MUSIC & DANCE
LAÏKA & ENTEHNA
Interest in genuine rembetika was revived in the late 1970s to early
’80s – particularly among students and intellectuals – and it continues
to be rediscovered by new generations of Greeks.
Rembetikaa ensembles perform seated in a row and traditionally play
acoustically. A characteristic feature is improvised introductions called
taxims.Laïka & Entehna
Laïkaa (popular or urban folk music) is Greece’s most popular music
genre. A mainstream musical off shoot of rembetika, laïkaa emerged in the
late ’50s and ’60s, when the clubs in Athens became bigger and glitzier,
and the music more commercial. Thebouzouki went electric and reigned
supreme, while the sentimental tunes about love, loss, pain and emi-
gration came to embody the nation’s culture and spirit. The late Stelios
Kazantzidis was the big voice of this era, along with Grigoris Bithikotsis.
During this period another style of popular music emerged, led by
outstanding classically trained composers Mikis Theodorakis and Manos
Hatzidakis. Known as entehni mousikii or ‘artistic’ music, they drew on
rembetika and instruments such as thebouzouki, but had more sym-
phonic arrangements. They also brought poetry to the masses by creat-
ing popular hits from the works of Seferis, Elytis, Ritsos and Kavadias.
Composer Yiannis Markopoulos continued this new wave by intro-
ducing rural folk-music and traditional instruments such as thelyra,
santouri, violin andkanonaki into the mainstream and bringing folk
performers such as Crete’s legendary Nikos Xylouris to the fore.
During the junta years Theodorakis’ and Markopoulos’ music became
a form of political expression (Theodorakis’ music was banned and the
composer jailed).Contemporary & Pop Music
Contemporary Greek popular music merges elements of traditional
laïkawith western infl uences, but the music emerging from Greece
today also includes local takes on folk rock, heavy metal, rap and elec-
tronic dance music.SOUNDS OF GREECEGreece’s musical tradition dates back at least to the 2000 BC Cycladic fi gurines found
holding musical instruments resembling harps and fl utes. Music was an integral part
of ancient life and theatre. The 4th-century-BC Mantineia Marble (at the National Ar-
chaeological Museum of Athens) depicts a muse seated on a rock playing a three-string
(trichordo) bouzouki-like pandouris, the fi rst known fretted instrument and a forerunner
to many stringed instrument families.
Other ancient musical instruments included the lyra (lyre) piktis (pipes), kroupeza (a
percussion instrument), kithara (a stringed guitarlike instrument), avlos (a wind instru-
ment), barbitos (similar to a cello) and the magadio (similar to a harp).
The ubiquitous bouzouki, the six- or eight-stringed (tuned in pairs) long-necked lute-
like instrument most associated with contemporary Greek music, is a relative newcomer
to the scene. Reintroduced into Greece in the 1900s by immigrants from Asia Minor, it
became the central instrument of rembetika (blues music; and later laïka, urban popular
music), along with the baglama (baby version) and tzoura (half way between the two).
In contemporary and traditional Greek music, you may also hear the plucked strings
of the bulbous outi (oud), the strident sound of the Cretan lyra, the staccato rap of the
toumberleki (lap drum), the mandolino (mandolin) and the gaïda (bagpipe), which share
many characteristics with instruments all over the Middle East, along with the fl at
multistringed santouri and kanonaki.A mini-bouzouki
of sorts, the tiny
baglamas was
the instrument of
choice for perse-
cuted rembetes
and prisoners,
as it could be
easily carried
or concealed
under clothing, or
assembled out of
materials smug-
gled into prison
cells. It usually
supports the
bouzouki and is
pitched about an
octave higher.