Rebetika: Songs from the Old Greek Underworld

by Katharine Butterworth, Sara Schneider

The songs in this book are a sampling of the urban folk songs of Greece during the first half of the 20th century. They are the creative expression of an urban subculture whose members the Greeks commonly called rebetes. These rebetes were people living a marginal and often underworld existence on the fringes of established society, disoriented and struggling to maintain themselves in the developing industrial ports, despised and persecuted by the rest of society. And it is the hardships and suffering of these people, their fruitless dreams, their current loves and their lost loves that these songs are about, and underlying them all, their jaunty, tough will to survive. The appeal of these songs, often compared to the American blues, is that the conflicts they express are not exclusively Greek conflicts, they are everybody's; and they are still unresolved - in urban Greece as in urban Anywhere.

Genres: Music, Poetry, Greece, History

176 pages, Paperback

Published June 5, 2014

Reviews

[Lorena]

La parte teórica, aunque muy bien explicada, se me hace algo escasa y me gustaría que tuviera más desarrollo. El pequeño apartado comparando el blues y el rebétiko me parece una maravilla, igual que el cancionero recopilado en edición bilingüe.

[Andrew]

When I was in Piraeus, the bookseller at a bookshop called Fata Libelli wanted to give me massive stacks of books that he felt were critical to my understanding of modern Greece. I was limited by the size of my luggage, so I told him he had to get rid of 70% of the stack he wanted to give me. He left me with Nikos Kazantzakis, Nikos Kavvadias, Μπέμπης, and this booklet.

I have since listened to quite a bit of rebetika music and this book helps me solidify how I conceptualize urban art created by disenfrancished members of society. I'm used to the moral panic around trap, drill, and hip-hop more broadly, so it is with great amusement that I see the exact same thing had happened in Greece in the early 20th century. I'm glad this manual to rebetika music was created, and my musical knowledge is all the more enhanced for it. Thank you.

[Rachel Gass]

With beautiful illustrations, and a fascinating history of Greek folk music, this book is the ultimate guide to Rebetika. It preserves Greece’s musical legacy, its lyrics of yearning and loss. By tracing the historical roots of Rebetika, Butterworth enables us to engage with Rebetika in a more authentic way.

[Ludo-Van]

This book includes lyrics, some musical scores, and some explanaitions of the musical techniques of the rebetiko.
I would have liked to know some more on the history, cultural background, and social milieu, but hey still a good one.

[Sharon Jacobs]

Just weird

[ei_tc Ryan]

Fantastic little book chock full of history.

[Tom Kenis]

Spirited map into a lost world.