Stelios Kazantzidis was the voice of Greek music for decades. While he is best-known for his laiko, popular music and folk recordings and performances, his early start in the 1950s included rebetiko.
Born in 1931 in Nea Ionia, Athens, Kazantzidis was left fatherless at a young age. His origin story is that an employer gave him a guitar after hearing him sing at work. He made his first public appearance as a singer in 1950 and his first recording – this song – in 1952. It didn’t catch on, but his second recording, The Suitcases, written by Giannis Papaioannou, became the first of his hits and launched him on his 48-year career.
In 1956, he hooked up with Vasilis Tsitsanis and recorded a few more rebetika sides, but he was developing his own style, which drew on popular European music, laiko, Indian film music and other sources. He achieved international success for his music and for a handful of film appearances. (His life has been captured in a bio-pic, I Exist, which was released in December 2024 in Greece.)
Along with popular music, Kazantzidis recorded albums of Greek folk music, and four albums on music from the Pontic region of northern Turkey, honouring his father’s roots.
His early rebetiko recordings showed both the power and quality of Kazantzidis’s voice and his ability to capture the essence of a song. I’m Going for a Swim was written by Apostolos Kaldaras
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