Marko Melkon is one of the fascinating musicians of rebetiko.
He was born Melkon Alemsherian to an Armenian family in 1895 in Smyrna, where he learned to play the oud. When he was 17, he moved to Athens to avoid Turkish army service and, after playing music there for a few years, emigrated to the U.S.
In the United States, he started out on a career as a professional musician, playing Greek, Turkish, Armenian and other music from that area of the world. Along the way, he adopted the first name Marko as a tribute to his love of Greek music.
In the mid-1940s, along with the Armenian and Turkish records he was creating, he recorded a series of Greek songs – including Smyrneika-style rebetiko pieces such as The Refugee, written by Vangelis Papazoglou – that have become well-loved in the rebetiko community. These recordings, coming almost a decade after the ban on eastern-sounding music in Greece, helped keep the music alive.
Whatever You Look For You Will Find, a love song, was written by Stelios Chrisinis and recorded in 1945.
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