At the beginning of the 20th century, Europe is living in peace and prosperity. The “Belle Époque” is an outgrowth of previous important historical events and developments. The networks that are created and which evolve funnel both people and their products, tangible and intangible. It is within this multi-layered world that sound recording and sound reproduction is invented. Early record labels send mobile crews literally all over the world to record local musicians. The range of the repertoire is endless. Cosmopolitanism in large urban centers favors polystylisms and polymorphisms. Colonialism, revolutions, conflicts, refugee flows; the theater, cinema, radio, photography, orchestras’ tours, but also circulations in all kinds of commercial channels in a world that evolves dynamically and anisotropically, form a complex network of “centers” and “peripheries” in alternating roles setting musical idioms in motion, both literally and figuratively. The networks in which the Greek-speaking musics participate, constantly conversing with their co-tenants, are magnificent. Discography has already provided important tools in understanding the relationships that developed between “national” repertoires. The result of this ongoing research is “Cosmopolitanism in Greek Historical Discography”.

This is a recording by Gramophone with Antonis Ntalgkas, which took place in Athens between June 11 and 30, 1928, with sound engineer Edward Fowler.

The song was recorded earlier, probably in Milan, in 1927, by Giorgos Savaris, John and Loukianos Miliaris (Columbia 20132 – 8216), by Giorgos Vidalis (Odeon 573 – 1248) and three other recordings have been found so far in Greek discography.

The tune used in this song is found, as the final part of the recording, in the song "Mi mou chalas ta gousta mou", which was recorded in 1927, in Athens, by Kostas Karipis (Columbia UK 20089 - 7724).

Based on Martin Schwartz's extremely interesting commentaries in "Greek-Oriental Rebetica, Songs and Dances in the Asia Minor Style, The Golden Years: 1911–1937" (Arhoolie Folklyric CD 7005), the tune comes from the Ashkenazi (klezmer/Yiddish) Jewish repertoire of Eastern Europe, originally from the Moldovlachian region. The oldest recording that has been found is entitled "יארקע פארט אַוועק" (Yoshke fort avek, Joseph goes away – according to Schwartz, the word "Yorke" on the label is a typo). It was recorded in New York on April 5, 1913, by Columbia, with Goldberg (cimbalom) and Max Yenkovitz (accordion) (Columbia 38770-1 – E 1397).

The musical tune was recorded once more in September 1922, again by Columbia, in New York (88754 – E 7781), this time in the form of a song; the lyrics are about the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. As Martin Schwartz describes by quoting Ruth Rubin, the tune was sung in Vilnius, Lithuania’s current capital, and the lyrics were about the enlisting of a local criminal in the army of the Russian Empire and leaving his beloved one behind in tears. On the record's label, the name of Abe Schwartz, a dynamic headliner in American discography of the klezmer/Yiddish repertoire, is given as that of the composer. The singer of the song is Abraham Moskowitz.

Moreover, the tune can be found in the Armenian repertoire:

- "Yar Ouneyi", Mr Sourapian [Setrak Sourapian ή Sourabian], New York, between 1922-1926 (Sohag 191-2 - 9).
- "Ah im dolardjis", Mme Lucie, probably in Armenia, around 1927-1928 (Odeon ES 1355 - A 220402 b).
- "Yar Ouneyi", Garabet Merjanian, New York, February 1928 (Columbia 71003-F).

Around December 1929, Muresa Daniels (or Murassa Urshan Georges or Murassa Urshan Daniels) recorded the song "Khamta Najeb" (or "Najib") in Chicago for Columbia (CO 82000-F - 206323). Although the label on the record reads "Persian song", Martin Schwartz, Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, has identified the language as Assyrian (New Aramaic or New Syriac), spoken by Christians on the border of Azerbaijan and Iran (as also cited in Spottswood 1990, vol. 5, p. 2519). This is the same musical tune, as confirmed from a record kindly provided by Abboud Zeitoune.

Moreover, it is particularly interesting to observe the "passage" of this tune into the repertoire of Pontic refugees, some of whom ended up in Soviet territories in the early 20th century. Notably, we find a version of the song titled "Kavkaz", with lyrics by Savvas Triantafyllidis and Nikos Georgiadis. Following the 1877 war between the Russian and Ottoman Empires, many Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians from the southern shores of the Black Sea migrated south of the so-called "small" Caucasus. In particular, the families who contributed to the creation of this song eventually settled in the province of Kars (Karsskaya область–Kars oblast), in the district of Ardahan (Ardahan okrug–Ардаганский округ), in the town of Kiolia (Göle–Kogh–კოლა). This region was annexed to the Russian Empire, but, under the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, it was returned to Turkey by the newly-formed Soviet Union, triggering a new wave of emigration. Moving north towards Georgia, some refugees took advantage of ships sent by the Greek government, resettling in Greece, while others continued further north into Soviet territories. Thus, Nikos Georgiadis was born in 1949 in the region of Krasnodar city. The following year, however, as a result of the Soviet Union's policies at the time, the family was again relocated, ending up in Kazakhstan; only to emigrate again in 1985 to southern Russia where they remained until 1993, when they moved to reside permanently in Greece (see the relevant text by Vlassis Agtsidis here).

(Special thanks to Ilya Saitanov for pointing out the above recording.)

Finally, it is worth noting that the musical tune is still part of active repertoires today, with remixes and covers, such as for example the song "Disko Boy", by Shantel, released in 2007 (Essay Recordings - CRAW 41), or the song "Ah! Im Anouche Yar", by Melkon and the Sevan Orchestra (MELK 102).

Syncretism, which is observed in the musical actualizations of the areas where Greeks lived and recorded, mainly in the area of folk-popular traditions, is monumental. It only takes one to listen to historical discography, which begins in New York, Smyrna (Izmir), Constantinople (Istanbul), Athens and Thessaloniki since 1900. An essential part of this syncretism concerns the Jews, who constitute one of the main conduits in the uniquely diverse cultural heritage of the Greek-speaking world. They borrow and lend, but they also carry more distant traditions from the places where they have previously lived and the places they have traveled to. They are the central interlocutors in the Greek and Ottoman ecumene, together with Turkish-speaking Muslims, Orthodox but also Catholic Greek-speaking and Armenians, Levantine Protestants, Europeans and Americans, and compose a rich musical mosaic which consists of heterogeneous but co-existent palimpsests: a reservoir to which everyone contributes but from which also everyone receives.

The sources show the timeless existence of a Jewish element, at least since the Hellenistic period, in areas that millennia later formed the modern Greek state. After the “Edict of Milan” in 313 AD and the gradual Christianization of the Eastern Empire, the Jewish element found itself in a difficult position. The Jewish populations that have since been established in these lands became known as Romaniote Jews (or “Romaniotes”’ Rome – Romios). Their historical geographical center of reference was the city of Ioannina, and they speak Greek with various linguistic mixtures. After 1492 and the “Alhambra Decree” by the joint Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, those Jews who did not accept to embrace Christianity were expelled from the Iberian peninsula. They became known as the Sepharadi Jews (or “Sepharadim”), one of the largest Jewish ethno-cultural categorizations (Sepharad in Jewish texts is referred to as the region of present-day Spain). Thessaloniki was one of the main destination points of this displacement, as the ties with the city were older and already close. Apart from the role played by the Greek Jews in the musical developments on the Greek peninsula, there were also important mutual influences between the Greek-speaking Orthodox and the Jews in various other areas where the two communities lived together. As, for example, in Odessa, with the Eastern Ashkenazi Jews, who mainly speak Yiddish, a sui generis Semitic-Slavic language (in Jewish texts, the Kingdom of Ashkenaz, a descendant of Noah, is connected with north-eastern European territories). Their orchestral repertoire is often called klezmer. In other words, apart from the geographical limits of the modern Greek state, the cultural conversations between the Greek Orthodox and the Jews also concern other parts of the world, both in Europe and America, where they met as immigrants.

Research and text: Leonardos Kounadis and Nikos Ordoulidis