NEW YORK – The second night of the two-part of “Rebetika – The Blues of Greece,” an “In-depth exploration of the musical tradition of rebetika presented by the Onassis Cultural Center NY simultaneously fulfilled the promise of the first presentation that the evolution of the beloved and fascinating musical genre would be addressed – and stimulated a thirst for more.
The Center’s Cultural Events Coordinator, Sophia Efthimiatou, offered an overview, in the words of the program, of “the urban popular songs and dances called rebetika,” which “have become as representative of Greece as flamenco is of Spain or the tango is of Argentina.”
The audience learned from Efthimiatou about composers like Vassilis Tsitsanis and Manolis Chiotis and the genre’s post-WWII development.
The pieces for the November 12 program were carefully chosen to represent the era, but singer Lena Kitsopoulou, guitarist Kostas Gerakis, accordionist Ilias Krommydas, and Georgios Petroudis on accordion accepted requests for the last third of the program, to the delight of the audience.
Kitsopoulou thanked the center and made a brief presentation, then, as she said, the musicians let the music speak for itself. There were many moments when the individual musicians shined, and each of the instrumentalists has fine voices.
The first song set the tone: “Panta Lipimeni – Always Sad.” In the darkened room, there was emotional tremolo on bouzouki, ardent strumming on the guitar, tender fingering on the accordion, and the musicians were off on a marvelous musical journey.
The audience, showing signs of fighting the impulse to dance from the start, were immobilized in their chairs by propriety, but the venue came to the rescue.
The elegant rectangular space with black walls and a white ceiling became a canvas for the imagination – part of the beauty of the Center’s brand new facilities – and the guests took flight, the wings of their souls stroking to the rebetiko beat, heading to points East: Piraeus, Thessaloniki, and lost but not forgotten Smyrna.
A generation after the burning of Smyrna, rebetika are still the songs of pain – more personal now, more about being brought low by lost love than by war and being ripped from one’s homeland.
In the second performance there were echoes of the poverty of refugees haunting the love songs of the next generation. Wounded hearts reflected the first rebetist’s experience with bodies and lives marked by madness and addictions born of aborted dreams and shattered hopes – it is the music of proud people turned into refugees, literally and figuratively, then and now.
The musicians served up a hearty meal of poverty, love, hope, and betrayal boiled in the angst that the police are always waiting outside – post-WWII Greece was not under dictatorship, but the early Cold War governments were extremely repressive, and the musical stew was enriched by the spice of lyricists’ humor.
As the songs rolled on, a theme emerged, especially from the females voices in the lyrics: forgiving the wayward lover.
The audience might have wondered, “Is it weakness or strength of character that makes such women forgive and forget?” The powerful and poignant lyrics, expressed by interpreters like Kitsopoulou, who is also an actress, declare that forgiveness among lovers can be acts of transcendence, not defeat.
The lyrics of the rebetists mean something. At their best, they reach Platonic heights, giving birth to a powerful vision of personal and social reality pulled from their pain.
Cracking with the fire of truth – and lies – experiences of intoxicating falsehoods and truths sublime, the lyrics inspire both passionate zeibekiko dancing and profound thought – a modern symposium the ancient philosophers would have appreciated.
And the social background seems to have come full circle as the painful songs of love now unfold amidst the Greek economic crisis.
“Ena tragoudi gia thn Ellada – a song for Greece, please” one guest shouted.
Krommydas replied: “They are all for Greece.”
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