Markos Vamvakaris

The compelling autobiography of the man who made the Bouzouki famous and changed the history of Greek music. ​For the first time in English.

'Addictive reading.’
Alex Kapranos, Franz Ferdinand

'I love it, who could resist this?’
M. A. Kennedy, World on 3, BBC
 
‘One of the great memoirs by any musician of the 20th century, as good as Dylan's, as good as Miles Davis's, and maybe better if you know the music.’
I. Nagoski, The Wire

'The confessions of a man on the fringes of society, who was to alter the music of a nation.  
A brilliant translation.'
M. Dragoumis,  Folk Music Archives, Athens

---

'"I’ve got a bouzouki and it’s a sacred thing, because it’s come out of that world".  A sense of that world – that raw, proletariat Greece of the interwar years  - may yet be recovered in ​The Man and the Bouzouki."
A. Clapp, The Times Literary Supplement

"...Translating and editing this work was a monumental task and Ms. Minogue is to be commended for the excellent results."
Michael G. Kaloyanides, Professor Emeritus of Music, University of New Haven

"One of the greatest books I have ever read. "
C. Chomenidis, Five Books
Number one choice of "Five Books" that show "the Real Greece".

---

In Piraeus during the 1930s and 40s, dockworkers, tradesmen, thieves, and ex-cons sat together in shacks or mountain caves smoking the arghile and playing stringed instruments. They sang and played Rebetiko. Markos Vamvakaris is the undisputed Patriarch of Rebetiko. Out of the lowlife of the port, the brothels and hashish dens, the man and the bouzouki trod an unlikely path from disgrace to glory. The autobiography was compiled in 1972 by Angeliki Vellou Keil from dictated material and recorded interviews with Markos in the last years of his life. The English translation is by Noonie Minogue. This timely and ground-breaking translation vividly conveys the speaking voice of a Rebetiko legend.