Markos Vamvakaris was a man fully conversant with his own myth. In the 1930s he transformed Greek music by popularising the bouzouki – an instrument he first heard during a brief spell in prison – making it central to his take on rebetiko: the rebel songs of manghes – the social outcasts who haunted the docks of Athens. Markos (and what pleasure he took in being on first-name terms with fame) described himself in his autobiography as “the best kind of mangas”: rather than drift into petty crime, he devoted himself to rhythm and blues.
Those words imply a different world of music, but they also characterise rebetiko’s emotional pull – a pull that packs the Barbican Hall with Greek ex-patriots and British island-lovers for this multimedia tribute show (a difference that becomes evident when people start dancing in the aisles). Markos’ rhythms are sturdy enough that clapping along feels essential, yet have a pleasing viscosity, the beat frequently sticking or oozing past the bar; his blues are felt in the discordant twang of the bouzouki melodies and the keening of the five singers. In particular, Sofia Papazoglou infuses Mes sti Hasapiki Agora (a song she has absorbed into her own repertoire) with a yearning that cuts across language barriers to resonate in the heart. Manolis Pappos, meanwhile, brings a rough-toned authority to his delivery of Bouzouki mou Diplohordo, in which the instrument is blessed as Markos’ most faithful companion – and played by Pappos himself with thrilling dexterity.
The concert – essentially a replay of an event staged in Greece in 2012, marking 40 years since Markos’ death – runs chronologically through his life, interspersing songs with extracts from his autobiography, read with wry flair and just a little flounce by Alex Kapranos. The Franz Ferdinand frontman even joins the singers for one of Markos’ most famous songs, Ta Matoklada sou Laboun (dedicated to the glory of eyelashes), his phonetic Greek and lack of ululation received with barely disguised amusement by Yiannis Kotsiras, another modern singer keeping the rebetiko torch aflame. Still, Kapranos gets a nod of support from Stelios Vamvakaris, Markos’ middle son, whose voice has the leathery quality of well-tanned skin, and who flourishes the bouzouki with a quiet passion of his own.
