Antiquity at the musical margins: rebetika, ‘ancient’ and modern

Abstract

With their insalubrious social connotations, low-brow content and Ottoman musical features, rebetika songs appear unlikely candidates for connection with the revered culture of ancient Greece. Yet this seemingly sacrilegious nexus has repeatedly been contrived by exponents of the genre and by commentators, unlettered and educated alike. It has also exercised the ingenuity of literati, translators, stage directors and graphic artists. The examples surveyed in this article, whether earnest or whimsical, plausible or manifestly deluded, reflect both evolving perceptions of the genre and broader issues of Greek cultural politics. They further exemplify informal mechanisms for disseminating antiquarian knowledge-and misinformation. One of the more imaginative scenes in Rebetiko (La mauvaise herbe), a graphic novel by David Prudhomme published in 2009, is set at the portico of the Erechtheum on the Acropolis of Athens in October 1936. It features the legendary rebetika-musician Yorgos Batis, who is seen licking the marble lips of a Caryatid and then presenting his artistic credentials to her: 'I had hoped to wake you ... If you could only hear the music I have in my head ... It lives and breathes from here to Poli... It walks Byzantine roads ... Comes back here, leaves again....' 1 Batis soon abandons his attempts to arouse the ancient statue and, dancing away from the ancient temple, offers this prophetic parallel between the art of the rebetes and that of Greek antiquity: 'Like you, we're going to make a sacrifice for these comings and goings. Our records will be our statues ... our sarcophagi... '. This whole scene and its 1 Both extracts quoted here (complete with original ellipses) are from the English translation, D. Prudhomme, Rebetiko, trans. N. Mahony (London 2012). I am obliged to Peter Mackridge for alerting me to it, and to Dimitry Pai'vanas, George Galiatsos, Loukia Gauntlett and Alicia L. Suarez for supplying me with several other publications cited in this article. An earlier version of it was read at the conference on 'Re-imagining the Past: Antiquity and Modern Greek Culture' at the University of Birmingham in June 2011.