Rebetiko emerged in the urban centres and port cities of Greece during the early twentieth century, initially among working-class and marginalised communities. Its musical language did not grow from a single source. UNESCO describes a tradition shaped through exchanges among Greeks from Asia Minor and the Aegean and the Turkish, Jewish, Armenian, Balkan and Levantine communities of the former Ottoman world. Songs were originally transmitted mainly by listening, playing and learning directly from older musicians. Recordings, cinema, conservatories and universities later created additional ways of passing the repertoire on.
What interests me is how easily a music that begins on society’s margins can later become part of a country’s cultural identity. Rebetiko did not become valuable because somebody preserved it unchanged. It kept absorbing new surroundings, performers and technologies. Its history suggests that tradition may be strongest when it is flexible enough to travel without forgetting where it came from.
