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 "Kalliopaki".

Apart from this recording (which was reissued in the USA on the record Orthophonic S-785-A), the song has been recorded in two other versions in Greek historical discography. In 1933, in Athens, Stellakis Perpiniadis, accompanied by a popular orchestra under the direction of the composer Panagiotis Tountas, recorded the song "Kalliopaki" for Columbia (Columbia WG-707 – DG-454).

About fifteen years later, in 1948, Amalia Vaka, who is listed as Amalia on the label of the record, recorded in New York the song "Kalliopaki". The recording features an Oriental Orchestra with I. Pappas on the clarinet (Metropolitan 160-A).

The tune can also be found in Turkish-speaking discography of the 1950s. In particular, it was recorded in 1951, in Istanbul, by Cevriye Ceyhun, under the title "Gemilerde Talim Var" (Odeon CO 4243 - LA 270625 a) and, about eight years later, in 1959, in the same city, by Sulhiye Kuşkaya under the title "Gemi Gidiyor Gemi" (Sahibinin Sesi OTB 2120 - AX 2675).

Research and text: Leonardos Kounadis and Nikos Ordoulidis