Dimitris Atraidis is said to be one of the purest interpreters of Smyrneika rebetiko, but he was more than that.
As a singer, he recorded almost two dozen amandes, the largely improvised, vocally-driven songs that linked Greek rebetiko to Asia Minor. He recorded another dozen-and-a-half rebetiko songs, some of which he wrote either lyrics or lyrics and music for. And he recorded many more songs that fit comfortably into the rural folk music of Greece.
Atraidis was born in Smyrna in 1900. In the early 1920s, as Turks drove back Greek forces in Anatolia, he was a guerrilla fighter who was eventually captured. He was exiled to Greece as part of the population swap of 1922-’23. He had been an amateur musician – a singer, santouri player and guitarist – in Smyrna, and through his association with other refugees, began performing and then recording in 1929.
In all, he recorded more than 60 sides by the 1940s. But in post-war Greece, the Asia Minor-influenced music that he had made, and his vocal style, fell out of favour. He retreated from the world of rebetiko. He is reported to have opened a songbird shop where he also ran an informal school to teach traditional music to youths. He died in Athens in 1970.
The infatuated was recorded in 1937. It was written by Kostas Karipis, and tells the tale of a man torn between two loves:
In two loves I’ve been involved
and how do I get out of it?
They’ve got me mad and crazy
And I can’t stand it.
I’m in love with both,
I’m in love with both of them.
One of them’s got me like a madman
and the other one a slave.
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