Beginning in the 1950s, Rena Dalia charted a course across popular Greek music that encompassed what we in the west would call urban contemporary, as well folk music of Greece (and Turkey), and, of course, rebetiko. Her discography is deep and rich.
Dalia was born Eleftheria Papakosta in the early 1930s in Patras. Her singing abilities were noted early, with participation in school choirs, but when she moved to Athens with her family in 1950, she was forced to abandon any ideas of singing for a living: Her father and brother were exiled to the island of Ikaria for their left-wing views and Dalia was forced to go to work as a secretary to support herself and her mother.
In 1951, though, she and her mother were living in a flat above a tavern and she began singing with a local trio. A radio DJ hear her and suggested she enter a on-air singing contest. She entered (under the name Rena Dalia) and won. As a result, she began appearing as a paid performer, where she was soon discovered by Giannis Papaioannou, who fell for her warm, contralto voice and ability to deliver a lyric. (There are also suggestions that Papaioannou, married and with children, also fell for Dalia, which may have led to their later musical splits.)
Beginning in 1952, she recorded a number of late rebetiko pieces, while performing with Papaioannou in Athens and in Istanbul for a three-month stint. That latter appearance was likely what led to her later recording a number of Turkish folk tunes. As her fame spread, she also recorded mainstream light Greek popular music and traditional folk songs but, mainly, laiko.
From the mid-’50s on, she travelled back and forth between Greece and America, recording with leading musicians on both sides of the Atlantic, further extending her discography. Discog.org records almost 90 EP and single releases, seven albums and her appearance on 13 compilations. Her recordings cut across almost all modern Greek genres.
She died in 2000, at ager 65, after a lengthy illness.
Unfair, unfair, written by Papaioannou, and recorded when she was 19 or 20 (the exact year of her birth isn’t known) and was among her earliest recordings. Even at that age, she was firmly in control of her distinctive voice..
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