Poor sad love

A love song, one of those that reminds us of the close relationship between folk songs and rembetika.

At the end, the melody turns into an amanes^*, with a couplet expressing erotic passion with the intense emotionality common to many songs in this genre. These couplets were also common in a host of Greek communities on the Asia Minor seaboard and on the islands, where they were sung to various melodies.

So it’s not surprising that both Mytilene and Smyrna claim the song as their own, given the close links between Smyrna and Lesvos, whose inhabitants would flock to the mainland city in their thousands until 1922, to work as craftsmen or labourers, to study, some even to shop in Smyrna’s marketplace or to settle there permanently. And it’s only natural that they should have taken their songs, music and dances -indeed, cultural and material goods of every sort – with them. Which explains the enormous influence Smyrna had culturally not only on Lesvos, but on almost every island in the Aegean.

Theodor Kondaras (2022)

^* Amanes (pl. amanedes): a slow melancholy song in the oriental style