Markos Vamvakaris

Author:
Publisher: Greeklines.com
ISBN: 9780993263309
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Markos Vamvakaris, born in 1905 in Syros was a pioneer of rebetiko, the urban folk music of Greece. The bouzouki was a disreputable instrument but he paved its path to glory. He spent many years, first as a stevedore in the port of Piraeus and then as a butcher in the slaughterhouse. During this time he fell in love with a tigress, his first wife, he learnt to smoke hashish and to play the 'sacred' instrument: 'I had a great passion. My life was all bouzouki. It took me over - but it also took me up in the world, way up ...' This is the first ever translation into English of the autobiography compiled by Angeliki Vellou Keil in 1972. It opens a window onto a time of extraordinary creativity in the history of Greek music, an explosion of songwriting in the interwar period. Its composers wrote about themselves and each other, the rituals of hashish smoking and the landmarks of a now vanished city. Markos the repentant sinner and living legend, looks back at childhood idylls in Syros, the arrival of the Asia Minor refugees, the terrible years of the Nazi Occupation, the ceaseless love affairs and disappointments, and the triumphs of the bouzouki. He offers a rare insight into the lives of toiling workers and the lowlife of one of the world's most ancient ports, where East meets West. Out of this melting pot he produced the classic songs that Greeks of all ages still love and know by heart.

The Famous Quartet of Piraeus

Author: Giorgos Skabardonis
Publisher: Europe Comics
ISBN:
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 85

Book Description
The Famous Quartet of Piraeus was formed in 1934 as a café band. It was the first group featuring the bouzouki and the baglama, and consisted of frontman Markos Vamvakaris, Giorgos Batis, Anestos Delias, and Stratos Pagioumtzis. Markos’ fiery love for Zingoala, his first wife, is the main and painful source of inspiration for the founder of rebetiko music. Starting as a skinner at a slaughterhouse, Markos becomes a pioneer who paves new paths for traditional Greek music and entertainment, running constantly afoul of the musical mores of the era—as well as the police, his wife, and the dictatorship of Metaxas. And all the while, war is approaching in the background like an inevitable chorus...

Road to Rembetika

Author: Gail Holst
Publisher: Denise Harvey (Publisher)
ISBN: 9789607120076
Category : Popular music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The rembetika, songs that were sung in the poor quarters of Smyrna, Istanbul and the ports of Greece in the late nineteenth century, and became the popular bouzouki music of the 1930s to 1950s, have many parallels with American blues. Like the blues, the rembetika were the music of outsiders, who developed their own slang and their own forms of expression. Road to Rembetika was the first book in English to attempt a general survey of the world of the 'rembetes' who smoked hashish and danced the passionate introspective zebekiko to release their emotions. The author Gail Holst, an Australian musician and writer who first came to Greece in 1965 and who has continued to perform and write about Greek music ever since, describes her own initiation into the rembetika, outlines its historical and sociological background, its musical characteristics and instrumentation. The second part of the book is a collection of rembetika songs in Greek with the English translation en face. The text is illustrated with photographs of the period, musical examples and original manuscripts of the songs. Although Road to Rembetika was first published many years ago, this revised edition of this now classic book still remains the most vibrant portrayal of this musical genre.

Greek Rebetiko from a Psychocultural Perspective

Author: Daniel Koglin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134803559
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Book Description
Greek Rebetiko from a Psychocultural Perspective: Same Songs Changing Minds examines the ways in which audiences in present-day Greece and Turkey perceive and use the Greek popular song genre rebetiko to cultivate specific cultural habits and identities. In the past, rebetiko has been associated chiefly with the lower strata of Greek society. But Daniel Koglin approaches the subject from a different perspective, exploring the mythological and ritual aspects of rebetiko, which intellectual elites on both sides of the Aegean Sea have adapted to their own world views in our age of globalized consumption. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods from ethnomusicology, ritual studies, conceptual history and music psychology, Koglin casts light on the role played by national perceptions in the processes of music production and consumption. His analysis reveals that rebetiko persistently oscillates between conceptual categories: it is a music both ours and theirs, marginal and mainstream, joyful and grievous, sacred and profane. The study culminates in the thesis that this semantic multistability is not only a key concept to understanding the ongoing popularity of rebetiko in Greece, and its recent renaissance in Turkey, but also a fundamental aspect of the human experience on the south-eastern borders of Europe.

Rebetiko Worlds

Author: Dafni Tragaki
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443804029
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 355

Book Description
Rebetiko Worlds invites the reader to share the experience of rebetiko music-making in the city of Thessaloniki today. It aims at representing an ethnographic world made of diverse realities united by the melancholic sounds of rebetiko songs. Rather than a musicological account on rebetiko music, this ethnography is about the human encounters happening in certain rebetiko venues of the Ano Poli area in Thessaloniki. How do people perceive, practice, feel and imagine rebetiko song—a music tradition coming from the beginning of the 20th century—today? What are the worldviews embodied and inspired in the context of the ongoing rebetiko performances? And, how may the exploration of rebetiko revivalist culture convey understandings of broader music-cultural orientations defining contemporary Greek society? This ethnography is primarily interested in knowing contemporary rebetiko culture as a ‘lived experience’. It captures instances of the life-worlds of the people involved in the rebetiko revival, which unravel the ways local traditions are re-defined in the context of the nostalgic re-invention of ‘ethnic’ music in postcolonial times. On this level, the representation of the discourses and aesthetics associated with rebetiko performances today instigate further interpretations of local cultural trends, the visions of ‘our’ future triggered by the mythicized representations of ‘our’ past. Beyond a window to the rebetiko worlds of today, this book recounts the story of an ethnographer engaged in fieldwork ‘at home’. It aims at communicating the dynamics of reflexivity shaping the ethnographic self by proposing an understanding of the fieldwork experience as a ‘special ontology’. In this way, it reveals the various dilemmas, moments of enthusiasm and moments of despair lived in the process of research in an attempt to illuminate the poetics of the subjective cultural knowledge. Rebetiko Worlds incites the reader to share the poetics of ethnographic ‘fiction’ and interpretation and, through this, the gradual ‘making’ of the ethnomusicologist in the field.

Ethnomusicology

Author: Jennifer Post
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136705198
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 468

Book Description
First published in 2011. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The No-Nonsense Guide to World Music

Author: Louise Gray
Publisher: New Internationalist
ISBN: 1906523703
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 171

Book Description
"World music" is an awkward phrase. Used to describe the hugely multifaceted nature of a range of typically non-English-language popular music from the world over, it's a tag that throws up as many problems as it does solutions. Louise Gray's The No-Nonsense Guide to World Music attempts to go behind the phrase to explore the reasons for the contemporary interest in world music, who listens to it, and why. Through chapters that focus on specific areas of music, such as rembetika, fado, trance music, and new folk, Gray explores the genres that have emerged from marginalized communities, music in conflict zones, and music as escapism. In this unique guide, which combines the seduction of sound with politics and social issues, the author makes the case for music as a powerful tool able to bring individuals together. Louise Gray is a writer and editor whose work on music and performing arts has appeared in the New Internationalist, The Wire, The Independent on Sunday, the Guardian, and Art Review. She co-edited Sound and the City (British Council, 2007), a book exploring the changing soundworld of China.

Calling on the Composer

Author: Julie Anne Sadie
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300107501
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 450

Book Description
Every musically curious traveler or reader will find this guidebook indispensable. Distinguished musicologists Julie Anne and Stanley Sadie have traveled across Europe to compile an unparalleled directory of more than three hundred houses and museums where composers have lived and worked. Lively commentary on each location is included.

Modern Greece

Author: Elaine Thomopoulos
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440854920
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 426

Book Description
This volume provides an overview of the history of Greece, while also focusing on contemporary Greece. Coverage includes such 21st-century challenges as the economic crisis and the influx of immigrants and refugees that is changing the country's character. This latest volume in the Understanding Modern Nations series explores Greece, the birthplace of democracy and Western philosophical ideas. This thematic encyclopedia is one-of-its kind in its down-to-earth approach and comprehensive analysis of complex issues now facing Greece. It analyzes such topics as government and economics without jargon and brings a lighthearted approach to chapters on such topics as etiquette (e.g., what gestures to avoid so as not to offend), leisure (how Greeks celebrate holidays), and language (the meaning of "opa"). No other book on Greece is organized like this thematic encyclopedia, which has more than 200 entries on topics ranging from Archimedes to refugees. Unique to this encyclopedia is a "Day in the Life" section that explores the actions and thoughts of a high school student, a bank employee, a farmer in a small village, and a retired couple, giving readers a vivid snapshot of life in Greece.

Greece Between East and West

Author: Richard Pine
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527501132
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Book Description
Greece Between East and West looks at the central geopolitical situation of Greece, and its pivotal role in the Balkans and the Levant. The trend towards “modernisation” and “westernisation” is examined in the light of traditional values in culture, language, history and politics which reflect Greece’s eastern legacy and the continuing presence of that legacy in contemporary society. It features original creative writing, an interview with a leading film-maker, provocative accounts of political and cultural agitation on the Aegean islands, aspects of Greek music and drama, plus historical accounts of Greek cities like Smyrna/Izmir and Alexandria, and the new phenomenon of China’s re-creation of the historic “Silk Road”. Additionally, Greece Between East and West features a Foreword by Roderick Beaton, one of the most distinguished scholars and commentators on Greek history and social affairs, and current Chair of the British School at Athens.