zaimakis, bawdy songs and virtuous politics” ambivalence and controversy in the discourse of the...

History and Anthropology,Vol. 20, No. 1, March 2009, pp. 15–36

ISSN 0275–7206 print/ISSN 1477–2612 online/09/010015–22 © 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/02757200802650496

“Bawdy Songs and Virtuous Politics”: Ambivalence and Controversy in the Discourse of the Greek Left on rebetikoYiannis ZaimakisTaylor and FrancisGHAN_A_365219.sgm10.1080/02757200802650496History and Anthropology0275-7206 (print)/1477-2612 (online)Original Article2009Taylor & Francis201000000March [email protected]

This paper explores the interrelations between politics and music as they appear in theongoing debate about the rebetiko genre, within the intellectual circles of the left-wingmovement in the post-war era. Through the analysis of the rebetika texts and biographicalmaterial, the ambivalent attitude of the Greek Left movement about the political contextand the class affiliation of rebetiko are exposed. The Left saw popular music as a pedagogicmeans for inculcating class-consciousness among the masses and promoting optimisticutopian images of a possible communist future. In the framework of this politically moti-vated consideration, the attempt of left-wing intellectuals to interpret and evaluate therebetiko genre led to various ambivalences and controversies within the Left movement.

Keywords: Rebetiko; Left movement; Popular song; Ambivalence; Politics; Biographical reconstruction; Greece

Introduction

In the post-war era in Greece many left-wing writers became involved in a long-standingdebate on the field of popular music and in particular on a specific type of music calledrebetiko. By following the contours of this debate both among the intellectuals and partydogmatists, as well as among the musicians and singers themselves, we can witness notmerely a debate on the relationship between popular culture and Marxist views on art,but also the complexity of the relationship between political parties and certain socialsegments as well as a symptomatic reading of what was viewed as “proper” Greekculture. The long-lasting engagement of the progressive movement with rebetiko reveals

Yiannis Zaimakis, Faculty of Social Science of University of Crete, Rethymnon, Crete, Greece. Email:[email protected]

16 Yiannis Zaimakis

a deep-seated interest. Rebetiko was a musical genre with great popularity among theworking people and was connected with the lower strata of the urban areas, at leastduring its early phase. Left intellectuals engaged in this debate believed that the socialand political affiliation of a type of music which was popular among the subordinatesocial classes should be a priority for Marxist policy makers. Despite the common polit-ical aspirations of the writers involved, the debates between such intellectuals displayedambiguities, different opinions and understandings reflecting the prevailed ideologicaltensions and conflicts within the Left movement. A study of these attitudes could there-fore reveal much about such tensions and perhaps shed light on the relative failure ofthe Left in fully inserting itself in popular Greek culture. At the very least, it could helpoutline the nature of the Greek Left’s engagement in issues of hegemony, popularculture, etc., topics that engaged the attention of Gramsci in neighbouring Italy.

The rebetiko issue has become a favourite subject in some scholarly explorationsbased on textual analysis in the last two decades (see, inter alia Gauntlett 1991, 2005;Michael 1996; Andriakaina 1996; Vlisidis 2004; Tragaki 2005a, 2007; Papanikolaou,2007) including, to some extent, the left-wing intellectuals’ involvement in this debatewhile some texts turn their attention directly to the Left movement’s discourse aboutrebetika. Vlisidis, for instance, using a wide range of rebetika texts presented a detailedchronological approach of the left-wing intelligentsia’s assumptions and beliefs aboutthe genre (Vlisidis 2004: 69–164) while Panagiotopoulos (1996) explored the contro-versial attitudes imprisoned leftists held regarding rebetika.

My approach focuses on some ideological juxtapositions which privileged within thecommunist movement, mainly after the restoration of democracy in 1973. In the socio-political context of this period, the revival of rebetika and its increasing popularityamong the members of communist youth, the influence of the 1960s social movement’sdiscourse in leftist intellectual circles, and the involvement of some left-wing scholarsin rebetiko study refocused attention on the issue. In these circumstances, the genre’ssupporters emphasized rebetiko’s visionary appeal and tried to stress its resistingelements, while the opponents employed an anti-imperialistic rhetoric in order to crit-icize rebetiko’s presumed fatalist and apolitical content and to denounce some rebetes1

for their alleged shady transactions with parastate mechanisms and the security police.This article uses both textual and biographical material in an effort to understand

the rebetiko issue in all its complexity. Seen from this perspective, the analysis allow usto crosscheck the oral histories of elderly people concerning their experiences andinterpretations of the locally circumscribed relationship between rebetiko and the Leftwith the views of Marxist intellectuals as expounded in the published texts. This multi-method approach poses new questions and, possibly, paves the way for a morecomprehensive approach in the field.

The text is composed of two interrelated sections. The first part is based on textualanalysis and addressees an important issue and dilemma in the rebetiko debate. It dealswith the political orientation of the genre and poses the question whether rebetikocould be thought of as a political song; one that includes elements of cultural resistanceto bourgeois norms and values, or whether it is a reactionary, fatalistic song genre thatdiverts proletarians from active political activity.

History and Anthropology 17

The second part is based on primary and secondary biographical material. From ananthropological point of view, it turns its attention to some of the controversies andambiguities concerning the moral and political influences of rebetika as these aredisplayed in elderly people’s life histories. It also highlights the ways that rank-and-fileleftists negotiate and interpret in their biographical reconstruction the rebetiko worldin its local context.

The sources for this article are both available textual resources and biographicalaccounts. The former were selected from a wide range of left-wing intellectuals’ writ-ings on the rebetiko issue, published in newspapers, magazines and books since the endof the interwar era till the present. The biographical accounts include testimonies fromethnographic interviews and biographical texts. Two oral histories collected throughmy 1994 ethnographic fieldwork on the rebetiko world in Heraklion, Crete and re-examined according to the aims of this paper. I have also collected an oral history of aleft-wing woman composed specifically for the needs of this survey. In addition, I usetwo published biographical texts: Kail-Velou’s edition of Vamvakaris’ autobiography,an eminent rebetiko composer (Kail-Velou 1978), and an autobiographical book byMissios (Missios 1985), a left-wing political imprisoned in the post war era.

Political and Subversive or A-political and ‘Reactionary’ Song?

The interest of the Greek Left on popular music dates back to the inter-war period.Although, the official Left saw rebetiko as a disapproved musical genre which wasconsidered to be associated with the fatalism of the lumpen-proletariat and the under-world, some Left intellectuals acknowledged its value for its satirical depiction ofGreek low-life in poetic and literary works (Gauntlett 2005). During the 1920s theLeft’s engagement with the rebetiko world seems to reflect the “mystique of themarginality” which was expressed in the texts of some new authors (for examplePikros, Varnalis, Velmos, Zarkos, Katiforis and Kanellis). Vivid, colourful, oftensarcastic, literary pictures which derived from the worlds of social wretchedness (pros-titutes, drugs, venereal diseases, vagabondage and hashish-dens) used to depict theatmosphere of the marginal social worlds in the interwar era.

As Ntounia (1996: 38) has noted for the militant intellectuals of that time, populartavernas, rebetika haunts, and the neighbourhood of Trouba’s brothels in Piraeusbecame the space of a literary and social protest and the figures of the underworld wereperceived as spontaneous representatives of social subversion. As the times passed, theparty’s disciplinarians and ideologues sought “purer” proletarian patterns in art whichcould inspire people in the fight for radical socialist transformation. In their politically-motivated conceptions, Marxist intellectuals tried to do two things: first, theyattempted to demystify the underworld hero, who was perceived as a victim of capital-ism being pushed in marginality by the dominant sordid living conditions; and second,they attempted to appropriate some of rebetika’s positive and subversive elements inthe rosy prospect of organized political activities (Ntounia 1996: 52).FIGURE 1. Yiorgos “Souliaris” (third from the left) with his company in a local den.Figure 2. The cafe ouzeri Krinos in the centre of Lakkos, 1949.Figure 3. Civil guards, policemen and various gamblers in the years of Cretan Autonomous State (a photo taken by Cretan Muslim photographer Béhaeddin—Archives of Vikelaia Library of Heraklion).Figure 4. A family of refugees from Bodrum of Asia Minor in the suburb of Heraklion, Nea Alikarnassos (1934).

In 1934, the Conference of Soviet Union of Writers initiated the dogma of socialistrealism in literature and art that had a strong influence on the Greek Left intelligentsia.

18 Yiannis Zaimakis

The need for a strong criticism of bourgeois values as well as the shift towards the popu-lar traditions in literature and the arts were among the most important issues thatemerged from this influence. Following the 1935 Seventh Conference of the CommunistInternational that decided on the formation of anti-fascist blocks all around the worldagainst imperialistic forces, Marxist discourse started to incorporate national and ethnicissues seeking the continuity of Greek popular traditions across time. In Marxistrhetoric, the traditions of the popular masses were distinguished from the bourgeoisones, which were considered to be merely as an unquestionable acceptance and imita-tion of western musical patterns.

In the field of music, the dimotika (folklore) songs were perceived as the popularartistic expression of subordinate classes including, up to a point, elements of theauthentic experiences of the masses. These songs expressed the torments and passionsof the people and could be used by communist artists as seminal materials for a newform of optimistic and militant popular art. In the spirit of the militant populist slogan“art from the people and for the people”, Marxist artists were expected to combinetheir need for artistic expression with the task of raising the class-consciousness and theideological indoctrination of the working people, while the positive picture of thehardworking and militant proletarian was expected to replace the controversial andambivalent heroes of the underworld.

In the post-war era, interest in a national-popular culture, which had been enforcedduring the years of Metaxas fascist regime (1936–1940) and the Second World War, ledto a long-standing debate about the political and national affiliations of rebetiko. In thisdebate, some of the most important questions were whether the morphologicalelements and social affiliation of rebetiko could allow its inclusion into authentic Greekpopular music and whether it could express the deepest needs, feelings and hopes of thesubordinate social classes. This rebetological discourse is defined by a demand for“uplift” and “reformation” of popular music destined to reinforce the anti-capitalistspirit of the people and which could “humanize” them (Tragaki 2005a: 63).

During the same period, Mikis Theodorakis, a left-wing composer who was involvedin this debate, tried to implement through his innovative musical experimentation theMarxist ideals concerning the political role of the progressive artists to the formationof a militant culture. Poems mirroring the high virtues of Greek people were set to a“qualitative” form of popular music (what was termed entexno laiko tragoudi, art-popular song), which could be understood by the masses raising their cultural level andcommunist morale.

The furious discussion about rebetika occurred in a polemical climate with themajority of Marxist intellectuals and the Communist leadership expressing their reser-vations about the possibility of the genre to become a vehicle of social consciousnesscontributing to the struggle against the “hegemonic” dominant culture. During theyears of Junta dictatorship (1967–1974) although interest in rebetika remained active,public expression of Marxist opinions as to the political value of the genre could not beexplored as political parties were abolished and a strict press censorship instituted.

In 1968, a year after the imposition the dictatorship in Greece, the split of Commu-nist party into two parties, the orthodox KKE and the reformist KKE “of interior”, was


accompanied by and expressed in various changes in the attitudes of the communistmovement. On a cultural level, the reformist intellectuals were influenced by theFrench May ’68 student uprising and the new discourses that emerged, and attemptedto adopt ways of life and Marxist precepts about class-based societies that deviatedfrom the strict rules and ideals of the orthodox communist leadership.

The framework of the rebetiko issue in the post-dictatorship era, which is the focusof my analysis here, seems to change. In the second half of the 1970s in the enthusiasticclimate of the restoration of democracy the newly established communist reformistyouth Rigas and B. Panelladiki turned their attention to new ways of expressions suchas rebetiko, the music of youth subculture in western countries, and the innovativemusic of Dionysis Savopoulos2 (what is termed the “new wave” in Greek music). Theinterest of young people in music with new social meanings led to the use of rock andrebetiko as powerful instruments in order to challenge conservative respectability andto deviate from the principle of the party lines concerning militant art. The previouslyclear-cut distinction between what was regarded as a higher form of popular songcompatible with the virtues of working people and the low culture that serviced thegoals of reactionary forces was starting to collapse.

In the case of the orthodox KNE (Greek Communist Youth), although the principlesof party discipline and class consciousness remained strong, the new social and culturalcontext and the increasing popularity of rebetika and rock music among the younggroups was followed by new considerations regarding popular music. Indeed new,sometimes moderate or positive, views about rebetika appeared which were at oddswith the longstanding negative attitude of the party and the voices of the moredogmatic intellectuals within KKE. In the wider debate about the political affiliation ofsome popular musical genres, the issue of the politically engaged versions of rock music(for example, Dylan’s and Baez’s songs) was posed and re-evaluated while rebetika(with the exception of the alleged hashish-rebetika), along with the entexno laikotragoudi started to be incorporated in the recommended forms of music to the youth(Papadogiannis n.d.).

The attraction of young communists towards new musical experimentations and therevival of underworld music contributed to the emergence of a subversive discoursethat identified rebetika and rock as symbols of a young counterculture which was atodds with the dominant values and challenged, up to a point, the strict disciplines andnormative rules of the Communist leadership. In the campus of rebetiko’s supportersnew considerations appeared including views from the academic community. It seemsthat, after some delay, the mixing of music and politics in the popular music of themovements of 1960s (see Eyerman & Jamison 1998) started to influence the Greek Leftintelligentsia provided an opportunity for the emergence of some critical views accom-panied by new conceptualizations and visionary, often idolizing, approaches.

A noteworthy example is Stathis Damianakos, a Greek scholar living in Paris and anactive member of the communist movement, who was engaged in the furious rebetikodebate in 1970s. Damianakos was aware of the analytical weakness of the old argumentsabout the evolution and class affiliation of rebetika and tried to identify a large-scaleevolutionary progress of rebetika inspired by the evolutionary schemes familiar to

20 Yiannis Zaimakis

Marxist circles. According to this author, the birth of rebetiko dated back to the end ofthe nineteenth century in the harbours of the Aegean. A new type of popular urbansong emerged in the enclosed spaces of hashish dens and prisons, whose lyrics referredprimarily to hashish, prisons, and criminals. This primary phase of the genre wasfollowed by a second phase of “classic rebetiko,” which started with the arrival ofthe Asia Minor refugees in 1922 and ended approximately in 1940. During this phasethe genre changed, the orchestra was enriched and references to issues such as loveand the way of life of the rebetis were reinforced. The third phase of the genre, called“the labor phase”, spans from 1940 to 1953, when it spread throughout the wider socialstrata. Its poetics were embellished and it began incorporating lyrics that were influ-enced by the proletarian movement, including elements of working class culture(Damianakos 2001, 1987: 109–167).

This evolution of rebetika reflected, in Damianakos’s words, “the history of theGreek proletariat in a society on the way toward capitalist integration”. Rebetikofollowed the development of the proletariat and its class-consciousness and capturedthe “authentic expression, the cry of pain and despair of a great part of the low socialstrata, which due to the invasion of capitalist relations were driven to a marginal andwretched existence” (Damianakos 1987: 164). The progressive development of rebetikafrom a criminal and sub-proletariat outlook toward an authentic voice of the workingclass was interrupted in the mid-1950s due to the widespread commercialization of thegenre by the culture industry and the invasion of the upper class in the places of popu-lar entertainment.

Damianakos’s work seems to be inspired by the popular idea in the 1960s socialmovements’ discourses about anti-capitalist utopias in that he seeks to locate pocketsof resistance in popular culture against the assimilating mechanisms of the state and thealienating patterns of global cultural imperialism (Damianakos 2001: 270, compare toTragaki 2005b). In an historical perspective, Damianakos (2005) saw in rebetiko’s casethe continuity of a long tradition of resistance and revolt by some dominated groups ofGreek society.3 Damianakos’s view about the proletarian outlook of rebetika has beenchallenged by Ole Smith (1989: 190), who claimed that this was mere wishful thinkingamong leftists and that only one song, Fabrikes [Factories] by Tsitsanis, can be regardeda proletariat song that, nonetheless, presented a rather romanticized picture of the lifeof industrial workers. According to Smith, the new feeling of postwar rebetika of deepdepression, insecurity, and total hopelessness was a veiled reaction to the shatteredprospects for a better world created during the Resistance and Liberation.

Kostas Vergopoulos, in his limited yet noteworthy involvement in the debate,adopted an interpretive approach that focused on cultural dimensions, rather than anarrow political frame of analysis and presented an idealized and perhaps rarefiedinterpretation of rebetika. He located its development in the marginal social strata ofthe interwar era and proposed that it is precisely the marginal nature of the genre thatgave it its artistic value and power. Rebetiko, like other kinds of popular traditions, didnot directly challenge the power relationships but their manifestations in everydayreality and, in this sense, it constituted a “secondary” resistance in the wider terrain ofthe struggle against ruling class hegemony. He found the strength of rebetiko in the


marginality of its “worldview and ideology” because, for Vergopoulos, the radicalismof the lumpen-proletariat during the interwar era of social crisis expressed not only theviews of the working class but also a large part of the wider society (Vergopoulos 1974,reprinted in Holst 1991: 232.) (Vergopoulos original text derived From newspaper).

Regarding the class affiliation of the genre, Vergopoulos claimed that it had a class-less orientation, which is considered to be radicalism beyond class struggle. Hedisagreed with the criticism of some political organizations, including KKE, about theconservatism of rebetiko, noting that, although it did not have a revolutionary contentin terms of political struggle, it nevertheless proposed a radical aesthetic around theissues of “beauty, life, pleasure and poetry”. In this sense, rebetiko was not a realistic buta “deeply metaphysical and poetic song” that gave priority to an interior freedom, over-coming every type of alienation (Vergopoulos 1974 in Holst 1991: 233, 237).

It is worth mentioning that Vergopoulos, did not attempt, as did the eminent folk-lorist Petropoulos (1978: 70),4 to separate rebetiko from its disputable and disreputablesocial setting but identified precisely the virtues and unconventional values of thismarginal world in its social settings . In his worlds, “in this case it is confirmed thatsocial deviation and isolation were forever compound elements of every kind ofauthentic art” (Vergopoulos 1974, in Holst 1991: 233). Some years later, he character-ized rebetiko as the highest expression of a generalized pursuit to find ways that led to“the other, the different, and to escape”. For Vergopoulos, rebetiko was an authentic artform that achieved its poetic value by dwelling on the low, insignificant features ofeveryday life, rather than on the pure forms of conventional poetry (Vergopoulos 1978:210–211). To some extent, this approach seems to return to the nostalgia for marginalworlds, an issue, which, as I point out above, was employed leftist intellectuals in 1920s.

In the mid-1970s there were appeared some critical evaluations of the genre in thecommunist party’s official press. In a Rizospastis column, for instance a contributorcalled M.P. (1975), pointed out that the social origin of rebetiko from the underworldmade an objective evaluation of the genre problematic. He attributed this cautiousattitude to the “fossilized dogmatic tendencies” of Stalinism, which had prevailed in theLeft movement during the 1940s and demanded the eradication of the authenticexpression of an era. Referring to the official stance of the modern Left on rebetiko, heremarked on its ambivalent thesis, which on the one hand praised its aesthetic content,and on the other continued to castigate its lack of fighting spirit.

In 1975, “M.L.” in an article in the newspaper of the KNE Oδηγητ ς, tried toconnect rebetiko with the working-class value system. According to his view, rebetikowas born in the working-class areas of Athens, Piraeus and Salonica and, apart from afew hashish songs, it incorporated the social protest of the proletariat and not theexpression of lumpen circles. Although rebetiko did not reinforce proletarian class-consciousness toward militancy, it was an authentic popular and social song expressingdaily longings. Because of the inability of the progressive movement to understand thesocial meaning of the genre, its evaluation remained entrapped in bourgeois concep-tions by stressing its lumpen and mangiko features (M.L. 1975).

Others commentators asserted views that attributed an explicit political content tothe genre. Sxorelis, a rebetologist and a then member of the communist party,

η

22 Yiannis Zaimakis

defended rebetiko, claiming that only 2 per cent of rebetika made references to hashish;that was because of the State policy to encourage drug-use among the impoverishedpopular masses in order to control their resistance. He reversed the arguments regard-ing the anti-social dimension of rebetiko by asserting that it was not a song of escape,pessimism and refusal, but a social popular song, which, for a long time, was theunique expression of popular longings, wishes and desires in the Greek cities (Sxorelis1976).

In the same vein, the political orientation of rebetika became the main topic in a bookby Nearxos Georgiadis. He presented selective examples of songs penned by rebetikocomposers, with references to the Resistance and the heroic role of EAM (NationalLiberation Front), to support his hasty generalization that the popular song—identifiedwith rebetiko—followed in the footsteps of guerilla songs which were connected withthe political ideology of EAM. From this point of view, rebetiko ideology was graduallymoved away from the inter-war patterns of low life mangas’ bravery in favour of thefighting guerrilla. Similarly, its anarchistic or individualistic ideological traits recededin favour of organized political action (Georgiadis 1993: 142).

It is remarkable that although the rebetiko debate has recently subsided, texts haveappeared, sporadically, posing some of these old questions. For example, there is aview that criticizes the modern youth because they enjoy themselves in commercialrebetadika listening to songs which praise narcotics (T.M. 2008: 15). This has incited adirect reaction in the Kosma and Mitas article (2008) which in responding to the T.Margumentation that these songs were in low esteem in the circles of the Left movementin 1960s, argued that rebetiko is a “deeply political song” which came from the“bottom, the silent majorities of the margins” to build an “alternative sensibility” anda response to the prevalent social, political and cultural discourse. According to thesewriters, the use of hashish dens as a means of escape was not the abandonment of thefight but a political vindication: one consciously chooses the deviant circumstancesand this constitutes an answer to the social contexts in a given historical conjuncture(Kosma & Mitas 2008: 84).

In the circles of the rebetiko opponents a main argument was elaborated around theestablished belief that rebetiko was used by reactionary forces in their effort to imposean ideological hegemony of the ruling class in Greek society securing, to some extent,the consent of the subordinate class. This consideration brought to the fore a latentawareness of the shady dealings of many people around rebetika haunts with membersof the repressive state apparatus and the promotion of the genre by both the culturalindustry and state radio.

This line of thinking dates back to the civil-war era when Stavrou condemned theincreased popularity of the genre and its diffusion in bourgeois circles as proof that theextreme social worlds of prostitution in Trouba and the upper class society of Kolonakisquare interacted. He complained about the wide diffusion of rebetika but wondered,ironically, who would ban it, since “rebetika songs are neither anarchistic nor do theyseek the toppling of the ‘beautiful’ and ‘healthy’ regime”. Recalling the days when thenationalist paramilitary “evzones”5 were singing rebetika,6 he defended the proletarianspirit that was not broken in spite of the exiles, the executions and the efforts of the


reactionary forces to “imbue” people with the music of the hashish dens that wouldmake them passive and politically inactive (Stavrou 1946).

Similarly, other distinguished members of the communist youth emphasized therisk of corrupting the youth through the free circulation of hashish songs in variousdisreputable places with the tolerance, if not collaboration, of the police. This alsobrought to mind the campaign by the organized communist movement, during theGerman occupation years, against dens of vice and prostitution where the koutsavakikasongs were born. A variant of this argument was presented later by Maxairas whoregarded the postwar diffusion of rebetika as a symptom of the cooperation of a varietyof capitalist forces, such as security policemen, black-marketeers, entertainment halls,radio and record companies, which formed a block based on their common intereststhat were antithetical to those of the working class (Maheras 1961).

The conspiracy argument was at its fiercest during the mid-1970s—unsurprisinglyso as Greek society was trying to understand and come to terms with the disastrousperiod of the recently collapsed Junta dictatorship. In this period, the revival and theincreased popularity of rebetika and its promotion via the broadcasts of the ArmedForces Radio were interpreted as an organized cultural plan of imperialistic forces totransmit their “rotten reactionary ideology on a cultural level” through the diffusion ofalien cultural patterns (Laikos Dromos 1975) or, in other words, a means for “the ideo-logical and moral attack of imperialism” against the people, aiming at their “spiritualenslavement” (Skaros 1976). The supposed immoral and a-political traits of “defeatist,sad, anti-heroic, neutral songs of prisons and hashish dens”, incompatible with the real“grandeur of the people” (Fotiadis 1976) were considered to be the means that spreadan attitude of “despair, solitude, escape, consolation in false paradises, subordinationto fate and destiny, and the belief that every effort is in vain” to the masses (Rotas 1984).

In his, critical intervention Vournas claimed that while the rebetiko of the interwarperiod became the musical expression of the working people, during the “black” yearsof the German occupation it transformed into a “musical expression of the psychologyof the black-marketeer, the tagmatasfalites,7 and of all sorts of agents of the occupyingforces. As he wrote “We saw it with our own eyes and heard with our own ears. Iremember the crowds of [tagmatasfalites] shooting in their enthusiasm while listening[to rebetika] …” (Vournas 1977). Expressing his disappointment with the increasingcommercialization of the genre, Theodorakis also commented on the passion of someapolitical and anarchic circles for rebetika and rock music and noted that the idoliza-tion of the rebetis and his evolution into a social symbol amounted to a backstabbingof the Left (Likiardopoulou 1980).

The high-school magazine of Communist students Sxolio also became involved in therelevant debate criticizing the postwar invasion of rebetika in the places of upper strataentertainment and their musicological and stylistic adjustment to bourgeois tastes.According to the anonymous writer, this process was a plot by the ruling class to concealthe Civil War scars and to generate a false sense of improvement in the living standardof Greeks, in the framework of a supposed capitalist industrial development (Sxolio1982). Xenos came back with his conspiracy theories (see Gauntlett 1991: 16–17)condemning the economic oligarchy for the long-standing diffusion of the decadent

24 Yiannis Zaimakis

message of rebetika that vulgarized people’s qualities, disorienting and debasing humannature (Xenos 1975). He also criticized the connections between the German Occupa-tion informers and the hashish-dens of rebetes after the civil-war era, as a basic vehicleof the right-wing campaign to wear down the democratic and fighting spirit of thepeople. Xenos argued that this campaign was organized on the basis of an Anglo-American plan of psychological warfare, by diffusing rebetika in the places of exile andby promoting it through the State Radio (Xenos 1984).

For many years the argumentation of the alleged underground relations between therebetiko world and the reactionary forces as well the risk of the diffusion of its corrupt-ing power on working class people remained among the main weapons in the crusadeagainst rebetika. In the next section I will try to show that this issue was in the forefrontof biographical accounts.

Biographical Ambivalences in Musical Memories

The foregoing account of the ideas about rebetiko that were held by leftist intellectualshas traced the ideological orientation of the left-wing movement. If the texts reflect thenegative attitude of the communist leadership and the ambivalent views of left-wingwriters, the stance of the rank-and-file members of the Communist Party remainsopaque. I use biographical reconstruction and the memories about left-wing attitudestowards the rebetiko world, as they re-created in the present, to interpret and under-stand past beliefs and prejudices. The patterns of repetition and reinvention of thememories concerning the musical experiences and their political affiliation, inShelemay (2006: 17) words, move across the boundaries of the personal consciousnessto touch a collective memory of the social worlds.

Figure 1. Yiorgos “Souliaris” (third from the left) with his company in a local den.


Taking into account my biographical research on material relating to the world ofrebetiko in the Cretan port-city of Heraclion, it seems that some left-wing elderlynarrators had constructed a stigmatized image for the local rebetiko world. However,this negative attitude was associated rather with the low-life associations and politicalaffiliation of this local pocket than with rebetika per se. As regards the latter, the majorityof the narrators appeared to be supporters of the genre only expressing some objections

Figure 2. The cafe ouzeri Krinos in the centre of Lakkos, 1949.

Figure 3. Civil guards, policemen and various gamblers in the years of Cretan Autono-mous State (a photo taken by Cretan Muslim photographer Béhaeddin—Archives ofVikelaia Library of Heraklion).

26 Yiannis Zaimakis

to the hashish songs. By contrast to the rather positive assessment of the genre, theiropinions on the local social setting of rebetika appeared to be more controversial.

Lakkos was a neighborhood on the south-west perimeter of the old town, justwithin the Venetian walls in which were restricted all the city brothels away from theeyes of respectable people, following the “Decree on Brothels”8 issued by the CretanAutonomous State. It was a dynamic social space structured around complex socio-cultural networks connected with impromptu economic transactions at times border-ing on the illegal, such as smuggling, gambling, prostitution and hashish-smoking. Itwas also a vibrant centre of indigenous cultural activity and popular artistic creation(Damianakos 1996: 325).

This was the social setting where rebetes (known also in local society by variousnames, such as kaldirimitzides, mourmouria or kapadayides) frequented. According tocross-checking oral histories, they were social figures with a central presence in thedaily life and economic activities of Lakkos and were characterized by a distinct slangidiom, a peculiar swaggered style of dressing (among other things, it comprised of atype of hat called republika, striped suits and pointed polished shoes), a system ofvalues associated with manliness, hashish smoking and the pursuit of daily pleasures.Although the music, especially some modes of local, non-commercial and oral-compositional songs, was an important part of the daily community activities and anelement of their collective identity, the meaning of the word rebetis, as it is constructedin biographical outlets, is associated more with its social context than its relation witha particular kind of music.

Exploring the body of left-wing personal narratives on rebetika, it seems that theconspiracy argument, highlighted in many rebetika texts, was also a commonsense

Figure 4. A family of refugees from Bodrum of Asia Minor in the suburb of Heraklion,Nea Alikarnassos (1934).


belief in biographical reconstructions. Indeed, some narrators denounced certainprestigious rebetes for their alleged secret dealings with the State mechanism, implyingthat they were informers of the State Security Police in exchange for the unhinderedpursuit of their economic, and occasionally illegal, activities. According to the lifehistory of Giorgos “Souliaris” (1915–2000), a left-wing mangas from Asia Minor, “thepimps here were protected by the Security [Police]. As for the stories about the banimposed by Metaxas’s regime, […] they exiled only those persons that K.9 and someothers pimps did not like. They were a clique—the pimps, the security policemen,some patrons, and the ‘permanents’ in the area. They lived under immunity during thedictatorship.”10

Souliaris referred to one of the troubled periods in the social history of Lakkos in theMetaxas era when many local manges were exiled and the place was under the strictsurveillance of the local authorities. He seems to express a social protest against thecorrupt social networks of the time and a belief, widely accepted in left-wing circles,that despite the regime’s declared determination to clean out local expressions of moralcorruption in Lakkos, the subject of their zeal were mainly some leftists that frequentedthe area and some wretched hashish users, not the “local elites”—implying the cooper-ation of the latter with the Security Police. All the same, this biographical commentfocuses on the ways that ordinary left-wing people interpret the regime’s policies,presenting a commonsensical picture that under the guise of a crusade for the re-moralization of the city, the regime tried to wear down the morale of the powerful localworking class movement.

The same matter is the subject of criticism in the biography of Yiorgos Kalatzis,(1906–1998) an old boatman who had been exiled during the Metaxas’s Dictatorshipera (1936–1940). This extract from his narration is remarkable:

Among the people of Lakkos, the regime arrested only second-rate manghes, some hashishusers but not the heads. I remember P.—the Security Police detained him for a short while.He went to the Chief of the Security Police and became an informer. We all know that hetrafficked women and hashish.

As regards his own experience, he said: “They exiled me to Toυρκoλ µανo. They keptpressuring me to enroll in Metaxas’s [Fascist] Youth. But I was a liberal, so I couldn’tdo it. They labeled me a dangerous communist and since I was a mangas they took awaymy republica11 and tried to humiliate me.”12

The evidence from diverse biographical accounts suggests that for a long time someexchange networks were established between some prestigious figures of Lakkos andthe repressive mechanisms of the State. Despite the fact that these networks seem toconstitute a small part of the local social scene, the left-wing approached the Lakkoscase with some degree of caution. The Left leadership’s cautious attitude was reinforcedby the fact that Lakkos was considered to be an area associated with permanentpleasures, hashish using, listless and fatalist rebetika including some local oral compo-sitional songs. The latter contained eastern influences reflected an undesirable residueconnected to the era of Ottoman occupation in Crete and the years of the AutonomousCretan State when the Cafe Aman flourished in Heraklion (Zaimakis 1997–1999).

ı

28 Yiannis Zaimakis

The negative attitude of the communist leadership against the local rebetiko worldis a source of ambivalence in Souliaris’s biography. Despite his strictures against thesuspect role of some men of Lakkos, he was attracted by the pleasures offered thereand the sense of liberty which he found in “rebetiko” life and music. According to hisbiography,

I was Left-wing and I still remain Left-wing […] They (The Communist Party leadership]did not want us, the rebetes, the manges. They were looking for slavish followers, theywanted to be at the top and to have the others worship them like they were Jesus Christ.But the rebetis is something else. He has no restrictions […] They wanted to impose ruleseverywhere. They told us to keep out of the area. I didn’t want to have dealings with ruffi-ans but these songs were passed to us by our parents, people who had been uprooted andtortured … . They were our songs.13

The narration of Souliaris reminds us of a deep-seated ambivalence that many leftistsexperienced due to their enmeshing in two controversial value systems. On the onehand, there was the low-life preoccupation including sensual pleasures and ephemeralhappiness (for example: vice, hashish-using, flirting and listening to low-life music).On the other hand, there was their commitment to communist ideals and a concomi-tant way of life dedicated to the political struggle for radical social transformation andobsessed with demonstrating Marxist precepts about social life. This political missionwas considered to be incompatible with a way of life immersed in hedonistic values andpleasures.

The analysis of all of Souliaris’s biographical accounts shows us the way in whichhe managed to overcome this ambivalence between the inner drives and the rational-istic thought of his political ideology. Although he remained committed to left-wingideology he started to challenge the moralistic rules, releasing himself from collectiveobligations of the past and accepting his way of life and musical preferences withoutany guilt ambivilance.

Unlike the ambivalences exposed in the voices of ordinary people, the local left-wingintellectuals displayed more complex views. Despoina Skaloxoritou (born 1928) hasbeen an active member of both the Left and the feminist movements. She was one ofthe founding members of the Greek Women’s Union, a member of the executivecommittee of EDA (Hellenic Democratic Left), together with Mikis Theodorakis, aswell as having run for the Greek Parliament in the past. Her parents originated fromSmyrna and Capadokia of Asia Minor and came to Heraklion during the exchange ofminorities between Greece and Turkey in 1923. Her mother played the kanonaki andall the members of their family were enthusiasts of café-aman style rebetika. Shestressed the social meaning of rebetika, defining them as a type of music that gaveartistic expression to the popular masses. As regards hashish songs, she accepted theirmusical value but not their social content, claiming that they were a particular categoryof songs within the rebetiko tradition, associated with some marginal groups’ ways oflife but not with the people as a whole. This commonsensical approach appears to havebeen adopted by some circles of Marxist intellectuals (see the previous section).

Skaloxoritou challenged the prevalent view of the perpetuation of hegemonicmasculinity through rebetika, proposing a more moderate and balanced view. In her


opinion, the majority of the genre’s verses depicted images of oppressed and exploitedwomen, while some other ones had images of liberated (woman) rebetises. Sheexpresses her sympathy for the women who worked in the Lakkos’ economic activities(the so-called Kaldirimitzoudes or Lakkoudianes in local argot) stressing that some ofthem transgressed the conservative norms of this period by participating in malecompany: dancing, singing, smoking and drinking with them. In her memories, some-times the pictures of misery and exploitation of these women were intertwined withsituations of ephemeral pleasures along with a sense of freedom which some womenseem to experience.

Skaloxoritou’s opinion seems to distance itself from the one-sided negative attitudesof respectable society towards low-life women providing an alternative interpretationof women’s position within rebetiko place that broadens the range of the interpretiveschemes, through which narrators negotiate the topic. It is worth mentioning thatSkaloxoritou was a non-conformist woman, who chose not to marry and occupied theposts of General Secretary and Treasurer of the local Football team Ergotelis during1950s and 1960s—extremely unusual for a woman in the city. She was, also, the firstwoman who drove a car in her city in 1951 and wore trousers, something that “oneshould have guts to do it” in Crete at this time (Michailidis 1999). Her type of personalhistory stimulated Holst-Warhaft (2003: 170) to note that “there were references in therebetika lyrics to the types of women who shared the male world of rebetiko”, while inthe real world some women “who mixed with socially marginalized rebetes, either asartists or fans, may even have enjoyed a degree of freedom available nowhere else inGreek society”.

According to her biographical sources there were two different views for the rebetikoissue in the interior of EDA.14 In the following extract from her biography she explainsthis point:

The other sides (of EDA) accepted the popular song and said that not all (rebetes) werehashish users, men of the Security Police and informers. Rebetiko is a social expression andwe should not make generalizations. We ought to deal with its origin and the needs thatgenerated these songs. The Communist Party believes that none of rebetes had socialconsciousness. They may not have been informers. However, if they were under (Police)pressure they could do it. We could not have this world in the bosom of our party. Theyare adamant on this point. But I could understand their fears. They have made greatsacrifices for their political struggle. Exiles, prisons, tortures […] I was preoccupied withthis issue. Sophia, a distant relative of my mother’s from Asia Minor was in Lakkos in herbakery. Sometimes, I went there to buy rolls and see what was going on. There were coffeeshops around where the old (musicians) played rebetika and many Leftists and Asia Minorrefugees frequented. The Communist Party demanded that the people avoid this place.[…] Sofia told me many things. That some manges were police spies. We know that manywere Royalists. The Police needed to have their snitches there. …”

This extract shows that the controversial positions concerning rebetika were part ofthe wider ideological conflicts that occurred within the communist movement.Although the narrator’s explanatory scheme exposed a general picture of the existingideological disputes between the orthodox and the reformist sides of the left-wingmovement, as we have seen in the analysis of textual sources, the boundaries between

30 Yiannis Zaimakis

the approaches of two sides were overlapped, with many commentators transgressingthem.

Any understanding of the fixed idea of the suspicious role of rebetes requires anawareness of the social-political context of the post Civil War climate and of the fearsof that time. In this era, the defeated left wing was under the surveillance of the stateapparatus and was treated as a political threat to the social order that was called the“communist danger”. Since its members suffered various persecutions, fear promptedpeople to organize their political struggle and conspiratorial mechanism against thepropaganda of their rivals. The existence of a few incidents of corrupt relations betweensome people of the rebetiko circles and the State—a type of power relation that is alsofound in a wider social context in modern Greece—along with the presence of someknown Royalist rebetes were interpreted as evidence of a polluted social environmentwhich was becoming a moral and political risk for working class values.

Ambivalence between political aspiration and inner feelings is also present inSkalohoritou’s life history in which it is displayed in several vivid pictures. The follow-ing extract focuses on the way in which some members of EDA internalized the partyrecommendations:

Some (Leftist) friends of mine lived in Agios Eleutherios, near the old vegetable market,close to Trouba (the old prostitution area in the port of Piraeus). I saw them on the one handwanting to listen to these (rebetika) songs and on the other closing their windows, so as notto be seen from outside, while leaving the blinds open. They enjoyed themselves privately.The prevalent view was that they (rebetes) were hashish users and they carried a socialstigma and (our friends) did not want to have any connections with them.

Expanding our commentary beyond the local settings, we should note that similarbiographical accounts have emerged, relating to ambivalence and controversies. Itseems that despite the aspiration of the left-wing leadership to protect the communistethos from moral corruption and cultural influence alien to the communist ideals, formany rank-and-file members of the party this censure gave rise to much controversy.Chronis Missios, an ex-tobacco worker, described this ambivalence in the literarynarrative of his lengthy experience of exile and prison. In his own words and in freetranslation:

Beyond what the others did to us, we had the Party guidance assholes telling us not to insultanyone, not to curse, not to protest. The communist ethos and so on […]. This bourgeoisbullshit was presented to us as communist morale and revolutionary behavior. […] Theyviewed the former as traits of a lumpen character […] and you know why. Because [therebetis] wanted to listen to a few bouzouki notes without hiding it, he loved women and hedidn’t hide that either, and he loved wine because he is a man who has longings […]. Theystuffed our heads with the idea that it was immoral to listen to bouzouki, and rebetika ingeneral, and even more so to sing them because they were songs of decadence andpessimism. (Missios 1985: 12–13)

It seems that some communist exiles had mixed feelings of enjoyment as well as guiltwhen listening to rebetiko, as it was a digressive social discourse, a deviance from theproper cultural norms of proletarian morality. Rebetiko constituted a threat of corrup-tion, what Douglas (1993) terms symbolic risk, to the degree that any involvement with


it could be perceived by the left wing as evidence of participating in a negatively-assessed social category (Panagiotopoulos 1996: 270). As the above extract suggests thecommunist leadership’s rejection of the rebetika because of their alleged immoral,apolitical and fatalist elements was followed by strict recommendations for the party’smembers to avoid people frequenting rebetika haunts and the area around them, orlistening to this kind of music. This political attitude was thought to be part of the dailypolitical task of the conscious and fighting proletarians as well as a preventive device inthe party’s attempt to protect the class struggle from the polluting influences ofreactionary forces.

The way that State apparatus manipulated rebetiko world is another remarkablesubject in biographical sources. For instance, in his autobiography, MarkosVamvakaris described the German police (Komandatur) strategy to hunt communistguerrillas in the rebetika haunts, based on his personal experience when he was orderedto appear at the Komandatur offices in Athens. A German officer there asked him toinform on the communists that came to the places where Markos performed and manyrebetes frequented. According to Vamvakaris, they told him:

This is what you will do. You will tell us all (about the activities of the communists). Wewill give you what you like to eat in your house. Bread, food, “stuff”, and we will pay you.[…] I said yes to what they were saying as I could not do anything different. […] Afterthat I considered dropping out of sight because I could not do such things. (Kail-Velou1978: 206)

Vamvakaris, again referring to the civil war years, talked about the communists whowould come to the musical tavern Kare tou Asou and ask for him to stop playing hash-ish songs, or else they would banish him: “They did not want (hashsish songs) by anymeans” so that the people “would not learn these things”. They demanded from me toplay their Guerrilla songs. At the same time, their opponents, the Hiittes (right-wingdeath squads) would go there saying “Sing them Marko, don’t worry about a thing,we’ll protect you” (Kail-Velou 1978: 206).

Vamvakaris’s narration reinforces the view that in the circumstances of theGerman occupation and the Civil War era, the social space of rebetiko became acontested ground between different political forces that tried to control the socialbody for their own purposes. The Left saw in it a way of expression that subvertedits value system and tried to reduce its influence on the progressive movement. Boththe German conquerors and the Civil War State employed devious means to under-mine the left-wing resistance movement and to put deviant social places undersurveillance.

These biographical materials showed that narrators recalled past life experiences togenerate a kind of social protest against the corrupt networks, between the para-statemechanism and some suspicious men associated with the rebetiko world. Regardless ofwhether these voices referred to actual facts, something which requires more detailedstudy of written sources and archives, it is obvious that such deep-seated beliefsreinforced the left wing’s negativism towards rebetiko.

The analysis of these biographical accounts provides us with the opportunity toapproach, from an anthropological point of view, socially and historically constructed

32 Yiannis Zaimakis

beliefs and prejudices as well social conflicts that were hidden behind the negativegeneralizations of a left-wing leadership. It shows the ways in which people inter-preted and depicted the rebetiko world from their biographical perspective anddisplayed their sense of ambivalence connected with their position between twodifferent worlds: of meaning and action (the rebetiko and the communist). Similar tothe textual sources, the biographical accounts suggest that the prevalent conspirato-rial argumentation of communist leadership was in the forefront of its crusadeagainst the political and morally corrupting forces that rebetiko are said to represent.The analysis also suggests the significance of certain factors, for example the ideologi-cal tensions within communist movement and the sex of the narrator, which affectedthe perceptions and the assessment of the genre. It also points to the changes in leftistattitudes from the 1940s to the present day. Indeed, leftists begun to transgress theprinciples laid down by the communist leadership exploring and experiencing theirown relationship with rebetika without the transmitted guilt of the past. One couldargue that rebetika had ‘won’.

Conclusion

The rebetiko debate among Greek leftists highlights the prevailing attitude of a fightingand visionary Left committed to, and guided by, the certainty of the coming radicaltransformation of Greek society. The long-lasting interest of the left-wing for rebetikawas based on the belief that music, especially popular music, influenced the system ofvalues and the consciousness of working people, so that it could become a pedagogicalinstrument in the service of the proletarian struggle. For militant left-wingers, the roadtowards the emancipation of the working class had to pass through the resisting ofconventional leisure habits, which caused further alienation. In this framework, theproposed solution to the rebetiko question can be seen as part of a wider plan of culturalpractice aimed at raising the fighting spirit of the working people and forming acounter-hegemonic class consciousness.

Trapped as they were in the dogma of socialist realism that insisted on the transpar-ent and immediately graspable political dimension of art, many writers looked withsuspicion upon the particular cultural expression of rebetiko. Other voices expressedmore moderate assessments that reflected novel aesthetic and political orientationswithin the Left movement. Nonetheless, the interpretive framework of even these latterviews continued to be embedded in the principles of a politically committed art thatwas directly connected to the vision of socialist transformation.

The explanatory framework of the advocates of rebetiko was characterized by anidealized disposition. Indeed, they searched within the rebetiko melody and lyrics forelements of passion, love, kindness, pain and deep feelings in general that marked the“chaste popular soul” and constituted authentic traits and humanist attributes of thelower social strata (Andriakaina 1996: 236–237). These elements were perceived asreflections of an instinctive and genuine popularity.

In the other camp, the opponents of the genre, who formed the mainstream, claimedthat rebetika reflected the negative social and psychological attitudes of the lumpen


strata from which they had originated. The societal, aesthetic and ideological codes ofthe genre constituted a symbolic danger and contamination for the potential membersof the movement. In the eyes of the communist leadership, rebetika glorified hashish-use and praised pessimism, fatalism, bitterness, sadness, escapism and individualism.These traits were antithetical to the moral and ideological order of a movement thattried to politically organize the resistance of the working class and to raise the moraleof its persecuted members (Panagiotopoulos 1996: 270–274).

The patterns of repetition which appeared in biographical and textual materialssuggest that the negative stance of many left-wing intellectuals, and of the communistleadership, was associated not only with the alleged pessimism of rebetiko songs but alsowith its political affiliation. The rebetiko world was seen as a politically infectious placeconnected with parastatal surveillance networks of the right wing which used peoplehanging around rebetika as informers for the Security Police in exchange for Statetolerance or support for their activities, i.e. drug-trafficking, gambling, exploitation ofprostitutes, running hashish dens. The interpretation of this belief or prejudice requiresan understanding of the furious political and social conflicts of the Greek Civil War erawhich scarred the defeated left wing, spreading fears and insecurities among theirmembers.

As Samatas showed, the anti-communist victors of the Greek Civil War, with USguidance and assistance, organized an oppressive socio-political control system, legiti-mated by a semi-parliamentary guided democracy. The state tried to impose ethniko-frosyni, i.e. national loyalty and conformity to the post-Civil War regime, while theSecurity Police and military surveillance network throughout the whole countrysystematically watched, collected, stored, and updated information in special surveil-lance files (Samatas 2004: 20). The illegal Communist Party marshalled its conspiracytheory mechanisms against the propaganda of its opponents and its members regardedevery activity of the state apparatus with suspicion. It is no surprise that in this cold-war climate the ideological disputes expanded in various areas of social life, such as therebetiko world. The latter was seen by the official Left as a social environment associ-ated with a part of lower social strata without class consciousness (in their terms,lumpen-proletariat or sub-proletarians) which risked becoming the ruling class’spawn in their efforts to impose their socio-political control system and ideologicalhegemony.

Despite its defeat in the civil war, in the next decades the Greek Left continued tobelieve in a radical social transformation of Greek society and the arrival of a commu-nist classless social formation. Along with the collapse of the former socialist regimesof Eastern and Southern Europe the hope for cultural and political revolution alsocollapsed, shaking the Left’s faith in the communist future and reshaping the ways inwhich left-wing people interpreted cultural phenomena. Nowadays, the discussionabout rebetika remains alive but the focus on its class character and the effort to includerebetiko in a grand explanatory theory has all but disappeared. It is possible that in thefuture there will be another stage in the history of rebetology. Indeed, in the last fewyears there is a renewed interest—this time among academic rather than politicalcircles, as this paper testifies.

34 Yiannis Zaimakis

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to the anthropologist Costa Gounis for his helpfulcomments on this paper.

Notes1 [1] The Rebetis (sing., pl.: rebetes) was the protagonist of rebetika songs. In the social life he was a

prestigious man who revolved around hashish-dens and the rebetika haunts and acquiredfame and prestige in their social environment. He used low-life slang and a distinctive way ofdressing. His way of life was characterized by non-conformity, hedonism, prodigality and thepursuit of hashish and flirtation pleasures.

2 [2] Savopoulos incorporated in his music musical elements from various types of Greek (forexample, folk and traditional) and foreign (for instance, rock) music and mixed references topolitical protest, youth, drugs, alienation and gender issues.

3 [3] Damianakos (1987, 2005) referred to three groups that deviated from societal norms of Greeksociety. The first were the Kleftes (brigands), a rebellious mountaineer group, during the eraof national revolution against Ottoman Empire, the social armed bandits during the period ofthe settlement of modern Greek state and rebetes, the hard core of lower wretched socialstrata, at the end of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century.

4 [4] According to Petropoulos rebetika was directly related to underworld which was, in his words,the only authentic depository of cultural transition in Greece (Petropoulos 1978: 70).

5 [5] The term “Evzones”, which normally describes the select units of the Greek army that wore atraditional uniform, was adopted by the extreme right-wing paramilitaries in order to stresstheir anti-communist nationalism.

6 [6] In the same vein, Pagkalis (1953) pointed out that during the German occupation there appearedsongs such as “A man’s power is his pocket” that sang the praises of the black-marketeer.

7 [7] The tagmatasfalites were the members of the “Security Battalions” [Tagmata Asfaleias], that is,the Greek armed bands that collaborated with the Germans in fighting the Resistance forces.

8 [8] See “The Decree on Brothels”, Law 173/1900, Official Gazette of the Cretan AutonomousStatus), Chania, 1900, vol. 1, no. 30

9 [9] He was a prestigious owner of a local musical cafe-shop in Lakkos. According the cross-checkingtestimonies, he sold hashish, exploited prostitutes and played bouzouki.

10[10] Biography of G. “Souliaris” (1915–2000), Interview 12 March 1992.11[11] In Greece, the republica is a fedora. Wearing a republica was one of the trademarks of a

Maghas appearance, very much like with other urban underworld figures during the inter-warperiod. It was considered a grave insult to knock-off or take away a mangas’s republica. Ineffect it took away his manhood.

12[12] Biography of G. “Kalatzis” (1906–1999), Interview 17 December 1991.13[13] Biography of G. “Souliaris”, Interview 12 March 1992.14[14] EDA, which was composed of a block of progressive parties including the illegal Communist

Party, remained the main political expression of the Left movement until the imposition ofthe Junta Dictatorship in 1967.

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