Musical Encounters: 1923-1936
And here is where our two musical styles of rembetika and cafe aman began really rubbing elbows: in the tekedhes and clubs of Piraeus and Athens. The Asia Minor refugees brought along their musical traditions, instruments, vocal and compositional styles to mainland Greece. The displaced musicians began organizing professional unions and opening musical clubs modeled after the cafes aman of their lost homeland.
By the early 1930’s, a competition for customers began to arise between the rembetic and cafe aman performers. The underworld rembetiko was fast becoming mainstream as rembetic musicians such as Markos Vamvakaris and Stratos began recording. The bouzouki was losing its underworld links; previously an instrument looked upon with scorn, it became increasingly popular, particularly after “Jack Gregory’s” recording in America of Minore tou Teke. The owners of the more respectable clubs began to recognize the popularity of the rembetika recordings and hired the rembetic musicians out of the tekedhes. Guitarists and other musicians were often told by club owners to learn the bouzouki; some made the conversion on their own after recognizing the bouzouki’s popularity (e.g. Papaioannou and Peristeris). Cafe aman performers such as Roza Eskenazi, Rita Abatzi, Dalgas and Samiotaki added rembetika songs to their repertoires, and easily switched between smyrna-style (oud, lyra, violin, etc.) and Piraeus-style (bouzouki, baglama) orchestras.
The musicians of this period are generally known as the first generation of rembetika and smyrneika. Markos Vamvakaris, Anestos Delias (Artemis), Andonios Dalgas, Stratos, Papaioannou, Roza Eskenazi, Rita Abatzi, Vidalis, and Semsis to mention only a handful of those performing and recording at the time.
The Metaxas Era and Logokrisia: 1936-1941
Despite laws on the books against the growing, trafficking and use of drugs including hashish, there had been little attempt by authorities to rein in the rembetic songs and their thematic material of drugs and smuggling. This changed in 1936, with General Ioannis Metaxas’ rise to power and, on August 4, his suspension (with a nod from King George II) of parts of the Greek Constitution. Within the Ministry of Press and Tourism, a censor was appointed to control sound-recordings. The censor rejected recordings of songs which made reference to any facet of rembetic life, the life of the underworld or any anti-social behavior, including drug use. For a short period of time even the playing of the bouzouki did not receive the censor’s approval. Tekedhes were demolished, and rembetika musicians and hash smokers were harassed and exiled (many, practicing self-exile, left Athens/Piraeus for the more comfortable confines of Thessaloniki, where Vassili Mouskoudis, the police chief, was a rembetika fan). The cafe aman musicians were discomforted to discover that not only was their newly adopted use of bouzouki and underworld thematic material suddenly unacceptable, the censorship also extended to any songs which showed a “Turkish” influence: in other words, a good part of the smyrneic repertoire could no longer be recorded. Apparently these bans first caused a brief drop in the number of popular recordings made in Greece, probably while the musicians learned how to work within (or around) the new recording environment. There came an abrupt switch in the lyrical content of recorded songs as rembetika entered a new phase. Gone were the references to drugs, gambling, the underworld, prison life and criticism of authority. Lyrics became more erotic and chivalrous, yet much more tame. The teke and hashish were no longer mentioned; the taverna was the setting and the protagonist of the song would drink ouzo or wine to forget his (or her) worries.