Rebetiko (plural Rebetika) and occasionally transliterated as Rembetiko is a form of Greek music which came into existence in the post World War II Greece. It is the other name of Greek Blues music. It was a movement which has lately seen a revival. BBC made a documentary on Rebetika which was narrated by Anthony Quinn. The full documentary has been divided into ten smaller parts for easier viewing. Before I carry on with the topic of the role of Indian (Hindi) film music in the movement let us watch this documentary. It traces the entire history of Rebetika, but sadly does not mention a bit about the Indian influence. It is true that the Indian influence was not there to start with, it only became evident in the late 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. Aptly enough Rebetika was sub-categorized into Laiko, Indoiftika or Indoprepi and the Greek songs with Indian influence were grouped into this new category. This documentary will allow me to speak less because it has every details about Rebetika. I have made a playlist of all the ten parts. Here are they one after another.
But how does Hindi film music fit into this? How does Greek Blues relate to Naushad? To understand this we have to travel back in time, back to the 2nd and 3rd decade the 20th century in relation to modern Greek history. The place is Thessaloniki, the capital city of Macedonia and the period is World War I (1914-19), which brought to Thessaloniki the multinational Army of the Orient, in which the British participated. With this army came a lot of Indians serving the army as soldiers and as auxiliary staff (havildar, naik, lance naik, sepoy, rifleman and driver, dhobi, bhisti, jamadar, laskar). Carried away by the force of the Allies to stop the Germans and Bulgarians, about 520 mainly poor and illiterate Indians ended their lives in Thessaloniki. One wonders if they knew in which part of the world they were when they died. And it is doubtful that many knew why they or their regiments were fighting and for which ideals they died. It is possible that this is period when the first seeds of Indian (Hindi) music were sown in the soil of modern day Greece. A detail description about the Indian cemetery can be found here.
The actual crop was sown much later, in the 1950s to be precise. Rebetika, the popular music of the Greek working class, the downtrodden and the underworld was already into existence. Dr. Helen Abadzi has been a forerunner in researching on this topic and I quote from her writings below. "The economic condition of Greece was bleak in the early 1950s. Since its liberation from Turkey in 1827, the country had been a poor agricultural nation with high levels of illiteracy, limited life expectancy, and a low status for women. World War II and a subsequent civil war with communist insurgents had destroyed the countryside and killed many inhabitants. An atmosphere of depression and mourning prevailed as people tried to rebuild their lives. One
survival tactic was migration to larger cities (such as Athens) and emigration to countries like Germany, which needed cheap labor. Uneducated orphans and people caring for widowed relatives were forced to leave their homes and become bricklayers or housemaids, living in unhealthy and oppressive circumstances. It was in that climate of desperation that Hindi movies made an indelible impression".
"The years 1945-65 were a golden period in Indian cinema. Though made with limited means, many of the films produced then became timeless masterpieces. Most were dramatic love stories set in a background of tangled family relations, poverty, exploitation, and misery. In a format that became characteristic of Hindi cinema, many songs and dances were included. Frequently during the movies, actors sang, pondering on problems and situations like a protagonist and a responding chorus in a Greek drama.. Many of the songs, composed by the greatest Indian musicians for the films, have become timeless tunes that every Indian knows.
The plots of the movies resonated with the wounded Greek psyche. Suffering women, street children who had to drop out of school, jealous sisters-in-law, vengeful mothers-in-law, interdependencies, betrayals, and frequent unhappy ends resonated with the difficult choices of poorly educated Greek people subsisting in large cities. In particular, the characters appealed to poor women. The maidservants and factory workers saw themselves depicted on the movie screen, hoping for deliverance. Maybe the rich young man would marry the poor beautiful girl who worked at his house. Maybe lost relatives would appear to take care of the abandoned street child who sang so beautifully".
Suffering in the movies was combined with spectacle. There were scenes of palaces, beautiful houses, jungles, elephants, spectacular countrysides, and medieval-period costumes. Though often depicted as poor and unhappy, the Indian actresses were gracefully modest, with bright clothes and much jewelry. They enabled the audiences to see people like themselves improving their conditions, but also to be transported to a reverie far from reality. Thus, India managed to package and export its main problem, poverty, with its main attraction, exoticism. And Greece at that time was a willing buyer. At least 111 movies are known to have been imported in 1954-1968. They were most popular in 1958-1962, when at least one out of the 35 movie theaters of Thessaloniki played one or two Hindi movies in per week. The films were always subtitled in Greek. Their one-word symbolic titles were changed to indicate tragedy: mothers losing children, social upheaval, and other emotional topics. Thus, “Ghar Sansaar” became “Tears of a Mother”. “Mother India” became “Land Drenched in Sweat”, and “Mela” became “Love Drenched in Tears”. The advertisements contained text that accentuated the dramatic aspects of the movies and declared that the newest import was better than other earlier arrivals. These movies were considered working-class fare. They had much less appeal for the middle class, which looked westward for entertainment, wanted more humor, and was not plagued by the social dilemmas of the poor and the limited solutions available to the heroines. Nevertheless, the Hindi masterpieces were seen by many and it seemed then Hindi movies are there to stay in Greece.
In the next part I shall be dealing with these movies and how these popular Hindi tunes were integrated into Greek popular music.
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