Rembetika: Aşk, Gurbet, Hapis ve Tekke Şarkıları (Songs of love, exile, prison and hash dens). Istanbul/Athens/New York 78 rpm recordings (1926–1954). By Kollektif. £11.99/€17.63 (audio CD and booklet).
Having launched Rembetika 1 and 2, produced by Muammer Ketencioğlu, Kalan Music collected, with the production of Stelyo Berber and Pelin Suer, 78 rpm disks which were recorded under the name of “Rembetika” between 1926 and 1954 in Istanbul, Athens, and New York. The album includes love, exile, prison, and lodge songs. The album’s name, “Rembetika,” means rembetika songs which is the plural form of a musical style called rembetiko. From an etymological view, “rembetiko” music is supposed to have been derived from “rebenoc” in the Slav language: young person; “rembelos,” in Italian: reformist; “rembome” (verb) in Greek: to roam. This musical style was predominantly common between 1850 and 1950, especially where the Greek diaspora lived, mainly in Izmir, Istanbul, Thessaloniki, and Athens.
In 1922 during the Turkish Independence War, about 1 million Anatolian Greeks moved to Greece as a result of the Turkish victory over Greece, many of them taking refuge in bad neighborhoods in the port of Piraeus. Rembetika can be described as the songs in which the Greeks who had to leave Turkey in consequence of this war, called the Asia Minor Disaster, blended Aegean and Istanbul songs with Greek music. Mentioning the feeling of homesickness, longing for homeland, and memories, these songs have a lyrical atmosphere. These victims of compulsory immigration were looked down on, insulted by being called “Greek non-Muslim” on the Turkish side and “Turkish seed” on the Greek side, had to suffer poverty, and were in the position of “the other.”
Rembetiko basically comes from two traditions. The first is the Izmir style (smyrneika), a more joyful rembetiko; the second is the Piraeus type, which is lodge style. These two styles came together in Piraeus after the war. The origins of rembetiko are claimed to be related to prison songs. Known as the music of bullies, drug addicts, and prison aghas, rembetiko was able to enter into the entertainment places of the middle class and gain popularity thanks to artists like Vassilis Tsitsanis and Theodorakis. In the 1920s Greek musicians who had had to immigrate to Greece as a result of the war brought the Izmir style in rembetiko (smyrneika) to Athens, Thessaloniki, and Piraeus, together with such instruments as the violin, kemence, ud, kanun, and satur; and in 1932 the Piraeus style, which is composed of bouzouki, bağlama, and guitar, began to develop. Immigrants opened their own Cafe Amans and thus rembetiko got past the limits of prisons and lodges and started to voice the feelings of larger social environments.
Sold together with a comprehensive booklet, the album under review mostly includes songs which are still sung in Turkey even though they have different lyrics today. The songs are played with the various combinations of such instruments as kanun, kemence, ud, violin, clarinet, bouzouki, bağlama, mandolin, zil, kaşık, piano, and guitar. They are mostly in 9/4 or 9/8 rhythm, which is the basis of Aegean zeybek, a folk dance named after Aegean zeybeks and improvised by one person.
[This review has been edited for length; the full review may be read in MELA Notes no. 82, which will be posted soon on the MELA Notes webpage.]
Zeynep Gülçın Özkişi
Yıldız Technical University