A lot of the early recording of rebetiko took place in Chicago and New York, where Marika Papagika and her husband, Kostas (Gus), were at the centre of a lively music scene that drew on the songs of the eastern Mediterranean.
Papagika, born in Kos, first recorded in Alexandria, Egypt, before the couple moved to the U.S., possibly first to Chicago in 1915. Four years later, she began recording in New York. Her recordings were popular among the American Greek diaspora as well as in Athens (which didn’t yet have a recording facilities) and influenced the early generation of rebetiko, especially with her Smyrneika-style songs. She recorded more than 70 songs over the last few years of the 1920s
In the 1920s, she and Gus opened a swanky cabaret in New York that fell vicim first to Prohibition (it became a speakeasy) and then the Depression, which put it out of business. Papagika recorded a few more songs in the 1930s, including four patriotic Greek songs on the eve of WWII. She died in hospital in 1943 at age 53.
In Syngrou Prison was recorded in 1926; the writer of the piece was not credited.
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