A beautiful song about a school burning down in September 1821 in Galaxidhi. In 1930 listeners must have remembered the recent great fire of Smyrna 1922. But burning schools and burning cities will always be with us it seems. The song was written, played on guitar and sung by Kostas Bezos, the mysterious cartoonist, actor, journalist and musician who recorded under the name A. Kostis. He was born in the same year, 1905, as Markos and wrote an article describing a visit to Votaniko in the thirties where Markos directed the orchestra in 'his own peculiar way'. 'Pianissimo', he wrote, is conveyed by scaring the performers and shouting "morto"' ... 'The bouzouki trembles in his hands ... the curls on his forehead dance madly to the music'.
Tony Klein, a British psychiatrist and bouzouki player has gathered together Bezos' extraordinary 1930 and 1931 recordings on a vinyl record: called ‘A. Kostis, The Jail's a Fine School’. It comes with translations of the songs, a glossary, detailed notes on the tunings and modes of each song and some great detective work on how this mercurial middle class man came to record some of the earliest classic 'hard core' rebetiko songs on his steel guitar some years before the bouzouki was allowed in the recording studio. Since yesterday it's official according to the BBC: digital is old news and vinyl is coming out on top again. The sound quality of this disc makes you believe Kostis is sitting and playing in your own living room.
Tony Klein's collaborators on the 'Jail's a Fine School' were Gordon Ashworth (American musician and instigator of the Olvido Records vinyl label and Dimitris Kourtis, musician and researcher. It's interesting that this particular song is described in the booklet that goes with it as a 'slow tsifteteli'. Markos Vamvakaris, when asked if there was such a thing as 'βαρυ τσιφτετελι' (heavy tsifteteli) said yes there was. This is the kind of song he might perhaps have had in mind. (See 'Addenda' on the Greeklines website for this interview).
Tony Klein, a British psychiatrist and bouzouki player has gathered together Bezos' extraordinary 1930 and 1931 recordings on a vinyl record: called ‘A. Kostis, The Jail's a Fine School’. It comes with translations of the songs, a glossary, detailed notes on the tunings and modes of each song and some great detective work on how this mercurial middle class man came to record some of the earliest classic 'hard core' rebetiko songs on his steel guitar some years before the bouzouki was allowed in the recording studio. Since yesterday it's official according to the BBC: digital is old news and vinyl is coming out on top again. The sound quality of this disc makes you believe Kostis is sitting and playing in your own living room.
Tony Klein's collaborators on the 'Jail's a Fine School' were Gordon Ashworth (American musician and instigator of the Olvido Records vinyl label and Dimitris Kourtis, musician and researcher. It's interesting that this particular song is described in the booklet that goes with it as a 'slow tsifteteli'. Markos Vamvakaris, when asked if there was such a thing as 'βαρυ τσιφτετελι' (heavy tsifteteli) said yes there was. This is the kind of song he might perhaps have had in mind. (See 'Addenda' on the Greeklines website for this interview).