You can’t talk about rebetiko without talking about the movie Rembetiko. Wikipedia says: “Rembetiko (Greek: Ρεμπέτικο) is a 1983 film directed by Costas Ferris and written by Ferris and Sotiria Leonardou [the star of the movie], with original music by Stavros Xarchakos. The film is based on the life of rebetiko singer Marika Ninou and gained cult status in Greece.”
(We need to clear something up about rebetiko and rembetiko. The difference is because of how the Greek alphabet handles the “b” sound in English. It’s written as “μπ.” The English equivalent is m+p, but in Greek words the “m” sound in the combination is rarely fully voiced. You’ll see both words: I prefer rebetiko to rembetiko. As for the Greek letter β (beta), that’s pronounced like the English “v” which is a whole other story.)
There are a some notes of interest here. The movie helped spread the word about this music beyond Greece. It won the Silver Bear at the 1984 Berlin Film Festival, and has been screened around the world.
Rembetika – a tragedy – covers the life and death of a female rebetiko singer in the 1930s and ’40s and while Wikipedia says it is based on the life of Marika Ninou, that only fits very loosely. Much of what happens doesn’t relate much to Ninou’s life. But then Rembetika is not a documentary, it’s a work of fiction and quite a good one.
The music is also of interest. Most of the soundtrack for the movie is not classic rebetiko: Almost all of the songs were written for the movie by composer Stavros Xarhakos, often with words by Nikos Gatsos. Only two of the pieces on the soundtrack listed at IMDB are old rebetiko recordings. But the movie had such an impact that several of the songs written by Xarhakos have become part of the modern rebetiko/laiko repertoire, including Stou Thoma, To Dihty and Bournovalia.
At the moment, the full movie is on Youtube (with English subtitles) and there’s a link from that page to the movie’s soundtrack (top right). For the purposes of this post, I’m going back to the source, the Marika Papagika recording of Smyrneiko Minore, recorded in 1919, which is featured in the movie.
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