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 network in which the Greek-speaking urban popular song participates, constantly conversing with its co-tenants, is 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 recording is a repress from Columbia's (USA) record CG 1542 – DG 6281. This is a chasapiko whose melody can be found in different aesthetic contexts. It was originally recorded by Homokord in 1929 under the title "Kassapiko" (C 93 T – T. 4-28118). This is an instrumental version, with a harmonica, a mandolin and a guitar. Panagiotis Tountas used this tune in his popular song "Garsona", where he added a new introduction. This piece was recorded again, in instrumental form in America, probably in 1947, by Kostas Gadinis and Nick Doneff (Kaliphon D 762 B). On the record label we read "Garsona (Waitress), Nikos D., Violin - Piano - Accordion - Drum" (warm thanks to Martin Schwartz for pointing out this recording).

Moreover, the tune can also be found in the Jewish (klezmer/Yiddish) repertoire. More specifically, in 1954, Folkways Records released a 33 rpm record (FP 809) with recordings by Nathan Nazaroff, better known as Prince Nazaroff, who was born in Europe (probably in present-day Ukraine) and in 1914 immigrated to America. There is a track on this record entitled "Freilchs (Medley of Freilachs)". Freilach is a musical form-genre in the klezmer/Yiddish repertoire, that is, that of the Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe, and means "happy". In this particular potpourri, musical phrases which refer to the ones in "Kassapiko / Garsona" can be heard.

The case of Sholom Secunda and his relation with the tune is of particular interest. In 1932, Abraham Bloom’s Jewish operetta "I would if I could" was presented in America, set to music by Secunda and lyrics by Jacob Jacobs. The song "Bei mir bist du schön" (Bay mir bistu sheyn: To me you are beautiful) was heard for the first time in this operetta; it was based on basic melodic lines of this tune. The operetta and the song were not a hit until 1938, when the lyrics were translated into English and recorded for Decca with the Andrews Sisters. This version was a big hit and, since then, the song has been recorded in various covers and languages (French, German, Russian). In 2001 the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music recorded the song by using the original operetta musical score. For more details on the history of Secunda’s song, see here.

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: Nikos Ordoulidis