There’s no clear break between the end of the classic era rebetiko and what followed it, but there’s no doubt that Manolis Chiotis played a major role in the transition.
Chiotis already played guitar, oud and bouzouki when arrived in Athens in 1935 and started working in clubs. He recorded his first composition in 1937. After WWII, he more or less launched the era of the virtuoso bouzouki player, adding a fourth string to the bouzouki and retuning it to allow him to play much faster. He added amplification, which changed the timbre of the instrument. And he started drawing on other music for his compositions, Latin American in particular.
His innovations, and those of other young musicians who had cut their teeth on classic rebetiko, made new music less like the often rougher and simpler rebetiko and more attuned to European and American popular music influences, and it became more and more acceptable to the Greek public.
Chiotis’s song The Pastime (with lyrics by Yiorgos Giannakopoulos) was first recorded in 1946. While it is typical of classic era rebetiko. the bouzouki work points to what was coming. I found three versions of this song on Youtube, by Rosa Eskenazi and Zacharias Kasimatis, Stellakis Peripiniades, and Ioanna Georgiakopoulou, each giving it a different flavour. I finally decided on Rosa’s version
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