The 7 best Rebetiko tracks of all time
Rebetiko
The urban song of Greece's dispossessed, made in Piraeus by refugees expelled from Asia Minor after 1922. Bouzouki and baglamas, Ottoman modes, and lyrics about hashish, prison and exile that the state repeatedly banned.
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Markos Vamvakaris / Frangosyriani
A love song to a Catholic girl from Syros, by the man who assembled the classic line-up of two bouzoukis, baglamas and guitar. The most covered rebetiko there is.
Vassilis Tsitsanis / Synnefiasmeni Kyriaki
Begun in occupied Thessaloniki in 1943 and finished in Athens after the war. Greeks treat it as an unofficial anthem, which tells you what the occupation did to the song's subject.
Michalis Patrinos / Misirlou
An Eastern Mediterranean melody of unclear parentage, recorded in Athens, and thirty-five years later surf-picked by Dick Dale into something unrecognisable. Both versions are correct.
Rita Abatzi / To Minore Tis Avgis
Smyrneiko — the Asia Minor style, more ornamented and closer to Ottoman practice than the Piraeus school. Abatzi's voice is the argument for it.
Giorgos Batis / Ta Kavourakia
One of the Piraeus Quartet, singing about crabs and meaning something else entirely. Rebetiko's coded humour, written for people the police were listening to.
Vassilis Tsitsanis / Ftohologia
Tsitsanis moved the form off the hashish den and onto the general condition of being poor, which is how it survived the ban and became national music.
Sotiria Bellou / Ah Pou Ta Niata Mou
Bellou sang in a low register, drank, gambled and refused to be presentable. The greatest female voice in the tradition, and the least accommodated by it.