Σε τούτο το παλιόσπιτο (1950)

Another work by Βασίλης Τσιτσάνης (Vasilis Tsitsanis). This masterfully crafted song is the Rebetico at it's highest artistic level. The song first sets the evocative scene of an old house, now a ruin, where gypsies and fortune tellers are camping out on the arid yard, and a bat flying back to her nest. The singer laments a sad parting of lost love and the scene he's presented becomes a symbol of that love.

The melody is mournful and haunting, the rhythm punctuates the verses while the wailing of the bouzouki animates the ghostly scene and sending shivers down your spine.

But the scene evoked, not only is not only made up of its surface elements but has an inner psychology of its own, what was the house in its previous life? The ancestral home of a luckless family fallen on hard time? A boarding for marginally employed? A brothel?

And the final lines telling of a bat making it's nests in the room where once the singer and his love had been. But the bat doesn't just represent darkness and, with mention of the gypsies and fortunately the presence of spirits or the supernatural: it's not just a cheap use of Halloween shop cobweb in a can. Instead it is balanced as the tender mother returning to her nest to tend for her young.
Στίχοι: Βασίλης Τσιτσάνης, Βλάχος
Μουσική: Βασίλης Τσιτσάνης, Βλάχος

Σε τούτο το παλιόσπιτο σε τούτο το ρημάδι θάψαμε την αγάπη μας ένα Σάββατο βράδυ		bury
Στο παλιόσπιτο ετούτο που χωρίσαμε την βραδιά την τελευταία που μιλήσαμε	| | Δις
Μέσα στην έρημη αυλή κατά 'π' τα παραθύρια οι μάγισσες και οι γύφτισσες να στήσουνε τσαντίρια		put up, paddy
Στο παλιόσπιτο ετούτο που χωρίσαμε και με δάκρυα ποτάμια το ποτίσαμε	| | Δις
Η νυχτερίδα μοναχή να χτίσει τη φωλιά της στην καμαρούλα τ'η μικρή που πέρνα τα φιλιά της
Στο παλιόσπιτο ετούτο που χωρίσαμε την βραδιά την τελευταία που μιλήσαμε	| | Δις

------ Μετάφρασης (Translation) ------

In that old house
In that ruin
Our love was buried
One Saturday night

In that hold house where we separated
The last night we ever talked

In the wasteland of a yard
Under the windows
The witches and the gypsies
Setup their wagons

In that hold house where we separated
The last night we ever talked

The lonely bat
Has built her nest
In the small room
Where I kissed you

In that hold house where we separated
The last night we ever talked

Όμορφη Θεσσαλονίκη (1950)

Μουζάκης Γιώργος (Giorgos Mouzakis) was a Rebetico legend and his style of bouzouki playing was especially influential for subsequent Rebetico artists and can be heard to this day in Greek popular music. He wrote and recorded hundreds of songs. The one below, Όμορφη Θεσσαλονίκη, (beautiful Thessaloniki)is about his love of Thessaloniki. A topic that comes up often in Rebetico is one's love of a native city, even if your conditions in it were squalid and beset by crime and drugs. Rebetico is a distinctly urban genre and you'll very rarely find the countryside or nature praised. It's often likened to the Blues of America, and at that one might even be tempted to go out on a limb and draw some parallels to hip-hop. Indeed, at various times Rebetico was banned due to it's perceived anti-social influence.

This is a nice modern recording played in a classic style, even down to the costumes. In a Ταβέρνα (tavern, from which we get the English word for the same.) it would be typical for a small band to sit in a row on a small stage, with some tables pushed away and men dancing in front.

Όμορφη Θεσσαλονίκη

Στίχοι: Μουζάκης Γιώργος
Μουσική: Μουζάκης Γιώργος

Ώ! όμορφη Θεσσαλονίκη Ώ! τα μαγικά σου βράδια νοσταλγώ Είσαι το καμάρι της καρδιάς μου Θεσσαλονίκη όμορφη γλυκιά κι' αν ζω στην ξελογιάστρα την Αθήνα για σένα τραγουδώ κάθε βραδιά Ώ! όμορφη Θεσσαλονίκη Ώ! τα μαγικά σου βράδια νοσταλγώ Μέσα στα στενά σου τα σοκάκια έζησα τις πιο γλυκές στιγμές καντάδες χίλιες νύχτες έχω κάνει για όλες τις μποέμικες καρδιές Ώ! όμορφη Θεσσαλονίκη Ώ! τα μαγικά σου βράδια νοσταλγώ Πάντα με κρατάς στην αγκαλιά σου Πάντα σε θυμάμαι και πονώ Κι αν είμαι τώρα λίγο μακριά σου με τον καιρό κοντά σου θα βρεθώ

------ Μετάφρασης (Translation) ------

Oh, beautiful Thessaloníki
Oh, I long for your magic nights

You are the chamber of my heart
Sweet, beautiful Thessaloníki
And if I'm living in bewitching Athena
I sing for you every night

Oh, beautiful Thessaloníki
Oh, I long for your magic nights

Amongst your narrow alleys
I've lived my sweetest moments
I've made a thousand songs
for all the bohemian hearts

Oh, beautiful Thessaloníki
Oh, I long for your magic nights

Always you hold me in your arms
Always I remember you and am pained
And if I'm a little away from you now
In time I'll find you

Modern Greek popular songs

I've been toying with this idea for a while: to walk through the last 50 years or so of Greek songs, chronologically, providing Greek lyrics, spot definitions of difficult words, a complete English translation, and links to where they can be found on the Internet. I've compiled a list of about 400 songs that I'd like to do and my last couple of posts have been working on the format for it.

I think it's something that would be fun and particular worthwhile for language learners. Who hasn't had the experience of have a song in their head that they couldn't get rid of? Imagine if that song were Greek. Those words suddenly become part of you. You understand what they mean at a gut leave.

The Greek is particularly well suited to this style of learning because Greek vowels are pure they are sung as they are pronounced. So, once you've learned to sing along to a song, you've learned to say the lyrics with perfect pronunciation. In addition Geek is by nature a lyrical language, there is not as much difference between the language of poetry and the language of prose in Greek as there is in other languages. That's why the two Noble prizes for literature won by Greeks have gone to poets, and even Greeks greatest prose writer, Kazantzakis, thought of himself as poet first and novelist second. In dead nearly all of Greece's best writers are poets.

So, hopefully you will find reading this as useful and entertaining I do writing it.