Marika Ninou

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Marika Ninou was an Armenian-Greek singer of rebetiko. She was born in 1922 on board the ship Evangelistria, which was carrying her mother, two sisters and eight-year-old brother from Smyrna to Piraeus. Because it was thought she would not survive, she was laid in a storeroom after the birth. She pulled through, and the captain immediately christened her Evangelia. The family settled in Kokkinia, a poor district near Piraeus. At school she learned to play the mandolin, and she sang in the Armenian church.

Music and breakthrough

She married in 1939. In 1947 her husband left for Armenia, leaving her with her son. She performed with the acrobat Nikos Nikolaides in the duo Nino. In 1948 she recorded two songs with Manolis Chiotis. From 1949 she worked with Vassilis Tsitsanis at the club Fat Jimmy's. The duo of Tsitsanis and Ninou became important for Greek music. In 1951 they performed together in Istanbul, after which they went their separate ways. In 1954 she went to the United States for a cancer operation. The disease spread quickly and she returned to Greece, where she kept singing for a little while in great pain. She died in 1957, thirty-five years old.

Influence

Ninou had a high, powerful voice. Rebetiko, the urban folk song of Piraeus and Athens, acquired a feminine, melancholy face through her. Her voice is the best known from the collaboration with Tsitsanis.

Listening