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 "I amartoli" was recorded in New York in November 1933 by Stavros Kaloumenos and Antonis Sakellariou Orchestra, with Sakellariou himself on the clarinet and unidentified musicians on the violin and the santour. The record label describes it as a “Syrtos”. It constitutes the only recording of this tune in the Greek-language discography.

However, the tune also appears earlier in the Turkish-language discography, specifically in the song "Beni sevmez", also known by the title "Beni sevmez biliyorum". The music is attributed to the Armenian Kemani Sarkis Efendi (Sarkis Sukuyian, Constantinople, 1885 - Paris, 1943). The earliest known recording, under the title "Beni sevmez", appears to have been made in Constantinople (Istanbul) between 1923 and 1926 by Hafız Yaşar Okur Bey (Odeon X-46377). Around 1929, the song was recorded again in Constantinople by Hafiz Burhan Bey, ("Beni sevmez biliyorum", Columbia 12348).