Rebetiko Music Festival - Skopelos Greece
Tax deductible
Dear Friends and Music Lovers,
We are launching this campaign to raise14,000 Euros ($17,000) for the 2021 Skopelos Rebetiko Festival
The Rebetiko Festival of Skopelos is a cultural and musical festival that brings musicians from Greece and around the world to this beautiful Aegean island to perform to a global audience. It brings together young and older musicians to share skills and to celebrate this quintessentially Greek music tradition. Sponsored by the Skopelos Culture Club, It is a free festival. All the musicians and organizers volunteer their time and talent. Your donation will help cover the musicians' travel, accommodations and technical requirements. We plan to record the Festival for the World Wide Web. We are now planning for a late summer 2021 festival. Despite the pandemic’s cancellation of the 2020 festival, we are hopeful that this year’s will proceed on time.
What is Rebetiko?
We live in a time of great upheaval and much sadness. We are not the first. But like generations before us we find beauty and hope in the music that brings our communities together.
Rebetiko has a rich history. It is a musical and cultural expression directly linked to song and dance that spread among the urban lower and working-class populations of Greece in the early twentieth century. It has always been the music of the poor and the dispossessed. Rebetiko songs combine the traditional musical forms of the Eastern Mediterranean with lyrics describing the life of refugees and ordinary people struggling to survive.
Its origins trace back to Greek settlements in Smyrna and Constantinople. Forced by war and ethnic cleansing to leave their homes of many centuries in the early 1920s, 1.5 million Greeks of Asia Minor settled in mainland Greece and many of the Aegean Islands. Rebetiko was born of a synthesis of Anatolian and Greek traditions. The refugees were ostracized from Greek society and blamed for rising unemployment. The feelings of deep loss and exclusion, nostalgia for home and hope are embodied in its “poem-lament” lyrics. The musicians were often persecuted and sometimes imprisoned.
The famous Greek composer Manos Chartzidakis described this music as the essential expression of Greek kefi or spirit. The soulful stories told in Rebetiko have been likened to those in Country, Blues and Jazz. The music and the lyrics are emotional, haunting, often quite humorous. While the songs capture past customs and practices, Rebetiko is a living musical tradition. During the Greek economic crisis that began in 2008 with the U.S. banking and mortgage meltdown, Rebetiko reemerged as the soundtrack of popular protest, continuing its symbolic tradition of folk culture in conflict with the “establishment”.
Some have described it as the articulation of underdog social movements’ defiance of oppressive states and social structures. It was part of the popular opposition to Greece’s dictatorial governments of 1936-41. It energized the Greek underground Resistance to the Nazi occupation (1941-46) and was taken up by Communist partisans during the Greek Civil War (1946-49). In the 1970s it rallied opposition to yet another military junta.
About Skopelos
This beautiful evergreen island in the northwestern Aegean is a hidden Greek treasure. Perhaps fitting its rich musical traditions, Skopelos is shaped like a saxophone. It is the home of some of the world’s best Rebetiko musicians. It has many beautiful beaches and its mountainous geography provides spectacular views of tree laden hillsides dropping sharply to the sea It is slightly larger than Mykonos and Santorini. The two closest islands are Skiathos and Alonisos.
For more on Rebetiko music
“So Good They Made It Illegal (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2004/apr/19/guesteditors3
Skopelos Rebetiko Festival
https://www.Rebetikoskopelosfestival.com/about-us
Festival Budget
Sound ….........................................2000 euro
Artist's tickets in Greece...............3500 euro
artist's accommodation.....................4500 euro
Seats and stage arrangement..........2500 euro
Extra payments...............................1500 euro
TOTAL...........................................14000 EUROS
We are launching this campaign to raise14,000 Euros ($17,000) for the 2021 Skopelos Rebetiko Festival
The Rebetiko Festival of Skopelos is a cultural and musical festival that brings musicians from Greece and around the world to this beautiful Aegean island to perform to a global audience. It brings together young and older musicians to share skills and to celebrate this quintessentially Greek music tradition. Sponsored by the Skopelos Culture Club, It is a free festival. All the musicians and organizers volunteer their time and talent. Your donation will help cover the musicians' travel, accommodations and technical requirements. We plan to record the Festival for the World Wide Web. We are now planning for a late summer 2021 festival. Despite the pandemic’s cancellation of the 2020 festival, we are hopeful that this year’s will proceed on time.
What is Rebetiko?
We live in a time of great upheaval and much sadness. We are not the first. But like generations before us we find beauty and hope in the music that brings our communities together.
Rebetiko has a rich history. It is a musical and cultural expression directly linked to song and dance that spread among the urban lower and working-class populations of Greece in the early twentieth century. It has always been the music of the poor and the dispossessed. Rebetiko songs combine the traditional musical forms of the Eastern Mediterranean with lyrics describing the life of refugees and ordinary people struggling to survive.
Its origins trace back to Greek settlements in Smyrna and Constantinople. Forced by war and ethnic cleansing to leave their homes of many centuries in the early 1920s, 1.5 million Greeks of Asia Minor settled in mainland Greece and many of the Aegean Islands. Rebetiko was born of a synthesis of Anatolian and Greek traditions. The refugees were ostracized from Greek society and blamed for rising unemployment. The feelings of deep loss and exclusion, nostalgia for home and hope are embodied in its “poem-lament” lyrics. The musicians were often persecuted and sometimes imprisoned.
The famous Greek composer Manos Chartzidakis described this music as the essential expression of Greek kefi or spirit. The soulful stories told in Rebetiko have been likened to those in Country, Blues and Jazz. The music and the lyrics are emotional, haunting, often quite humorous. While the songs capture past customs and practices, Rebetiko is a living musical tradition. During the Greek economic crisis that began in 2008 with the U.S. banking and mortgage meltdown, Rebetiko reemerged as the soundtrack of popular protest, continuing its symbolic tradition of folk culture in conflict with the “establishment”.
Some have described it as the articulation of underdog social movements’ defiance of oppressive states and social structures. It was part of the popular opposition to Greece’s dictatorial governments of 1936-41. It energized the Greek underground Resistance to the Nazi occupation (1941-46) and was taken up by Communist partisans during the Greek Civil War (1946-49). In the 1970s it rallied opposition to yet another military junta.
About Skopelos
This beautiful evergreen island in the northwestern Aegean is a hidden Greek treasure. Perhaps fitting its rich musical traditions, Skopelos is shaped like a saxophone. It is the home of some of the world’s best Rebetiko musicians. It has many beautiful beaches and its mountainous geography provides spectacular views of tree laden hillsides dropping sharply to the sea It is slightly larger than Mykonos and Santorini. The two closest islands are Skiathos and Alonisos.
For more on Rebetiko music
“So Good They Made It Illegal (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2004/apr/19/guesteditors3
Skopelos Rebetiko Festival
https://www.Rebetikoskopelosfestival.com/about-us
Festival Budget
Sound ….........................................2000 euro
Artist's tickets in Greece...............3500 euro
artist's accommodation.....................4500 euro
Seats and stage arrangement..........2500 euro
Extra payments...............................1500 euro
TOTAL...........................................14000 EUROS
Organizer
Brian Drolet
Organizer
New York, NY
Creative Diasporas Inc.
Beneficiary