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”.

Naturally, in the large urban centers of the Ottoman Empire around the Mediterranean Sea, the “conversations” of the Greek-speakers with their Turkish-speaking Muslim “co-tenants”, the Catholic Greek-speakers, the Armenians, the Sepharadi and Ashkenazi Jews, the Levantine Protestants, and the Europeans and the Americans, were more than intense. Very often, the scope of this network extends to the Balkans, to Eastern and even to a part of Central Europe. Especially regarding relations between Orthodox and Muslims, the relevant evidence demonstrates the musical exchanges between them and elucidate an ecumene where everyone contributed to the great musical “melting-pot”, and where everyone may draw from it, as well as redeposit it, in a new form, with a reformulated text and its meaning, with sometimes clear and sometimes blurred references to its pre-text, until someone else pulls it out again, through the “melting-pot”, so that it becomes clear that there is no end in this recreational and dynamic process where fluidity prevails. A case that comes from such repertoires is the song "Çapkin çapkın bakarsın".

Starting from the Turkish-speaking repertoire, the tune was recorded twice in Istanbul in the 1930s. On September 20, 1932 by Süheyla Bedriye Hanım under the title "Karşiyakali" (Sahibinin Sesi OK 1377-1 – AX. 1683) and on January 4, 1933 by Mahmure Handan as "Karşi yakali" (Sahibinin Sesi 0K 1521 – AX-1678 and Victor 25-2007-A). The labels of the records show Udi Cemal Bey as the composer.

On the label of the recording by Süheyla Bedriye Hanım, the song is characterized as "kanto". In other words, it is considered part of the repertoire of the kantolar, a term that seems to have been first used by Turkish-speaking Muslims mainly in large urban centers and especially in Constantinople (Istanbul) since the time when Italian troupes performed there. Although initially the kantolar were associated only with theatrical music, they soon became autonomous, when the term "kanto" (singular form of kantolar) came to describe any popular and light secular singing forms (see Pennanen, 2004: 9, O'Connel, 2006: 276, Beşiroğlu & Girgin, 2018: 49).

In the 1940s, Armenian Marko Melkon Alemsherian recorded the tune twice in America, for both the Turkish and Greek speaking markets. This is the present recording, in Turkish, as well as the recording "Ach den einai krima" (Balkan 807 and Me Re 807).

On June 4, 1944, Jack Mayesh recorded in Los Angeles the tune under the title “Chapkin, chapkin te quero” (Mayesh Phonograph Record 1511 – 1511) with lyrics in Ladino, that is, in the Spanish-Hebrew dialect of the Sephardic Jews.

Jack Mayesh was born in 1899 in Kuşadası, in the Ottoman Empire. In 1920, he married Flora Salmoni, a resident of the island of Rhodes, born in 1903 in the city of Pordenore, in northeastern Italy. More information about both Mayesh and the Sephardic repertoire in general in historical discography can be found on Joel Bresler's extremely informative webpage www.sephardicmusic.org.

America, where the recordings by Melkon and Mayesh took place, was a microcosm of the globe: a "successful Babel". Naturally, a unique syncretism also dominated in the field of music. The birth, on the other hand, of discography, built a condition that favored debates and osmosis between the innumerable ethno-cultural groups that made up the population. These processes led to the re-imagining, the update and the renewal of old musical trends arriving in the United States and, at the same time, to their re-exportation to the "old worlds", thus setting up a uniquely multi-layered network. "National" repertoires live a new, parallel life, largely molded by discography, which attended to and "tuned" the overlapping relationships that had already developed in the "Old World". Repertoires communicated with each other once again; a familiar and already dynamic condition in Europe. The circulation of music was already a reality before the 20th century with theatrical and musical performances tours, but also with the networks of music publishing houses. Discography is not only embedded in this context, but also plays a key role in its transformation.

Research and text: Leonardos Kounadis and Nikos Ordoulidis