| Steel-string guitar and vocals by the great Giorgos Katsaros, a mythic figure of Greek rembetiko. Our obsession with underground Greek music continues with 10 ultra-rare recordings of heartbreak and vice from remetiko legen Giorgos Katsaros. Katsaros, who by some accounts live to be over 100 years old, carried the old songs of Greece to the Diaspora in the US, bridging centuries of music in one storied lifetime. Born in 1901 on the Greek island of Amorgos, Katsaros was enchanted with the songs he picked up as a kid in the streets of Piraeus and Athens. Encouraged by his grandfather, an amateur singer, Katsaros developed a style that mirrored his upbringing - centuries-old Asia Minor songs, island rhythms of his homeland, well-known Athenian songs of the time, and anonymous 'rebetiko' songs. Katsaros' songbook was vast, but he was most drawn to the street life and music of the manges of early 20th-century Greece: outcasts who dealth with the indignities of an unstable economy and an inauspicious future with the old standbys: wine, hash, and dancing. These ten tracks are remastered from Katsaros' 64 surviving early recordings, many rarely heard since their original release. Hyptnoic melodies plucked over repeating thumbed basslines back his deep, mournful voice. |
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