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By Eric Hoeprich -
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- Un musicista si racconta
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By Francesco Martinelli -
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Folk Musica-
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Folk Musica-
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- 1900 to the present : their words, lives, and music
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Evliya çelebi Seyaha-
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Evliya çelebi Seyaha-
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- first man of jazz
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By Donald M. Marquis -
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- Music from the Margins--The Agony of the Greeks
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By Giannis Chorbajoglou -
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From the tradit-
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- From the tradition of the past. Od tradiciite na minatoto (1)
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From the tradit-
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By S.Frederick Starr -
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Rebetika
a scamBeing a long-time rebetika fan, and having a good part of the available non-greek literature, I was happy of finally tracking down this one. I am a bit confused about what I bought: there's a book by the same author and on the same subject that was indicated as published in 2009, with a slightly dif ... (continue)
Being a long-time rebetika fan, and having a good part of the available non-greek literature, I was happy of finally tracking down this one. I am a bit confused about what I bought: there's a book by the same author and on the same subject that was indicated as published in 2009, with a slightly different title, twice the page, but with the same iSBN number. I don't mind that too much - the author is supposed to be a mangas, and they move in shady areas. The back cover and the Amazon page also say that he's a respected musicologist as well as well known performer, playing regularly. His birth date is given as 1922! Masallah! Of all these activities, I could find no trace online trying all the possible spelling of his family name. In Turkey, the name is not rare, in its original form Çorbac#o#lu (which means The son of the soup seller, how nostalgic can you be?
The book comes without name index, discography or bibliography, and contains statements like "research on rebetika has not yet begun". Now, maybe nobody apart from Yannis bey did anything worthwhile, but a perusal of the internet yields a goodish number of book, articles, and learned liner notes. Even more interesting is that, while the author is said to have moved to Pireus at one year, and from there to England, where he lives, his name is spelled in an unmistakably French way, and in fact in the middle of the book there's an “introduction” (I kid you not) detailing a biography of somebody born in Izmir, living there in 2007, and educated in France. Greek nationalistic proclaim abound in the pages - the Exchange of Population is presented in a way that veils a simple historical fact - the misguided and tragic invasion of Anatolia by the Greek army in 1919, and the Fire of Izmir description conveniently omits the Greek massacres during the war: according to a number of sources, the retreating Greek army carried out a scorched-earth policy while fleeing from Anatolia during the final phase of the war. Historian of the Middle East, Sydney Nettleton Fisher wrote that: "The Greek army in retreat pursued a burned-earth policy and committed every known outrage against defenceless Turkish villagers in its path" Norman M. Naimark noted that "the Greek retreat was even more devastating for the local population than the occupation".James Loder Park, the U.S. Vice-Consul in Constantinople at the time, who toured much of the devastated area immediately after the Greek evacuation, described the situation in the surrounding cities and towns of Izmir he has seen, as follows:
"Manisa...almost completely wiped out by fire...10,300 houses, 15 mosques, 2 baths, 2,278 shops, 19 hotels, 26 villas...[destroyed]. Cassaba (present day Turgutlu) was a town of 40,000 souls, 3,000 of whom were non-Muslims. Of these 37,000 Turks only 6,000 could be accounted for among the living, while 1,000 Turks were known to have been shot or burned to death. Of the 2,000 buildings that constituted the city, only 200 remained standing. Ample testimony was available to the effect that the city was systematically destroyed by Greek soldiers, assisted by a number of Greek and Armenian civilians. Kerosene and gasoline were freely used to make the destruction more certain, rapid and complete. Alasehir, hand pumps were used to soak the walls of the buildings with Kerosene. As we examined the ruins of the city, we discovered a number of skulls and bones, charred and black, with remnants of hair and flesh clinging to them. Upon our insistence a number of graves having a fresh-made appearance were actually opened for us as we were fully satisfied that these bodies were not more than four weeks old.[the time of the Greek retreat through Alasehir]". [abridged from Wikipedia]
The musicology is equally based on a cultural attitude akin to the father of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" including claims that buzuki (a Turkish word, but won't learn it here) was invented by Greeks as pandoura - most probably, even according to Greek mythology, stringed instruments have an Eastern, maybe Hittite, origin.
Nevertheless there are interesting nuggets of information here and there, and somebody knowledgeable about the subject might extract them; they probably come from the more qualified sources used in this hodge-podge, or, as one might say in Turkish, çorba...
Francesco Martinelli