The Rembetiko Music Rembetiko music is a very popular genre of Greek Folk music. It is often called the Greek form of blues music, because it was merely formed in the same social background. Although it is not played that much anymore, its melodies, harmonies and scales have been a big influence for Greek music since. That is why I chose to do a research on it s history and on its particular musical characteristics, that made it so popular, not only in Greece, but around the world too. Definition of Rembetiko Rembetiko is the music played by the rembetes. Although musicologists are not sure about the term s etymology, they describe the so-called rembetes as vagrant, tainted, marginal people, or people from the underworld. They were mostly people who gathered in small cafes and tekes to smoke hashish, drink alcohol and play songs, in order to express their life s suffering. The ensembles occurring from those cafes would look something like the picture on the right (Photo of the Rembetes of Karaiskaki taken in Peiraious 19 ). The most significant rempetologist was Elias Petropoulos. History and evolution of Rembetiko Rembetiko started in the so-called aman-cafis and the tekedes (places where people gathered to smoke hashish) in Greece but mainly in Asia Minor. Those were cafes, that started appearing in 1873 and in which there was live music. The main form of music were amanedes, which were turkish, often improvised and highly melismatic songs, in which the singer s suffering for something (usually about hashish, narghiles and love-stories) is expressed. Ensembles, consisting of a combination of the folowing instruments : santouris, ouds, laouds, flutes or violins, were accompanying the singers. Those instruments were chosen, because they supported non-tempered notes, so they could play the Arab scales without approximations. People there smoked hashish in narghiles, while playing, singing or dancing to the music. In the late 19 th, early 20 th century the café amans and tekes decreased in popularity. The Greek government prohibited hashish in Greece, in 1890. This led to the people, who used to pass time in those cafés, being criminalised and marginalised gradually from Greek society. Another cause was the apparition of the Athenian revue. This theatrical genre had music, which consisted of copied western melodies (of that time). The genre got very popular and became mainstream in the 1900-1920, supplanting every other form of entertainment, including the aman-cafis. Meanwhile in America, Greek musicians were expanding and recording new songs. The first rempetiko-form apeared in a recorded album in 1896 in the studios of Berliner in America. The rembetiko, or what is now considered rembetiko, appeared later, when Markos Vamvakaris started growing in popularity in the 1930s and recording some of his work.
Another very important event was the catastrophe in Asia Minor in 1922. The catastrophe triggered a massive migration wave of minor Asians to Greece. The minor Asian refugees immigrated in boats and accumulated in the ports that the arrived. The port with the most refugees was in Piraeus, in Athens. The refugees changed 2 big things : 1. They arrived in a country, that was recovering from the destructions of the first world war. Greece wasn t prepared nor ready for that, and greek society was poor. In consequence, the arrival of nearly 1 million refugees made things for the lower class even worse, and social disparities in Greek society grew. 2. They brought their culture with them, which includes their music, which was highly influenced by the Arab culture. The refugees s songs in combination with the Greek folk music all over Greece is what gave birth to the rembetiko. The rembetiko was born in this athmosphere of social problems, in the big harbour cities in Greece, in Athens (Piraeus), but also in other cities like Volos or Thessaloniki. People had the urge to express their suffering from the social problems, by making songs. At the time of the Asia Minor catastrophe, the Greek opereta was the mainstream musical style, although in the lower social classes the rempetiko was growing. European recording companies setteled in Greece after 1924 and many of the musicians among the refugees became the companies s directors. They chose the music that was going to be recorded and produced, so they chose people they knew, that played this first form of rembetiko, which was still instrumented in the way they did in the aman cafis, and used the same arabic scales, to make recordings. Albums were released in Greece and spread through the radio. Gradually the rembetiko evolved into an independent music genre. The main instruments became the bouzouki and the baglamas. In 1931, recording factory columbia started producing rembetiko. This huge production of rembetiko music made it grow in popularity. Many of the rembetiko composers in the 1920s-1930s were inspired by the ensemble of Markos Vamvakaris, the Τ ρ ς ο Π ρα ώς (foto on the left) which translates to the Piraeus quartet (meaning that the ensemble consisted of 4 musicians) The 3 other players were Anestis Delias (right side), Stratos Pagioumtzis (left side) and Giorgos Mpatis (bottom middle). Markos Vamvakaris (in the middle, standing) is often reffered to as the father of rempetika. He was the one establishing the Piraeus style rempetiko, and was also the most famous and popular rempetiko musician. He was also the one popularising the idea of an ensemble consisting of a bouzouki, a baglama and a guitar. I will tell you a bit about him later. In 19 Greece s dictator Ioannis Metaxas imposed a censorship in the music production. Melodies consisting of Arab scales were prohibited because Metaxas wanted to set an end to the tukish-arabic roots in the Greek culture. In addition to that, lyrics that made any propaganda for the kommunist ideologies were censored too. In addition to that rempetiko songs were stigmatised as the music of the underworld.
Many rempetiko musicians stopped recording as a result, and the rempetiko production became smaller. However a new wave of composers (Vasilis Tsitsanis along with Marika Ninou, Manolis Hiotis, Giorgos Mitsakis, Giannis Papaioannou) became active from 1938 and produced again in 1946 after the censorship. The old rembetiko players at that time were either dead, or (like Markos Vamvakaris) having a hard time to survive the huge concurrence of the new rembetiko composers. With the appearance of new singers and interpreters, the rempetiko grows in popularity, which results in expanding its topics (arhontorembetika appear) and changing the places it was heard. This leads later to a revival of rempetiko music, in which Markos Vamvakaris also plays a significant role. In the 70s this great demand for new rembetiko leads to the industrialisation of rembetiko. This leads to less elaborated songs being produced, until at some point it wasn t rembetiko anymore. Most of the researchers conclude that rebetiko died in the mid 1950s. The rembetiko instrumentation Although the first rempetico was played by ensembles consisting of santouris, violins, ouds or clarinets, the most common instruments were tempered instruments with frets, such as the bouzouki, the baglamas and the guitar. Ensembles with such instruments were called kompanies. The kompanies were sometimes accompanied by some percussion. Usually they used alternative percussion. There were 4 big alternative percussion instruments: the spoons, the kompoloi, the zilia and the glasses. The spoons were wooden and the would be played usually by the dancer, by holding in each hand two spoons with the grooved side out, and hitting one another by opening and closing his fingers. The kompoloi (which was something like a rosary) was held hanging tightly from the vest or shirt button with the left hand while the right hand rhythmically rubed the beads with the rim of a small, thick wineglass. The zilia were metal cymbals with a hole in the middle. The glasses (usually wine-, or ouzo glasses)were placed on the fingers, 2 on each hand, and then hit together with the fingers. Another form of alternative percussion was the hitting on the body of the instruments. Of course one of the most common instruments was the singer, because with no singer, there are no songs. There is some instrumental rempetiko pieces, such as ο όρ ο, by Ioannis Chalikias, but they are not so common. Characteristics and form of the rembetiko Rembetiko songs often start with an intro called taksimi, an improvised intro to the actual song. The improvisation is based on the dromos of the song, the tempo is free, and the melody is highly ornate. The taksimi is sometimes accompanied by rithmical arpeggios of chords, that impose a tempo, from which the bouzouki player is escaping, by playing with in an Ad Libitum tempo, unsteady, everchanging and expressive. Most of Markos Vamvakaris s songs are characteristic for the rembetiko. The song called Μ α ό ορ αχρ, f. ex. talks about a beautiful brunete. In a recording he did in 1938, there is a bouzouki, a baglamas and a guitar accompanying a singer. The song talks about love, and uses rempetiko scales. The structure is typical: taksimi, a highly ornamented bouzouki solo break, and then an alternation of verse and
bouzouki-break, and a bouzouki finish. These are all rembetiko characteristics. Other songs, like the Φρα οσ ρ α, which he wrote for his homeland, the Fragki, featured in a recording from 1932 a second voice, singing the main melody in parallel 6 ths or 3rds. This feature influenced a big part of Greek songwriting until nowadays. The rembetiko modes and scales The rembetiko has a system of modes and scales, which is a bit different from the one in western classical music. The scales in the rempetiko are called ρό ο which means roads. The scales in the rembetiko were basically arab scales. However after the rembetiko peiraiotiko (the rempetiko that developed in the 1930s), the scales changed. There was the problem, that they had to convert the makam system scales in the tempered system, so they could play rembetiko with their bouzoukia and guitars. In order to do that, they took the non tempered notes, whose pitch was in the middle of one tempered semitone, in the scales, and played an approximation of this particular pitch. They used the raised note when playing ascending phrases, and the lowered note when descending. The scales in rembetiko (dromoi) can be described as sequences that are formed by combining groups of notes in contiguous degrees with well defined intervals. These groups of notes are called elements. There are 12 types of elements : Bouselik, Chisar, Chitzaz, Choumagioun, Kiournti, Nikriz, ousak, Pireotikos, Saba, Sazkiar, Segkiach, Tsargkiach. Those elements are usually 4 or 5 notes long and they all have the dorian D mode as a base. In fact, the Bouselik element is identical to the first 5 notes of the dorian D mode. The other elements very often start from a D or an A in dorian mode, but there is always one augmented 2 nd interval in the element between any 2 of its degrees and added some accidental notes. For instance, in the chitzaz element there is an interval of an augmented 2 nd between the II. and III. and there is a Eb and a F#. The dromoi that are formed with those elements can be categorised into 9 groups, according to their composing elements : Araban, Bouselik, Chitzaz, Kiournti, Nikriz, Ntougkiach, Rast, Segkiach, Tsargkiach. For example dromoi in the Bouselik group are composed by one Bouselik element plus another, different element, the Kournti element for instance. The melodies in the songs are usually built on one dromos, but they might also modulate to other dromoi, just like in western music. In the taksimia, the improvised intros, the player uses the common notes of some dromi, to modulate from dromos to dromos. Through their augmented 2 nd intervals, those scales can produce many dissonances, giving the performer (the one singing, but also the one improvising a taksimi a wide range of intervals with which they can express themselves, or the lyrics they want to sing. This was very fortunate for the purpose of rembetiko music, which was expressing the struggles in the everyday life of the rembetes. However with the influence of western music, minor and major scales were adopted in rembetiko. One example of that is the previously mentioned Φρα οσ ρ α, which is in D minor. The western scales were called α όρ and όρ major and minor.
Some songs and Composers Here are some songs based on various scales: Markos Vamvakaris Dio merakia stin kardia mou (1940) O xarmanis (1933) Alana Piretissa (1934) Karantouzeni (1932) Mou eipan na min s agapo 19 9 Plimmyra (1934) Ta dio sou xeria pirane (1939) Antilaloun oi fylakes (1935) Apostolos Chatzichristos Paramponiariko mou (1938) I pentamorfi (1949) Mou milas me maska (1940) O agymnastos (1940) Vasilis Tsitsanis Ksimeronei kai vradiazei (1949) Giannis Papaioannou Pseutra tis agapis (1939) Pente Ellines ston Adi (1947) Vadizo me parapono (1939) Exo ta panta varethei (1948) Antonis Diamantidis Pou na vro ginaika na sou moiazei (1939) Other rempetes were: Spyros Peristeris, Kostas Tzobenos, Giorgos Batis, Kostas Skarvelis and Vaggelis Papazoglou. Sources: http://www.rebetiko.gr/history.php http://www.rebetiko.gr/arthra.php?article=608 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjx-hlrewzq&feature=related https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-9zk5b_pm8&feature=related http://antikleidi.com/2013/12/01/rempetiko/ http://www.istoria.gr/may02/5.htm http://www.rembetiko.gr/forums/showthread.php?t=29052 http://rebet-topic.blogspot.lu/2014/10/blog-post_14.html http://www.worldlibrary.org/articles/eng/rembetiko#rebetiko_in_the_united_states