kind of music: their own traditional music. At some point, though, the need for something new and original, bearing a more personal stamp from the creator, gains ground (some early rebetiko was this kind of music too, as a mixture and an innovation). This development is not a bad thing, of course, provided the performer can enter the appropriate “mode” each time, as required by the kind of music being played.

And to stay more on topic, I’ve experienced this myself with friends who, although they play beautifully and we have a great time, have at some point ruined gatherings with pitiful laïkó songs or brought lovely evenings to a close with some dog-song number more obscure than an unreleased track by Yovan Tsaous. I have two thoughts on this. One concerns the search for unknown and never-played songs, a “for connoisseurs” hunt that has dredged up mediocre rebetiko, ephemeral light music, dated laïkó and disgusting dog songs from the obscurity they rightly deserved. And this rubbish is even elevated into a “cult discovery”. This brings us to my second thought: that we live in an age of rapid change and incongruous variety. So, in the middle of this soup, we casually throw in whatever comes to hand, creating a programme with no coherence or character.

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And a little dialogue:

True, but perhaps they don’t have such a deep connection with, say, the Piraeus style.

I don’t think so when it comes to such a different era and aesthetic within “bouzouko songs”; that applies much more to rockers and the like, who often rearrange rebetika songs. In other words, a skyladikos singer won’t readily play rebetika, whereas a metalhead will get fired up by it and might even combine the two at some point.

Very true, unfortunately…

If we’re talking about traditional music, there’s no need for anything else as long as it fulfils its role within the community. Outside that framework, things change, but in any case it’s good for the performer to be aware of what they are performing.

Neither Latin music needs the trichordo, nor does the trichordo need Latin music. There’s also the guitar, which is a more universal instrument.

A typical example of the “I butcher everything, I knife everything” supermarket mentality.

All of them worked in skyladika purely to make a living, and at great emotional cost. Giokarinis describes it brilliantly in “The Rock ’n’ Roll Nostalgic”.

That is very beautiful, and I completely agree! But it works perfectly well across any range of musical influences, from Manolis Karapiperis, who played the tunes he remembered from Samos, to Theologitis-Katsaros, who played everything.

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Even unemployed classical musicians make a living playing in skyladika (Greek folk-music clubs). More generally, in music venues.

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I think that treating rebetiko as a museum piece has given it many of the problems found in other musical genres; that is, nobody pays attention to contemporary music belonging to the genre, even though it is sometimes excellent, nobody pays attention to the central role of dance in rebetiko — namely, that the music was made for the listeners to participate in it fully (and we forget what role the tekkes played before they became marginalised) — and, generally speaking, as happened with entechno, traditional music and so on, we have reached the sad situation where

A. the so-called laïko, skyladiko, National Road skyladiko and so on are where one can dance and shout out expressions of admiration, pain and so on, even if they are fake and just for fun. The category also includes many traditional bands from the 1980s onwards, the so-called skylonisiotika, skylokritika and so on.

B. everything else is considered serious music, and therefore the audience must not participate; we have reached the point where, not only with rebetiko but also with other genres such as traditional music, it is considered insulting to the artists if some people eat in the background, or if some people get up to dance. Some artists even ban it in order to show how high-quality their music is.

So, on the one hand, if you want to express yourself live through good music, you cannot do so unless you are part of a group that plays music; you have to subject yourself either to the torture of bad music or to the torture of excessive volume, which makes every kind of music bad. Or you have to endure the torture of silence and stillness with good music, because otherwise you will insult the musicians. In the meantime, we are losing not only popular arts that go along with good music, but also an entire culture of good manners: for example, when to talk and when not to while the orchestra is playing, when to clink glasses and when not to while someone is singing, when to get up to dance, how to dance, in what order, who gives permission, what is considered ugly dancing and what is not.

All of this has a huge class dimension — that is, which genres we look down on and which we do not, what the musicians will earn a living from in a venue and why, why laïko is considered different from rebetiko, why today’s rebetiko repertoire does not include contemporary songs that technically belong to the genre, who decides on the rebetiko repertoire and how it reaches the audience, and so on.

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Εναρμόνιση στο ρεμπέτικο
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35 messages were split into a new topic: Harmonisation in rebetiko

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I’ll explain how I experience it by replying to @icetelli’s original post. Of course, I’m not a professional musician, and that may affect my answer.

The bouzouki I had built at first was a four-string one because I initially went to a teacher who played that type. Later, I got involved with a lovely group of people and we played rebetiko, so I switched to the three-string bouzouki, which I ultimately liked more. We’re talking about 30 years ago now. That’s where I learnt to play my first pieces, and the songs were simply pre-war ones (or from around the time of the war), though mainly rebetiko. Markos, Delias, Batis. I struggled to play the more technically demanding songs by Tsitsanis and Chiotis. Perhaps that played a part. In other words, Markos’s rebetiko songs are simpler than those by Tsitsanis, Chiotis and so on, so Markos is ideal for beginners.

As I became more proficient, I started getting into Tsitsanis, Chiotis, Papaioannou and Kaplanis, but mainly their well-known pieces. The really well-known ones! ‘Nytchose choris fengari’ (‘The Moonless Night’), ‘Tha kano ntou’ (‘I’ll Make a Raid’), and so on. I think a combination of factors is at work here: the satisfaction of playing songs that everyone knows, playing well-known pieces and feeling pleased that I’ve reached this point. At the same time, my musical tastes at that time revolved mainly around these songs. I hadn’t gone into greater depth yet, and that also plays a part. It’s perfectly natural, because gaining a deeper understanding and acquiring experience is a journey, not simply one giant leap.
I remember that at that time, whenever I met up with someone who was a much better player than me and we played together, they would play pieces I didn’t know, and I would often think: “But there are so many lovely, well-known songs—why is he playing these pieces that hardly anyone knows?”

Today, I’m exploring those pieces that were unknown to me back then. These days I enjoy playing songs from the 1940–1955 period, such as ‘O taxidiotis’ (‘The Traveller’) by Mitsakis, ‘Tsig gane, spase to violi’ (‘Gypsy, smash the violin’) by Tsitsanis, ‘Skotiniase’ (‘It grew dark’) by Mitsakis and ‘Katse kala’ (‘Behave yourself’) by Chiotis, and I’m captivated by the melodies of these pieces.

What happened, and why did I move on from Markos’s pre-war rebetiko and so on?
I think it’s a combination of factors:
i) A better knowledge of the instrument, which also gave me a greater ability to appreciate the melodies in these unfamiliar songs.
ii) My musical tastes were companions on this journey of change. I mainly listen to this sort of song and try to listen to it while feeling each song and its melody, imagining what it would be like to play it on the instrument. At the same time, the people I play with today are on the same wavelength. Perhaps choosing one’s circle is a two-way process. In any case, each reinforces the other.
iii) Perhaps I’m also to blame for getting tired of playing some of the better-known songs, though that doesn’t mean I don’t still love them. But a whole new world opened up to me.

I imagine that playing on stage is different. Here, things also have to do with the people listening and taking part! You have to interact with the audience and give them some of the pieces they enjoy. And these days, people like pieces they hear often. In other words, familiar pieces!

I can’t imagine myself playing newer songs in the syrtoroumba style, although at a celebration, and in the context of playing on stage, I would play ‘To diko sou paploma’ (‘Your quilt’) or even ‘Kapetanakis’!

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Say that again, Adminora!

Since you’re not saying it, I’ll post it again.

So they’ll really take it in…

Well done. A nice and honest recap :musical_notes:

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