(b Syros, 1905; d Athens, 1972). Greek rebetika musician. He went to Piraeus as a young man and began to play the bouzouki. He frequented the hashish dens and was influenced by refugee musicians from Turkey. Together with Delias, Stratos and Batis he formed a quartet that soon became famous, establishing what came to be known as ‘Piraeus-style’ rebetika.
From 1934 to 1935 the quartet played regularly in a small club in Piraeus where Vamvakaris wrote many of the songs that became classics of the rebetika repertory, such as Antilaloun oi filakes (‘The prisons ring out’), Kantone Stavro! (‘Fix it Stavro!’) and M’ekapses tsaxpina mou oraia (‘You burnt me, pretty teaser’). Both his gravelly voice and the subject matter of his songs belonged to the world of the manges, the inhabitants of the Piraeus underworld. Between 1930 and 1940 he wrote and recorded dozens of songs about prison life, the pleasure of smoking hashish in the illegal tekes of Piraeus and his relationships with women.
The Athenian public developed a taste for his music and, together with a number of other Piraeus-based musicians, he began performing in a fashionable Athens club. Censorship imposed by the Metaxas regime in the late 1930s forced him to alter the words of his songs and after World War II, as tastes in popular song changed, Vamvakaris’s popularity waned. With the revival of rebetika in the 1970s his songs were re-recorded and he was treated as a celebrity until his death.
For bibliography see Rebetika.
GAIL HOLST-WARHAFT