Kostas Manesis came to prominence in the late stages of rebetiko, but was responsible for writing the lyrics for some of the classics, including Five Greeks in Hades.
The plot to the song is simple: five Greeks wind up in Hades and instead of bemoaning their fate, they turn their time there into a party.
“With bouzoukis and baglamades / they drove the devils crazy / and the hellish ones danced / dizzy with joy,” as the lyrics relate. (Watching Greeks in the musical taverns of Athens, this isn’t hard to imagine.)
Manesis, born in Athens in 1917, began writing lyrics in the 1930s. As well as providing the lyrics for such musicians as Vasilis Tsitsanis, Yiannis Papaioannou (the composer of Five Greeks in Hades) and Stelios Perpiniadis, he also composed folk and laiko music, working through to the 1960s.
He also published two magazines that profiled the leading artists of the times, and occasionally criticized Greek record companies for promoting international music stars instead of Greek composers and performers.
Manesis died in 2002.
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