One night somewhere in 1932, a tough looking ominous figure of a man, tried his best to walk inconspicuously among the various odd and distorted shadows of a darkened and poorly paved Athenian street, with a musical instrument tucked and hidden under his coat. This was an instrument of disreputable notoriety known as the Bouzouke. To anyone of any consequence at that time, this young tough was obviously just another one of the indigent Opium smoking up to no damn good Cafe musicians, who probably worked at one of those God-Forsaken underground Juke Joints or  Hellenic Hell-Raising Hashish procuring Honky-Tonk, that catered to the huge unwashed underclass population, located down by the pier in a run down section of Piraeus, that was the scourge of King & Country as well as of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. This 28 year old "Mangas" (tough guy) big claim to fame up to that point, was that he could actually sing and play that damned criminal instrument at the same time and was more then willing to prove it . That is, if one of the record companies would just give him the chance. So one night after he had just about badgered them into submission, they did. When he finished the session and walked out of the studio a bit later, the style and substance along with the way in which the rest of the world would eventually come to regard Greek music, had been significantly and indisputably forever altered . He then put down the instrument and went to dinner ! 

If you have ever been in a Greek Cafe in Athens or Thessalonica, or even one of the more "upscale" Greek nightclubs in a Chicago or New York where they featured live music & entertainment (as well as the traditional and customary inflated check) and you began to hear the musicians begin to play a sound whose unusual syncopated rhythms, seemed to cut right through you while the ingratiating and seductive sound of a Bouzouke began to illicit a strange and esoteric urge, to get up and break a plate or two, then you have in all likelihood, just been struck by the " Keffi " (spirit) from a composition by one Markos Vamvakaris. Vamvakaris is generally recognized as the single most important figure in Rebetiko history because it was he who created the  "modern-day" sound we now recognize and identify as Rebetika. It would be difficult to overstate his contribution to the genre. This was the composer who first conceived and most personified, the contemporary structural context of the "Classic" Rebetiko style. He was also the first artist in Greece to release a record with the Bouzouke (although his friend George Batis nearly beat him to it ) and the first to highlight the instrument during live performances. Such were the contributions of  "O Markos".  His conception of the way the music should sound, would eventually revolutionize the Hellenic music industry. It was in Markos Vamvakaris, (along with a group he was part of called Tetras) that the preceding influences such as the Cafe Aman, Cafe Chantant and the highly Urbanized folk tune, finally came together to give us the sound we now call " Classic Rebetika". Unassuming, unpretentious, self-taught and without any kind of formal musical training, he somehow managed to conceive, create and project this unique sound, that encapsulated and has ever since come to personify the spirit of the Modern Greek musical experience. In this he is arguably the Spiritual Father of just about everyone who came after him.  More then any other composer that either preceded or followed, Vamvakaris was the composer who has come to symbolize a singular Hellenic spirit of a more elemental and visceral nature. The proverbial "Sterner Stuff" of another generation and from another Era lost by the years gone by. More "serious" composers would appear later, who would certainly exhibit a considerably higher degree of sophistication in their approach and interpretation to Rebetiko and Greek music in general. However every single one of them, will eternally be indebted to the extraordinary originality of Markos Vamvakaris and to some extent, will always be compelled to stand in the shadow of this tough, imposing and most creative artist, who was born into abject poverty on the "wrong side" of an Island named Syros, who left home at the age of twelve and went on to build a lasting and legendary musical edifice from a foundation of ashes and clay .