So it looks like we’re going to give a rembetiko workshop when we visit my folks (in Golden Bay, New Zealand) for Christmas. Here’s the plan:

Rembetiko is the “Greek blues”, a style of Greek music from the urban underclass of the early part of the 20th century (lots of songs of unrequited love, oppression by the police and the state, drug abuse and small-scale criminality, and similar cheerful subjects). The music has strong Turkish influences and is mainly modal and monophonic (rather than the harmonic melody-plus-chords structure of much of Western music).

We’ll look at three of the many modes (probably hitzaz, ousak, and something else yet to be decided), and learn one song in each (more if there is time and enthusiasm!). You don’t need to be able to read musical notation, but we’ll bring sheet music for those that do (and lyrics in Greek, for anyone who fancies a challenge).

We play: bouzouki, baglamas, guitar, accordion, mandolin (and we sing, or at least Olga does). You play: whatever you bring! Other traditional rembetiko instruments include violin, oud, kanoun, and ney for melody, and darbuka and tambourine for percussion (if you don’t know these wonderful instruments, search them out and get to know them!). If you play something else, don’t let tradition hold you back; the only constraint is that you’ll need a lot of chromatic notes (or a careful matching of instrument to song), since the modes don’t match the Western major or minor scales.

Since writing that outline we’ve made some progress in choosing modes and songs:

  1. Nikriz (νικρίζ): O thermastis (Ο θερμαστής). This is a very simple Piraeus-style song that shows the mode very clearly (the melody pretty much just walks up and down the scale). A good place to begin, for people completely unfamiliar with rembetiko.
  2. Ousak (ουσάκ): Then thelo ta matakia sou (Δεν θέλω τα ματάκια σου). We chose this mode because it starts with a minor second (an Eb if we start on D, as we probably will),1 which gives a characteristic sound very different from more standard Western scales.
  3. Hitzaz (χιτζάζ): possibly Ginome andras (Γίνομαι άντρας) (the first word is pronounced “yee-no-meh”). This is a more complicated, but very lovely, song by our favourite rembetis, Panagiotis Tountas. (The song isn’t structurally complicated, but the melody of the verse is quite long and has lots of elements repeated with small variations, which is tricky to learn when you can’t use the lyrics as a memory aid.)
  4. These three are fairly heavy and depressing — which is representative of a lot of rembetiko, but not all. A more cheerful nikriz number is H mikri ap to Pasalimani (Η μικρή απ το Πασαλιμάνι) (the song proper starts at 0:30). Depending on how exhausted and depressed folks are after the first couple, we might take this instead of Ginome andras. (It’s 4/4 instead of the zeibekiko 9/8, which makes it a bit more accessible too.)

While it’s unlikely that anyone reading this (a) will be in Golden Bay over the summer and (b) hasn’t yet heard about this from me, if you are that person and you’re interested in joining, feel free! There will be no cost (except possibly a demand for baking). Not sure exactly when it will happen yet, probably around Christmas and definitely before New Year.

Notes:

  1. The bouzouki is tuned DAD, so D is a default key, especially for beginners. [↪]