Various Artists - Rembetika 2: More Of The Secret History Of Greece's Underground Music 4 x CDs (due to weight, this price for the USA only. Outside of the USA, the price will be adjusted as needed) (Mega Blowout Sale)
SKU
23-JSP 77105
“Recording of Rembetica began in Athens around 1925, stimulated by the presence of many fine Greek-Ottoman musicians among the refugees who arrived in Greece in 1922 and afterward. However, from the early 20th century examples of the genre were recorded in Constantinople and Smyrna by sound engineers from the major companies. In the US, from c. 1915, a stream of fine material was waxed for the thousands of Greek emigrants.”
“This volume along with its forerunner, remain the "gold standard" of retrieved songs from Anatolia brought to Greece by the dispossessed after they had been pushed out of the homes of their ancestors.
The economy of their home country, Greece, after the First World War, was in shambles. The refugees were unable to bring the wealth which they had accumulated in Anatolia back to Greece and the economy which welcomed them stank.
The short lines with their quick rimes and the melancholic presence of the plucked strings of the Baglama and Bouzouki accompany, if not lead, the sorrows of the lover gone away, the police arresting you for stealing yet one more time, the cloud of the illegal smoke of hashish, and anger and bleeding of the heart and the arms scarred in knife fights.”-Donald A. Hagelberg