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 this recording.

The song “Rast Kanto (an den me pisteveis)” constitutes Roza Eskenazy’s second recording for the record company Odeon. It was made in 1930, accompanied by Dimitris Semsis on the violin and the Armenian Agapios Tompoulis (also known as Stambulian, Tombulian or Hagop Tobulian) on the oud.

The tune, however, appears earlier in the Turkish discography. Around 1927, Hafız Ahmet Bey recorded in Constantinople the piece “Kara sevda - Rast Kanto” (Odeon XC 3242 – Rx 131524 b).

We also note an even earlier Turkish-speaking recording bearing the same title, made in Constantinople around 1919–1920 by Hanende İbrahim Efendi (“Rast Kanto Kara Sevda,” Orfeon S. 3006 – 12802). As no audio material has been located, it is not possible to determine whether this recording corresponds to the same piece.

On the labels of the above records 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).