Researching these posts, sometimes I come across a bit of absolute joy. That’s the case with today’s video, a 1994 recording of then 72-year-old Ioanna Georgakopoulou singing Proper Sunset, 44 years after she first recorded it in 1950.
I found this while doing research on Yiannis Lembesis, who is another of the performers that has reinvigorated rebetiko (and kept it going) in the 21st century.
Lembesis was born in 1956 on the island of Evia. He was drawn to music early and during his university studies began performing in taverns and clubs in Piraeus and Athens. In 1976, he met Panagiotis Kounadis, a well-known rebetiko scholar, who introduced him to the world of 78 RPM recordings from the classic era of rebetiko. He was also able to meet most of the surviving artists from the earlier ages, people such as Ioanna Georgakopoulou and Michalis Genitsaris, musicians and singers he would later work with on records and in clubs.
As well as performing old rebetiko and folk songs, Lembesis began writing his own folk song-influenced compositions. Starting in 1985, he began recording and he developed a reputation as a dynamic and popular live performer. He has recorded dozens of albums.
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