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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”.
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 "Chariklaki".
It is one of the most popular tunes of urban folk-popular song, which has many historical and modern recordings. It seems that the song appeared in Greek-speaking discography in 1933, with two recordings under the title "Chariklaki", which, as compositions, are attributed to Panagiotis Tountas. The one shown above was recorded with singer Roza Eskenazy (re-issued on October 18, 1933, from the record 101321 – B 21674-I by Parlophone) and the other with Rita Ampatzi (Columbia WG 625 – DG 452). Recording a song more than once in the same year or even month was quite common. Composers or companies were perhaps not happy with the market success of the first recording, or they just wanted a second aesthetic approach to their work. "The same musical tune is subject to aesthetic transformations, outlining the style of Greek-speaking urban folk-popular musicians, not as overlapping trends with defined boundaries (rebetiko from Smyrna [Izmir], rebetiko from Piraeus), but as a predominantly intertextual field. In this field, specific aesthetic characteristics can be recognized, whose nature though is eminently fluid, since they are in constant transformation. The multiplicity of realizations is therefore necessary as a methodological starting point for their study. […] The concept of 'specific' is reinterpreted in these notions" (Ordoulidis, 2021: 420).
The song, however, seems to be also well known in the Turkish-speaking Armenian repertoire. Specifically, in the 1920s, the Armenian immigrant to America Mgrdich Douzjian (Մկրտիչ Տիւզճեան) recorded for M.G. Parsekian the song under the title "Hokvov siretzi" (161A – MGP 530 & Pharos 530). It is the same song with an extremely interesting introduction, which alludes to military marches aesthetics.
Around May 1921, the song was recorded again in America, this time under the title "Darıldın mı cicim bana". In English, it could be translated as "You made me angry, my sweetheart".
Research and text: Nikos Ordoulidis
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”.
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 "Chariklaki".
It is one of the most popular tunes of urban folk-popular song, which has many historical and modern recordings. It seems that the song appeared in Greek-speaking discography in 1933, with two recordings under the title "Chariklaki", which, as compositions, are attributed to Panagiotis Tountas. The one shown above was recorded with singer Roza Eskenazy (re-issued on October 18, 1933, from the record 101321 – B 21674-I by Parlophone) and the other with Rita Ampatzi (Columbia WG 625 – DG 452). Recording a song more than once in the same year or even month was quite common. Composers or companies were perhaps not happy with the market success of the first recording, or they just wanted a second aesthetic approach to their work. "The same musical tune is subject to aesthetic transformations, outlining the style of Greek-speaking urban folk-popular musicians, not as overlapping trends with defined boundaries (rebetiko from Smyrna [Izmir], rebetiko from Piraeus), but as a predominantly intertextual field. In this field, specific aesthetic characteristics can be recognized, whose nature though is eminently fluid, since they are in constant transformation. The multiplicity of realizations is therefore necessary as a methodological starting point for their study. […] The concept of 'specific' is reinterpreted in these notions" (Ordoulidis, 2021: 420).
The song, however, seems to be also well known in the Turkish-speaking Armenian repertoire. Specifically, in the 1920s, the Armenian immigrant to America Mgrdich Douzjian (Մկրտիչ Տիւզճեան) recorded for M.G. Parsekian the song under the title "Hokvov siretzi" (161A – MGP 530 & Pharos 530). It is the same song with an extremely interesting introduction, which alludes to military marches aesthetics.
Around May 1921, the song was recorded again in America, this time under the title "Darıldın mı cicim bana". In English, it could be translated as "You made me angry, my sweetheart".
Research and text: Nikos Ordoulidis
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