Steel-string guitar and vocals by the great Giorgos Katsaros, a mythic figure of Greek rembetiko.
Our obsession with underground Greek music continues with 10 ultra-rare
recordings of heartbreak and vice from rembetiko legend Giorgos
Katsaros. Katsaros, who by some accounts lived to be over 100 years old,
carried the old songs of Greece to the Diaspora in the United States,
bridging centuries of music in one storied lifetime.
Born in 1901 on the Greek island of Amorgos, Katsaros’ was enchanted
with the songs he picked up as a kid in the streets of Piraeus and
Athens. Encouraged by his grandfather, an amateur singer, Katsaros
developed a style that mirrored his upbringing - centuries-old Asia
Minor songs, island rhythms of his homeland, well-known Athenian songs
of the time, and anonymous ‘rebetiko’ songs. Katsaros’ songbook was
vast, but he was most drawn to the street life and music of the manges
of early 20th-century Greece: outcasts who dealt with the indignities of
an unstable economy and an inauspicious future with the old standbys:
wine, hash, and dancing.
These ten tracks are remastered from Katsaros's 64 surviving early recordings, many rarely heard since their original release. Hypnotic melodies plucked over repeating thumbed basslines back his deep, mournful voice.
Katsaros brought this nostalgic late-night music to smoke-filled rooms
of Greek exiles in Chicago, Philly, and New York, where he emigrated in
1917. He continued to travel the country and play until his music was
supplanted by more modern styles in the 1950s. He retired to the town of
Tarpon Springs, FL, famous for its Greek sponge fishers, til a
late-in-life revival brought him back to Greece for a few massive
concerts and national accolades in the 1990s.
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