It has been several decades since Gerhard Steingress He pointed out the similarity of the social context that gave rise to the so-called rebetiko music in Greece and the birth of flamenco .[1]He also pointed out similar processes in our neighboring country, Portugal, with fado, Algerian Raï, and also in Argentina with the emergence of the Río de la Plata Tango.[2]Rebetiko would be like a kind of flamenco In Greece, with musicians emerging from popular contexts of modern societies, with a predominantly working-class audience from lower and marginalized social strata, and with textual content on themes associated with these social groups, such as prison, violence, or hashish consumption.
The Greek musician and musicologist born in Macedonia Nikos Ordoulidis He is now publishing a little book, How a nation sounds (Current Books 2025), which originated from a presentation given in 2022 at the XXII Biennial of Flamenco of Sevilla, under the title Popular music and politics in GreeceIn it, he discusses the ideological appropriation of Greek folk music by the Greek state, which gave rise to the musical expression known as RebetikoOrdoulidis shows how the state has been masking the past of folk-popular music (as he prefers to call it), hiding what was not of interest and promoting a falsified image of its history, redrawing its sound map, identities and musical manifestations.
The author tells us how The ideas about Byzantine music are reformulated as the legitimate successor to the musical spirit of ancient Greece and sold as an aesthetic model to the entire nation, through institutional policies, educational practices and various media representations in which an interested image is promoted, excluding the values that were not of interest from the centers of power, giving shape to what should constitute Greek music.
One of the key mechanisms in this musical cleansing process was the idea of “cultural purity”Nikos explains that musical practices considered authentic, such as Byzantine chant or rural Demotic traditions, which supposedly preserved the ancestral essence of Hellenic music, were readily embraced by the national narrative as synonymous with authenticity. However, other practices, associated with Ottoman Muslim traditions of Turkish speakers, urban lower classes, or cosmopolitan popular culture, were rejected and devalued. Ancient sound archives reveal a musical practice that does not align with the ideas disseminated by the centers of power, reflecting a very different world, far more complex and hybrid than was readily acknowledged.
"The flamenco It has also presented a distorted image in some aspects since Demophilus studied our case and classified the cantes flamenco"It was according to his personal ideas, where festive styles such as cantiñas, alegrías and juguetillos, or tangos, malagueñas and related styles were not included."
The book reveals that these historical manipulations are still present in the Greek education system today, where music is presented as a pure and homogeneous tradition, where They link Antiquity, Byzantium and rural popular culture, leaving out musical practices shaped by migrationcosmopolitan urban life or popular culture, considered contaminated.
Drawing a parallel, the flamenco has also presented a misleading image in some aspects since Demophilus will study our case and classify the cantes flamencoAccording to their personal ideas, festive styles such as cantiñas, alegrías, and juguetillos, or tangos, malagueñas, and related styles, were not included. Only certain styles should be classified as such, even acknowledging that the artists called flamenco to an entire genre of compositions. We already discussed this in a previous publication.[3]. Antonio Machado y Álvarez was aware that the flamenco It was an artistic genre, despite having been incorrectly classified and analyzed as folklore, and subsequently labeled as decadent, upon realizing that the public, with its tastes, and the artists, with their concessions, were causing the genre to evolve, moving it away from the established vision of what it should be. flamencoDemofilo was indebted to the romantic currents of the time, especially the German ideas that idealized the soul of the people as something intact, pure, a reflection of the timeless national essence.
Consequences of these ideas and classism included the biased study of Manuel de Falla on primitive Andalusian song and the flamenco, the Contest Cante Jondo of 1922 in Granada, and the later Mairenism, where an appropriation of the is also observed cante, or part of it, with the intention of intentionally “cleaning” and “falsifying” its past, and giving a new image that does not reflect the true history and its plural and open dimension.
Returning to the book, Nikos mentions the influence of instrumental ensembles known as "estudiantinas," featuring guitars, mandolins, and other stringed instruments of Spanish origin. These ensembles spread throughout the Ottoman world and flourished in Smyrna. This topic, which the author only briefly outlines, certainly warrants further study. He also comments on the presence of other instruments, such as the piano, of Western tradition, which has now almost disappeared because it does not align with the Greek ideal of historical continuity.
In conclusion, Nikos Ordoulidis explains accurately and without literary excesses how a romantic vision of rural demotic song led to a silencing of the soundscape of Smyrna, redefining the term rebetiko and building a national image of Greek musicA highly recommended book that can be read in one sitting, due to its short length.
"Consequences of these ideas and classism were Manuel de Falla's biased study of primitive Andalusian song and the flamenco, the Contest of Cante Jondo of 1922 in Granada and the subsequent Mairenism, where an appropriation of the is also observed cante, or part of it, with the intention of intentionally “cleaning” and “falsifying” its past, and giving a new image that does not reflect the true history and its plural and open dimension.”
We also recommend other issues from the publisher Current Books, who has been kind enough to publish this interesting essay which we recommend from here.
E.g. Flamenco pioneers, focusing on the flamenco women who appear in the works of Guillermo Nunez de Prado (Andalusian flamenco singers. Stories and tragedies 1904), and Fernando de Triana (Art and artists flamencos 1935) mainly, supplemented with diverse information from different sources and archives.
A new edition of Hugo Schuchardt's invaluable book The cantes flamencos (1881), companion of our beloved Antonio Machado y Álvarez "Demófilo", where he presents his study on Andalusian speech and the flamenco.
Discordant Notes: Flamenco, Marginal Music and Social Control in Madrid, 1850-1930, Samuel Llano, who explains the fundamental role that street and popular music has played in the modernization and refinement of legislation and social control in modern urban societies, with Madrid as a suffering example.
Carmen de Burgos "Colombine"Confessions of artists". It includes forty-five interviews with entertainment artists, among them Tórtola Valencia, La Fornarina, Pepita Sevilla, La Chelito, Adela Cubas, and La Niña de los Peines. ♦
[1] Sociology of Cante Flamenco, Andalusian Center of Flamenco, 1993.
[2] Flamenco Andalusian and Greco-Oriental Rebetiko: Mirages in the construction of national identities, Shemale 27, Transcultural music magazine, 2023. https://orcid.org/0009-0002-7177-1112
[3] expoflamenco, April 2, 2025. https://expoflamenco.com/revista/pero-esto-es-flamenco-o-no/
