Rebetika Music

REBETIKA was the heavier "blues" style which developed when Anatolian refugees, finding themselves unwelcome and assimilation difficult, combined musical forces with Athens' lower class. Initially there was much cross-pollination with the Smyrneic genre, but these songs reflected the harsher realities of lives spent forgetting misfortunes through drinking, gambling, womanizing, and smoking hashish. Smyrneic instrumentalists and vocalists joined with, but soon gave way to, the bouzouki, baglama, guitar, and a blunter style of singing. At first shunned by the Athenian bourgeoisie, this music eventually achieved popularity and respect.

In 1921 the Greek army occupied Turkey at the instigation of England, France, Italy and Russia. The Ottoman empire was in a state of collapse and the Great Powers, eager to carve up the territory, let Greece know that if they were to take the coast of Asia Minor where there were two million Greeks living there from ancient times, they could expect support. (They were using Greece to do their dirty work for them since the Italians had invaded from the south and were marching North. They wanted to use the Greeks to stop them from taking the entire coast of Asia Minor.) All went well and the Greek army controlled Smyrna and the coast but then two things happened that sent events rapidly downhill. The Greek army decided to march inland and take Ankara while at the same time the French backed out of the deal. This caused the other powers to withdraw their support so as not to start another world war. The Greek army found itself in retreat from a Turkish army led by Kemal Attaturk. As they passed through towns and cities they were joined by the local Greek population who did not want to be left behind when the angry Turks swarmed into town. Thousands died and the city of Smyrna was burned.

As the army retreated back to Greece it brought with them the surviving Greek population of Asia Minor. By 1922 there were two million refugees in the country. These were Greeks who had never lived in Greece. They had come from the fertile lands of Anatolia but were now forced to live in a small mountainous country that could not support them, or in refugee settlements in Pireaus and Thessaloniki. It was in the cafes and hash dens near these settlements that what we know as Rembetika was forged from the early mainland movement with its bouzouki and the oriental tunes, rhythms and singing techniques that came from Asia Minor.  

Imagine yourself as a refugee. In Asia Minor you may have had a business, a nice home, money, friends, family. But in the slums of Athens all you had was whatever you could carry with you out of Turkey, and your shattered dreams. You went from being in the middle class to being underground in a foreign country that did not particularly want you. Rembetika was the music of these outcasts. The lyrics reflected their surroundings, poverty, pain, drug addiction, police oppression, prison, unrequited love, betrayal and hashish. It was the Greek urban blues. 
 

http://www.greecetravel.com/music/rembetika/