rebetiko means A Greek urban folk song, characterised by lyrics about underworld activity, and played generally on stringed instruments including the bouzouki. Lexicurio rates it Distinctive — a strength score of 67 out of 100.
Why this word is great
REBETIKO — [Noun] A Greek urban folk music genre, characterized by lyrics often dealing with the underworld, hardship, and love, and traditionally played on stringed instruments such as the bouzouki. Borrowed from Modern Greek ρεμπέτικο (rempétiko), from ρεμπέτης (rempétis, 'a working-class, socially marginal man'), a term of uncertain but debated etymology. Unlike laiko (which denotes a later, polished, and commercially popular mainstream) or dimotiko (which evokes the ancient, sun-bleached folk songs of the village), rebetiko is the raw, smoke-stained chronicle of the early 20th-century urban underbelly. It is the metallic shimmer of a bouzouki in a basement taverna, the solitary smoke curling towards a cracked ceiling, and the syncopated shuffle of feet on sawdust-covered floors—the art of finding a defiant dignity in places the light refuses to touch.
noun
- A Greek urban folk song, characterised by lyrics about underworld activity, and played generally on stringed instruments including the bouzouki.“I need another player to put a Greek melody over the top, perhaps a rebetiko of some sort.”
- This style of music; such music as a genre.“At the time, these earliest songs of the rebetika tradition were a symptom and a particular manifestation of a wider climate of violence, criminality and despair, whether real or imagined, that permeated the Greek capital around the turn of the century.”