Βρήκα την εξής ενδιαφέρουσα εργασία για το “κάντο” στην Κωνσταντινούπολη:
Περιμένω τα σχόλια σας! 
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Εύα μου, προσωπικά θα σε απογοητεύσω… 200 σελίδες ειδικά και μόνο για το Κάντο, είναι πάρα πολλές για κάτι ενδιαφέρον μεν, αλλά όχι και πρώτο στη λίστα των «προς ανάγνωσιν»…
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Δεν πειράζει! Και εγώ δεν αφήνω σχόλια σε όλα τα θέματα! Απλώς βρήκα ομοιότητες ανάμεσα στον κόσμο των “kantosu” και το κοινό τους και τον κόσμο του ρεμπέτικου και σμυρνέικου. Φαίνεται πως το kanto ήταν το αγαπημένο είδος των λαϊκών στρωμάτων και ακόμα τον “υπόκοσμο” της Πόλης:
Class identity, of course, represents another fundamental aspect of kanto culture. As
we have seen, kanto’s origins lay in the underclasses of Galata, and the genre was in this
way rather similar to other underworld genres of performance, such as rembetiko, that
evolved in an environment of illicit activity and poverty. The world of Peruz was, at this
time, the same world as the tulumbacıs and sailors who made up her fanbase, or the serial
killer Bıçakçı Petri who attacked her on-stage – that is, the world of kabadayılık and
külhanbeylik. As Sadi Yaver Ataman writes, they were “bald, burly, one-eyed, stunted, fat,
and hulking types, with nerves of steel, busted lips, and moustaches like scimitars; totally
worthless, scruff-of-the-neck sort-of characters.” Ahmet Rasim also gives us a colorful
depiction of an early kanto audience:
“Among all the people hanging around, there were gunners from the Tersane,
female bath attendants wearing jodhpurs and hooded sack coats, male bath
attendants, spies from the police, stevedores and barge-men; as to their ages,
there were children of about fourteen or fifteen years old.”
Ahmet Rasim goes on to describe fights and rivalries among this crowd, which
could begin with simple food fights and insults and end in attacks with “straight razors,
knives, iron bars, and sometimes pistols.” What is often missed in Rasim’s depiction is
the strikingly young ages of both the kantocus and their fans, especially if we remember
that Peruz herself was only fourteen when she took to the stage. Even the most seemingly
“respectable” audience members – the artillerymen from the Tersane (Ottoman Arsenal) –
are not in fact as they appear, for during the period in which Ahmet Rasim was writing,
dissolute street youth and orphans were forcibly conscripted into the artillery corps of
Tophane or the Arsenal as a means to keep them from engaging in begging and violent
crime.
We may thus understand the kanto audience, at the genre’s emergence, as being
essentially youth of the city’s underclasses – perhaps, to some extent, the equivalent of the
şehir oğlanları (city boys) that plagued Ottoman authorities earlier in the city’s history. As
a student at the Darüşşafaka boarding school, Rasim was strictly warned not to engage with
these youth, as well as to avoid Galata altogether; that he and his friends nevertheless
became entrenched within the scene demonstrates the attractiveness of this culture, and to a certain extent, we might even consider them to be the late Ottoman equivalent to today’s
“hipsters.”
It is probably this early obscurity which encouraged the later association
between kanto and camp: as kanto moved into the realm of mass culture, a devoted core of
appreciators developed which included “tasteful” intellectuals like Rasim and Muhtar Alus.
It was this urban clique which retained and preserved the memories of kanto esoterica; as
for the kabadayıs, tulumbacıs, and Tersane conscripts, who formed the true early core of
this subculture, unfortunately little remains for us but their names.
Σύμφωνα με τις παραπάνω περγραφές παρμένες από την εργασία, το καντο ήταν μία λαϊκή μουσική, τουλάχιστο στην πρώιμη της μορφή…δεν ξέρω κατά πόσο η μεταγενέστερη “αναβίωση” στα gazino είχε το ίδιο κοινό.
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Βρήκα και πιο «επιστημονικοφανή» δικαιολογία: ενώ εγώ ερευνώ, υποτίθεται, τη λαϊκή μουσική, το Κάντο δεν είναι λαϊκή μουσική… 