Vassilis Tsitsanis & Marika Ninou

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

Vassilis Tsitsanis & Marika Ninou · Vassilis Tsitsanis was born in 1915 in Trikala and is regarded as one of the founders of modern rebetiko and laiko. He played the bouzouki and wrote more than five hundred songs. As a child he learned violin, mandola and mandolin. In 1936 he left for Athens to study law, and a year later he learned to play the bouzouki and made his first recording. In 1938 he moved to Thessaloniki, where he stayed for ten years, opened an ouzeri and wrote many of his best songs during the German occupation. By 1941 he had already recorded some hundred songs of his own.

Music and breakthrough

In 1946 he returned to Athens and recorded his own compositions with male and female singers, among them Sotiria Bellou and Marika Ninou. His songs made the singers famous. Tsitsanis Westernised rebetiko a little and brought it to a wide public, thereby laying the foundation for the later laiko. Ninou was one of the voices that carried his songs.

Influence

He died in London in 1984, on his sixty-ninth birthday, and was commemorated throughout Greece. The bouzouki, which in his hands could sound both cheerful and melancholy, became the hallmark of Greek song.

Listening

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  Synnefiasmeni Kyriaki · Vassilis Tsitsanis & Marika Ninou, 1954
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