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Markos Vamvakaris, born in 1905 in Syros was a pioneer of rebetiko, the urban folk music of Greece. The bouzouki was a disreputable instrument but he paved its path to glory. He spent many years, first as a stevedore in the port of Piraeus and then as a butcher in the slaughterhouse. During this time he fell in love with a tigress, his first wife, he learnt to smoke hashish and to play the 'sacred' instrument: 'I had a great passion. My life was all bouzouki. It took me over - but it also took me up in the world, way up ...' This is the first ever translation into English of the autobiography compiled by Angeliki Vellou Keil in 1972. It opens a window onto a time of extraordinary creativity in the history of Greek music, an explosion of songwriting in the interwar period. Its composers wrote about themselves and each other, the rituals of hashish smoking and the landmarks of a now vanished city. Markos the repentant sinner and living legend, looks back at childhood idylls in Syros, the arrival of the Asia Minor refugees, the terrible years of the Nazi Occupation, the ceaseless love affairs and disappointments, and the triumphs of the bouzouki. He offers a rare insight into the lives of toiling workers and the lowlife of one of the world's most ancient ports, where East meets West. Out of this melting pot he produced the classic songs that Greeks of all ages still love and know by heart.
- Sales Rank: #1535759 in Books
- Published on: 2015-06-30
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .72" w x 5.51" l, .90 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
and he thought I’d enjoy reading about the subject of urban popular music in ...
By Deborah Pacini
A while ago a friend sent me a memoir entitled Markos Vamvakaris: The Man and the Bouzouki. Autobiography because he knew I’ve long had an interest in popular musics in the Americas, and he thought I’d enjoy reading about the subject of urban popular music in a completely different geographic and cultural setting. He was right: despite knowing nothing about Greek music or the Greek musician Markos Vamvakaris and the laiko songs he popularized in the 1930s and 40s, this wonderful memoir brought the man, his music and his times alive. And, while the trajectory of laiko, the style of popular music listened to by Greece’s urban working classes, as revealed in this memoir needs no comparisons to other urban popular musical styles that may be more familiar to American readers (such as blues, reggae and bachata), the memoir does illuminate the extraordinary musical creativity of poor and working class communities around the globe.
Markos Vamvakaris was born on the island of Syra into a poor family of peasant origins struggling to make the difficult transition to day laborers in a “modernizing” economy. From a very young age he had to contribute to the family’s survival by working in a variety of low paying, undesirable jobs, from hawking newspapers to working as stevedore and, for years, as a skinner in a slaughterhouse. He supplemented his income by playing and composing songs reflecting his experiences hanging out with manghes, working class non-conformists who rejected the social and material values of bourgeois society; instead, despite the limitations imposed by low paying, back breaking work, manghes used their creativity and wits, in ways both legal and illegal, to enjoy the pleasures of song, dance and women to the hilt. These pleasures included smoking hashish, which put them in the cross-hairs of the authorities and moral guardians of bourgeois Greek society. All of Markos’ struggles and experiences, including spending time in jail for smoking hashish, found their way into Markos’ songs, whose power, humor and authenticity resonated deeply with his working class fans.
Readers familiar with Greek culture and music will benefit most from this memoir, so rich in historical, geographical, cultural and musical details, but newcomers to the subject, like me, will also enjoy the ride. For those who know (or want to know) what laika music is, this book contains a wealth of first hand descriptions of the different instruments, styles, musicians and recordings circulating in Greece in before, during and after World War 2. Readers will also appreciate the lively descriptions of the urban working class social contexts in which laika music circulated throughout these years: these were mostly neighborhood dives, hashish dens and brothels, where working class men—workers and criminals alike—enjoyed congregating in the shadows of society. In his lusty and seemingly insatiable appetite for music and life, Markos might remind readers of the character Zorba the Greek in the film of that name. Like Zorba, his attitudes towards women (especially according to today’s standards of gender relationships) will likely appear to contemporary readers to be misogynistic and paternalistic, but this does not detract from the value of this vivid account of the life of an economically struggling but highly talented musician who became one of Greece’s most celebrated urban popular musicians.
This memoir is also notable for the collective way in which it was produced. Originally published in Greek in 1972, it was constructed upon the foundation of autobiographical material written by Markos himself, but supplemented with material from many hours of interviews with Markos conducted by Angeliki Vellou-Keil in 1969. More than 40 years later, the original Greek memoir edited by Vellou-Keil was translated into English and re-edited by Noonie Minogue, who rearranged sections of text to make the narrative flow more easily, and who made the apt decision to employ vernacular English slang as needed to maintain the vigorous textures and tones of Markos’ speech patterns. Dozens of Markos’ songs, in the original Greek and in translation, are also included within the text, and Minogue similarly translated these with an ear to retaining Markos’ original meanings and tones rather than privileging strict literal translations. Thanks to the many loving and knowledgeable hands who played a part in producing it, English speakers now have access to this wonderful memoir.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Fine translation of a "Street-Greek" classic.
By charles keil
I am biased, of course, because I know that my wife, Angeliki Vellou Keil, worked very hard to pull the transcriptions of taped interviews together for this book. lt took over a year of daily visits to a little office around the corner from our house in Buffalo, patiently shaping different pieces of interviews together for each chapter. I often looked at Alan Lomax's Mr. Jelly Roll as an early example of an as-told-to book. He made it look so easy to do. And David Ritz is another master of this craft, sometimes turning out 2 or 3 books a year by recording, transcribing, and sequencing the events and opinions, editing out any excesses of profanity, or leaving out a passing on of ugly rumors. His books, some of them very long and fully detailed, always feel natural, true to life -- again it looks easy. But take it from a friend of David's and a witness to wife Angeliki's labors, there are a lot of decisions to make about how many repetitions to leave in, and when does it seem prudent to leave a love affair out, or to put some particularly nasty insult or criticism of someone aside. At all times Angie insisted on keeping it just the way Markos spoke it, sticking to the transcription, and that turned out to have some unexpected benefits.
I was very surprised when a committee had to be formed for making the "orthography" consistent, the spellings of words according to grammatical rules, because the Greek Markos spoke was not strictly "demotic" and certainly not according to the rules of "cleaned up Greek" or 'kathourevesa" -- and here I have an orthography problem -- do I spell "cleaned-up" in English the way I hear it in Greek? And this gets me to the point of this brief and preliminary review. Noonie Minogue, with a bit of help from Pavlos Melas and other Greeks I'm sure, has done a very fine job of translating, giving Markos a street-Greek "voice" in English. Frankly, Angie couldn't figure out how to do that, and neither could I. Was he a black man in "white-face"? A port worker or longshoreman from which American port? If "port-Greek" in a book was something of a shock to many Greeks in Greece, how could we convey THAT to an American audience?
Noonie Minogue was very careful about chosing various "colloquial expressions", keeping many sentences brief and to the point, and the reading is easy. Careful editing of the Greek edition as she went along gives us just enough of each phase of Marcos' life, keeps it vivid, wanting more, not getting bored with the sufferings that the songs were meant to heal.
This is more of a "blessing" or a "thank you note" for the style of it than a real review of the contents, but perhaps I can come back and do a longer review later, Amazon-rules permitting, that highlights some of the main points for students of "comparative urban music."
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
For the neophyte like me, the book includes a great analysis of ...
By Charles R Planck
Markos Vamvakaris said: “Something happens. I see it and I write.” (And sang and played the next day at a hash den or bar.) This vivid translation of his memories will get you as close as possible to the raw materials of a folk music tradition--- Greek urban working class song---and its performance settings in the community.
Read it with You Tube’s “Markos Vamvakaris, Full Album” as the soundtrack.
For the neophyte like me, the book includes a great analysis of the politics and musicology in the period by Angeliki Vellou Keil, who recorded the singer’s reminiscences here translated in 1969.
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