Exactly 72 years ago, in civil war and highly conservative Greece, Manos Hadjidakis gave a ground-breaking lecture on the theme of rebetiko song. The official title of his historic speech given on January 31, 1949 was "interpretation and position of modern folk song". This was apparently also the opinion of the 23-year-old composer at the time, who, defying the conventional view of this particular type of song, not only argues in favor of rebetiko, but presents on the stage of the Art Theater Markos Vamvakaris and Sotiria Bellou who sing five well-known rebetikos.
"You heard with what coldness and severity they were said. The rhythm didn't miss a beat, the voices were straight in one piece as if the words had no emotion. That's how it is. Nothing to cause you to notice them, to distinguish them" he says to the audience that has suffocatingly filled the theater and is watching, almost speechless, something that he certainly had never heard before. Most of them are elite members of the so-called urban intelligentsia of Athens.
A little earlier, the young Hadjidakis talks about "the taverns and the entertainment center "O Marios" as well as "Panagaki" near Ai-Pandeleimon, where every night Vamvakaris and Bellou work on their art. I could to talk about rainy nights where the shadows of a crowd were illuminated with oil lamps, who all sang together calmly as if they believed in eternity".
Hadjidakis met Markos when he started visiting the places where the legendary composer of Fragosyriani ministered with his bouzouki. One day, in fact, he saved him from ... wood. The story was told by Manos himself to Iota Sykkas and Fotis Apergis:"One night I went to the tavern where he was playing and, as always, I ordered a plate of food and some retsina. It was obvious that I had nothing to do with him. space. And two or three guys didn't like that and they "came in on me". Then Vamvakaris, who was also physically fit, intervened, "came in" on them in turn and finally said to me:"Next time you will come and sit here, near us". Now safe, I could go to Sofia Spanoudis (s.s. professor at the Athens conservatory and great music critic) Manolis Kalomiris, I took them all..."
The scene with Hadjidakis and the two leading figures of Greek music listening to Markos and Bellou seems surreal (Sofia Spanoudi would later write a monumental article in "Nea" about Vassilis Tsitsanis), but the prolific young composer was impressed. from the strict, almost Byzantine, sound of the songs, which during the Occupation a genius close friend of his tried to convince him to listen carefully.
In fact, according to him, the death of his friend was the reason for him to learn rebetiko as best he could:"E We had an appointment one day at "Orfea", but Hector didn't come. He had been arrested. They tortured him in Haidari and killed him. This shocked me. Fatefully, every conversation with him now took on other dimensions. Thus, I wanted to trace the rebetiko".
The Hadjidaki speech, although the rebetiko song was already known and accompanied the poor, torturous evenings of the popular strata, causes an uproar. Associated with the fringes, drugs, rebetiko accepted the persecution and censorship of the official state (starting with the Metaxas dictatorship) and the discredit of the left which considered it the property of the lumpen proletariat "with hymns to hashish and tekedes", so "away from the real problems and struggles of the working class".
Even for an hour
Suddenly, along comes Hadzidakis with his innovative thinking, to mix Beethoven, Bach, folk song and Byzantium with repetiko, which he deifies as a genuine Greek art form. Obviously, he gets his inspiration from the appeal, which seems to have in those years the song with the bouzoukis and the baglamades. And at the same time he wants to blast those who disrespected him...
"Rebetiko, and this is an undeniable fact, has now imposed its power, more or less, on all of us, either positively or negatively, either because we admit it or not, while at the same time we see that it has been created around it a frivolous state of fashion, which makes us justifiably react to it and doubt the future and qualitative development of the genre. (Here, of course, I take its qualitative value for granted)" notes the genius composer, recalling the popularity of the folk song at the beginning of the 20th century when the folkists were in full swing...
"Because it will be kind of silly if we think that the butcher can or will replace the tango" he emphasizes, answering the question "what do we expect from the rebetikas" by explaining that "these folk rhythms have something much, more than is necessary to cover our evening entertainment hours - regardless of whether this character is imposed and prevails in the folk classes. Then it will be a big lie for us if we claim that it is possible to express ourselves with such bare and unsparing rhythms. Such a thing only for those who, with wine or other means, send to the devil - as they say - every social barrier and every contract, even for an hour." Great truth, if you consider that rebetika, without wine, cigarettes and ... dalkades, you can hardly listen mainly, but feel the song, first the music, then the lyrics.
Hadjidakis does not consider that rebetiko is for satiety, for everyday use, as is the case "and with the other music, the one we call serious? Can one ever imagine, that an evening of pleasure, it is possible to cover it with Beethoven's Sonata 110? h)".
From "Arapia" to "Arhontissa"
The well-structured speech begins and responds step by step to snobbery and polite distaste for rebetiko and its messages. The reference to the conversation with his friend from the occupation, on a frosty night, "with the unique illumination of the cold face of a moon, is the occasion to immerse the audience in the hidden charm of the songs to which he himself initially did not give the same importance.
"A subtle but piercing sound of a bouzouki is mirrored - as it were - on the asphalt and follows us step by step. My friend tries to explain to me the mood of flight and the intense obsession with the mood held by the four notes of the then circulating song "I'll go there to the wasteland," says Hatzidakis, and while his friend declares himself moved by the escapism of the lyrics, he reproduces the arguments "about marketable, cheap and vulgar genre as well as other similar"
"Later the two young people will hear a "new rebetika cry - new to me of course - flowing with intensity between the narrow and dirty sidewalks of Piraeus and Athens. We were listening to the first stanza which read "I tired to get you my highness witch trani". And my friend was explaining by touching on all the unsatisfied eroticism that suffocated the atmosphere", something that Manos himself would understand some years later, who seems to have fallen in love with the specific song of Vassilis Tsitsanis, getting into the essence of rebetiko. What have the Tsitsanides and Vamvakarides been singing to us all these years? Hadzidakis says that the main themes of rebetiko are love and flight. And what kind of love is it? The unsatisfied "who starts from the most cynical attitude and reaches with a primitive tension to the wide Christian limits of love and a flight imposed morbidly - I would say - by weakness, since conditions remain as hard as metal in the a man who moves to love with all his strength and as much as he can"
Sick? Every other...
The deconstruction of those who claim that rebetiko is also in line with his worldview. Hadjidakis considers and repeats that in a repressed society and atmosphere, there is a vitality that "burns" and while "spirituality gets sick and beauty remains" . There is the will "of a people, like ours, for a way out, for expression, for contact with the outside world"
"It's sick" they say sternly, "while the folk song, full of health and levity" and they nod their heads with meaning, while I'm sure our folk song is as annoying to them as the rebetiko, with the difference that they don't dare to admit they don't like it. It's like coming out and saying they don't like Shakespeare - for example - or something like that. They tolerate elementary but not rebetiko. The latter is something that circulates among them and they can throw it away -so they imagine- because it has not yet been hung with golden frames" he answers the "sound moralists" whom he reminds that they "ignore our age and that a popular song reflects with unique intensity not only a class or category of people but the effects of an entire era on a race, on a nation along with shaped local conditions".
For Hatzidaki, the "unsatisfied but intense eroticism" that the rebetika songs exude highlight, among others, "a compelling desire to escape from reality by any technical means, such as hashish and other drugs, the use of which shows the passivity of the class that uses it"
Such conversations in a Greece that exuded conservatism, eroticism was an almost forbidden word. Tsitsanis may have written about the "lady, mad witch" who was tired of acquiring her, the relationship between the two leaves, however, was covered by modesty, the ethics of the consul and the exhortations of catechetical schools. Hadjidakis, however, was never conventional, nor did he follow his time.
And he throws the gratuitous shot at the "ethicists" saying:"Our years are difficult and our folk song, which is not made by people of fugue and contrapunto to care about sanitation and rough health devices, sings the truth and only the truth".
The Greekness of rebetiko
Knowing that the main category of "opponents" of rebetik song was "oriental" or "Turkish" or "Arab" origin, Hadzidakis goes on the counterattack, arguing for the Greekness of the genre. At the end of the day he connects it with the municipal tradition and the Byzantine member. He also wants to answer the argument that rebetikas are "songs of a certain class of people, expressing their personal situation" and underlines:
"The rebetiko manages to combine speech, music and movement with a wonderful unity. From the composition to the performance, the conditions for this threefold expressive coexistence are instinctively created, which sometimes seems to reach the limits of perfection is morphologically reminiscent of ancient tragedy. The composer of the music is simultaneously a poet as well as a performer. His basic instruments are the bouzouki - a large mandolin of Turkish origin - and the baglamas - a variant of the Cretan lyre and the related island lyre, smaller from her and pen percussion. The composition of the song is of course based on the dance movement, with three characteristic rhythms, the zeibeki, the butcher's and the serbian (the latter is less used)"
According to Hadjidakis:
- "Zeibekikos in 9/8 is the most basic rhythm of rebetika music" comes from "the 9/8 dances of the Cyclades and Pontus" however, it has become "slow, heavy, long-winded and more comprehensive". And in an almost masterful analysis he explains that"the good zeibeki dancer will be the one who possesses the greatest imagination and the appropriate plasticity so as not to leave a single note of the bouzouki that he does not give with a corresponding movement of his body .Sa dance is the most difficult and the most dramatic in content"
- "The Butcher is based on the 4/4 beat" and based on the way it is danced (either by two or by four) it refers to an "extension of the folk dance style, with a certain European influence" and a very distant affinity to the French Java dance
- "Servicing is fast-paced and of little interest from the point of view of skill"
With these three rhythms dominant, the (then) young composer discerns the effect "or rather the extension of the Byzantine member. Not only by examining the scales that are kept unchanged by the instinct of popular musicians, but also by observing the falls, the intervals and the manner of execution" with the basic starting point (source he says) the "austere and unnecessary church melody".
Not that he does not accept the channeled elements of the folk song in rebetiko, he distinguishes them especially in the lighter genre, with "the island lightness", such as "party boat in the harbor, down in Pasalimani" or "Captain Andreas Zepo", he insists, however, in the extension of the Byzantine member, even comparing the two eras. The difficult years of Greece in 1949, with the decline of Byzantium:"Atmosphere just as oppressive, just as unclear, regardless of whether in those years it came from a misguided expenditure of religious sentiment"
As for the rebetiko style, the main characteristic is the restrained (sostenuto, as they say in music) style. "And in the melody and the words and the dance there is no outburst, no nervousness" he says and adds:"Everything is given modestly, unnecessarily with an inner strength that often shocks".
What does all this remind you of? But what else than "the main and great element that characterizes the Greek race. And even better the brilliant majesty of ancient tragedy and all ancient monuments". Hadjidakis reminds the modern Greeks, who are antiquarians anyway, that the culture of their ancestors was based "on purity, on simple lines " in uk en pollo eu, embraced in a transcendent simile by the rabble-rousing creators.
A music, therefore, that "is beyond the Byzantine organ, beyond the folk song and in the worst case beyond the palpable broken ancient columns of the Parthenon and the Erechtheion, that it is where all these were found in their time" it can only prove that "the rebetiko song is genuinely Greek, uniquely Greek".
At this point, Manos Hadjidakis will introduce Markos Vamvakaris, Sotiria Bellou and their band to the packed theater. They will play five songs. The legendary "Frankosyriani" by Markos, "I am your victim" again by Vamvakaris, "Stop my mother beating me" by Bellou, "Let's go to Baxe Tsifliki" by Vassilis Tsitsanis and "Open- open" by Yiannis Papaioannou.
Before the last song, he makes one final intervention by inventing a trilogy about "tragic in our love region ". He reminds again of the Princess of Tsitsanis, about which he notes almost ... sacrilegiously that "the melodic line unimaginable in content approaches Bach", he refers to Nychtose sans feggari sung by Tsitsanis (but written by Apostolos Kaldaras) considering that its lyrics highlight an eroticism that "progresses and completely touches the unsatisfied, giving such a subtle but such a strong sense of a heavy atmosphere" and through "Open-open" Papaioannou "gives us all this anxiety with a loud cry now - the only one in rebetika for this and so real".
With the heartbreaking "Open-open, why don't you open me" will end the evening at the art theater. Unnecessary, simple, as is the rebetiko song. With the clear voices of Markos and Bellou, about which Hadjidakis says:"You have to lighten up inside to accept their power. Otherwise you lose them because they are not waiting for you. So are we. Sometimes the fuss around them and they will continue their way undisturbed. Who knows what new life the lazy and pessimistic 9/8 have in store for us in the future. But we will have already felt their power well in the meantime..."
"Be careful in Pagrati..."
Η απήχηση της ομιλίας, βέβαια, ήταν αυτή που ζητούσε ο πάντοτε ανήσυχος, σχεδόν προκλητικός, κόντρα στο ρεύμα της όποιας συντήρησης, μεγάλος σε όλα του, Μάνος. Σάλος! Οι εφημερίδες του επιτέθηκαν, ειδικά για τη σύγκριση Μπαχ και Τσιτσάνη, η μητέρα του δέχθηκε απειλές "να προσέχει ο γιος της στο Παγκράτι".
"Με είχαν περιποιηθεί για τα καλά ο Σπύρος Μελάς, ο Ψαθάς και άλλοι. Μόνο η Σπανούδη ήταν υπέρ μου" δήλωνε στην τελευταία του συνέντευξη στον Φώτη Απέργη και την Γιώτα Συκκά.
Ήταν ακόμη πιο τολμηρός ο Χατζιδάκις εκείνο το χειμωνιάτικο βράδυ του 1949, γιατί ακόμη δεν είχε την τεράστια αναγνωρισιμότητα που απέκτησε λίγα χρόνια αργότερα. Παρόλα αυτά δεν δίστασε να ταρακουνήσει την αστική διανόηση της εποχής με μια σπουδαία από κάθε άποψη ομιλία, που έβαλε τους δημιουργούς του κυνηγημένου και απαξιωμένου ρεμπέτικου σε πρώτο πλάνο.
Μπορεί, όπως έχει γραφτεί, ο Χατζιδάκις να μην είχε υπόψη του τα ρεμπέτικα πριν από τον πόλεμο, να μην είπε ότι το "Νύχτωσε χωρίς φεγγάρι" είχε ξεκάθαρο πολιτικό μήνυμα πριν λογοκριθεί, αφού αφορούσε τις συλλήψεις των αριστερών και τη φυλάκισή τους στο Γεντί Κουλέ, η συνεισφορά του, ωστόσο, στην συνειδητοποίηση και αποδοχή από τις ευρείες μάζες του ρεμπέτικου τραγουδιού και εν συνεχεία στη διαμόρφωση του σύγχρονου λαϊκού τραγουδιού ήταν τεράστια.
Η ομιλία, 72 χρόνια μετά, δείχνει και τη φλογερή εναντίωση του Μάνου Χατζιδάκι στην ασφυκτική κοινωνική καταπίεση και την συμπάθεια του σε κάθε προσπάθεια διεξόδου και καλλιτεχνικής έκφρασης, μακριά από τα καθιερωμένα και τα κοινώς αποδεκτά.
Ο σκηνοθέτης Ροβήρος Μανθούλης που παρακολούθησε την ομιλία μαζί με το Νίκο Γκάτσο διηγήθηκε την εμπειρία του από το Θέατρο Τέχνης:"«Ένα απόγευμα, πήγα με τον Γκάτσο ν' ακούσουμε τον Χατζιδάκι στο Θέατρο Κουν. Ήταν η 31η Γενάρη του 1949, αν θυμάμαι καλά. Ο Μάνος έδινε διάλεξη για το Ρεμπέτικο. Η αίθουσα ήταν φίσκα. Με τον Γκάτσο καθίσαμε στο πάτωμα με την πλάτη στον τοίχο. Το ρεμπέτικο ήταν άγνωστο είδος, το ραδιόφωνο δεν το έπαιζε και κανείς δεν το άκουγε. Και ήταν υπό διωγμόν. Ο Χατζιδάκης το παρομοίωσε με τον Μπαχ. Κάτι είπε περί Μπετόβεν"
Για τη Σωτηρία Μπέλλου που τραγούδησε μαζί με τον Βαμβακάρη, η αποδοχή του κόσμου ήταν το συκλονιστικότερο γεγονός. Η αξέχαστη τραγουδίστρια είχε μιλήσει στην εκπομπή του Γιώργου Παπαστεφάνου "Μουσική Βραδιά" (1976)
Χρόνια αργότερα η βιομηχανοποίηση του λαϊκού τραγουδιού θα εξοργίσει τον Χατζιδάκι, που θα μιλήσει για το "τέλος του ρεμπέτικου τραγουδιού" για μόλις "ογδόντα τραγούδια", ρίχνοντας το ανάθεμα ακόμη και στον ίδιο για την εμπορική κατάχρηση μέσω του "Ποτέ την Κυριακή" ("η χαριστική βολή σε αυτό που υπήρξε κάποτε το λαϊκό τραγούδι).
Όπως όμως έγραψε η Γιώτα Συκκά στην Καθημερινή "Στην πραγματικότητα, ποτέ δεν έπαψε να αγαπά και να εκτιμά την πιο γνήσια, αυστηρή έκφραση του λαϊκού τραγουδιού. Δεν είναι τυχαίο που το 1979 κάλεσε τον Γιώργο Ζαμπέτα στο Τρίτο Πρόγραμμα και μοιράστηκε μαζί του μια ιστορική εκπομπή. Ούτε που το 1989 εξέδωσε από τον «Σείριο» την ηχογράφηση του προγράμματος του Ακη Πάνου στο «Επειγόντως».
Και επι της ουσίας, τον Γενάρη του 1949, ο Χατζιδάκις άνοιγε μια κουβέντα, έβαζε στο προσκήνιο ένα είδος τραγουδιού, που μέχρι τότε παιζόταν μόνο στις ταβέρνες, παρέα με κρασί και τους απαραίτητους "κουτσαβάκηδες". Το μπουζούκι, οι μπαγλαμάδες και τα τραγούδια που κάποτε ενοχλούσαν την αισθητική του Ζαχαρία Παπαντωνίου, έβγαιναν με φόρα από το περιθώριο, το κυνηγητό και την απαξίωση.
Λίγους μήνες αργότερα ο Μίκης Θεοδωράκης θα έβαζε "στο παιχνίδι" και την αριστερά που επίσης αμφισβητούσε τη λαϊκότητα του ρεμπέτικου γράφοντας μια σειρά άρθρων στην εφημερίδα "Σημερινή Εποχή". Με τους δυο κολοσσούς άλλωστε είτε μαζί, είτε απέναντι, αλλά σε μια ευτυχή συγκυρία να υπάρχουν και να δημιουργούν ταυτόχρονα οι ρεμπέτες βρήκαν την θέση τους στην ιστορία και το ελληνικό τραγούδι έζησε τα καλύτερα του χρόνια.
Ο ίδιος ο ιδιοφυής Μάνος, μετά την ομιλία του στο Θέατρο Τέχνης κυκλοφορούσε τις έξι λαϊκές ζωγραφιές, παίζοντας στο πιάνο τις ρεμπέτικες μελωδίες που αγάπησε, ενώ το 1962 στις "Πασχαλιές μέσα από τη νεκρή γη" μεταφέρει στον δικό του μουσικό κόσμο 11 ρεμπέτικα και το παραδοσιακό "πέρα στους πέρα κάμπους".
Πηγές :Καθημερινή (Γιώτα Συκκά) Lifo (Φώντας Τρούσας) Kozani Tv (Νίκος Δαδινόπουλος)
Ακούστε την τελευταία συνέντευξη του Μάνου Χατζιδάκι στον Φώτη Απέργη και την Γιώτα Συκκά (παίχθηκε στο Δεύτερο Πρόγραμμα της ΕΡΑ το 2019)