Various Artists - A Cloudy Dawn (2022)

Death is Not the End follow up 'The Sun is Setting on the World' with another set of Greek rebetika from the 1930s to the late 1950s.

What we now know as Rebetika originally developed from Greek and Turkish folk music in the late 19th century, taking in aspects of Orthodox church music, and Ottoman cafe music and slowly developing into a sound that's now become recognisable enough to be certified by UNESCO. Death is Not the End's latest collection begins in the 1930s, as the bouzouki was becoming its main instrument, asserting a dominant Greekness after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

This was folk music, but with teeth - because it developed from cafe music, there's an edginess to rebetika that's often overlooked if you're missing the lyrical content. A deep dive will reveal songs about drugs, women, pain, loss, alcoholism, all that good stuff.

1.01 - Sotiria Bellou - A Cloudy Dawn (3:26)
1.02 - Stavros Tzouanakos - I Am Crying Inconsolably (3:12)
1.03 - Kostas Roukounas - Shooting Dice (2:56)
1.04 - Rosa Eskenazi - I'm a Drug Addict (3:13)
1.05 - M. Vasiliadou - Mother, I Became Sick (3:12)
1.06 - Stelios Kazantzidis - You Ruined My Youth (3:14)
1.07 - Giorgia Blana - I Am a Sinner (3:22)
1.08 - Stelios Perpiniadis - My Body Is Wasting Away (3:38)
1.09 - Kyriakos Agorides - Dense and Dark Clouds (3:32)
1.10 - Vangelis Perpiniadis - Weep for Me My Friends (3:20)
1.11 - Panayotis Tsoros - Doudou (4:16)
1.12 - Stelios Kazantzidis - The Good Ones Die Young (3:10)