Rebetiko songs labelled as "The blues of the Prince [of Greek Rock]"
Nassos Polyzoidis
Bath Spa University
Abstract:
Rebetiko is a style of folk music that originated at the end of the nineteenth century by marginal people in prisons and ports of Greece. It has been slowly disappearing since the middle of the twentieth century, which resulted in rebetiko being inscribed on UNESCO’s list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017. Rebetiko was developed in parallel with the blues and has been characterised as ‘the blues of Greece’. But how and when did the Greek style of rebetiko meet the Afro-American blues? Despite journalists, critics and musicians identifying Pavlos Sidiropoulos as the songwriter that married blues with rebetiko, there has not been sufficient research and analysis to confirm that.
Daniel Koglin refers to the mixture of rebetiko with ‘older and contemporary “subcultural” or “undercultural” styles such as the blues’ (2016) in relation to three albums from different artists, including the 1991 Ta Blues tou Prigkipa (The Blues of the Prince) by Pavlos Sidiropoulos. All songs of this album, accompanied by alternative versions that can be found in his 2003 posthumous release Me tin Kithara tou (With his Guitar), are transcribed and analysed to demonstrate the common ground between blues and rebetiko. Lists of scales and modes (using both their western and eastern music theory names), time signatures and rhythms, song structures and chord progressions, in combination with their frequency are extracted from the analyses to highlight the main characteristics that made Sidiropoulos’ songwriting distinctive.
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Biography:
Nassos Polyzoidis is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, music theorist and PhD candidate at Bath Spa University, where he gained a Master’s Degree in Songwriting. He also holds an Associate Diploma in Music Teaching from the University of West London. His doctoral research explores the common characteristics of Greek rebetiko and Afro-American blues with the aim of conceiving a creative method for generating cross-cultural music and lyrics. It focuses on the analysis and reception of rebetiko fusions with contemporary Western music. He teaches in conservatoires and privately. He releases his music under the pseudonym Nassos Conqueso, along with his side project Sakké ConQuéso.
