The Hellenic Project 2022-23 | The Panagiotis Toundas treasures and the new rebetiko | Tassos Roussopoulos: “Con Tricks: Five Underworld Dances for Solo Guitar” & “Working-Class Knights”

For the project titled “The Treasures of Panagiotis Toundas and the New Rebetiko”, a series of unknown, never-released songs by this revered composer from Smyrna were completed and orchestrated by one of the great modern-day exponents of the rebetiko form, Manolis Pappos, to premiere in stages. On the evening of April 3, audiences will get the chance to enjoy all the songs that have been reformulated and presented to date, in a single concert.

These Panagiotis Toundas materials are drawn from drafts for prospective songs or melodies, or songs whose lyrics were never completed and so were left unreleased. Other materials never made it to the recording studio by force of circumstance. Nonetheless, the genius and signature style of their composer remains markedly and inescapably apparent within them.

Contemporary poets and lyricists have written lyrics for melodies by Toundas that were never released, in a time-displaced “collaboration” between artists separated by the passing of a century. Dionysis Kapsalis, Giorgos Koropoulis, Kostas Fasoulas, Dimitris Papadimitriou, and Veronica Davaki all undertook to complete any partially written lyrics, or to write new ones in instances where they were missing entirely.

Manolis Pappos is without doubt one of the leading bouzouki players of our times, one who perpetuates the innate expressive and aural qualities of the instrument in a time when the bouzouki is tipping into decline. His unostentatious yet magical skill, his measured aesthetic choices, his cultivation and deeply poetic nature rightly position him as the artist of first choice to be entrusted with the treasures of Toundas.

These finds brought a rich seam of around 30 songs to light. Manolis Pappos in the main worked with a single sheet for each, containing only certain melodies and musical “responses,” minus even the chords. In rare instances, there existed piano and vocal parts for him to use, in which case there were chords in place too. Other times, there were only stray ideas to work with, bereft of any elaboration, and of course lacking lyrics.

This series of unreleased Toundas pieces features a wide range of songs and ideas drawn from all three of his compositional periods. His first period –1926-1933– includes songs of the Smyrna School, which are rooted in the style prevalent in Asia Minor during the first two decades of the 20th century and which feature a fusion of European musical elements with the traditional Greek style. When it comes to this conceptual approach, Toundas proved pivotal in the development of the form. It is precisely during this period that he became more widely known among musicians and to the broader public, emerging as one of the best-loved and leading composers of the time. His second period, which roughly runs from 1934 through to 1937, is more clearly influenced by the rebetiko song tradition. Last in line is his 1937-1941 period, dominated by a purely laïkó approach in which the bouzouki takes on a starring role.

These songs are drawn from all three periods of Toundas’ output as a composer – a repertoire that includes easy-listening, Asia Minor “café aman” (tavern), rebetiko, and folk songs, but also completed songs (including lyrics), and others that were imaginatively completed using contemporary approaches to song-making.

The founder and artistic director of the Hellenic Project, Dimitris Papadimitriou, had this to note about Panagiotis Toundas: “P.T. is rightly considered one of the great composers of the Smyrna rebetiko tradition. Deeply knowledgeable of music theory, he has left us perfect, almost calligraphic scores featuring notation that is impressive for the genre. His successful experimentation with multimodal approaches to melody still blaze light –even today– into a particularly opaque area within Greek melodicism. Into a terrain that can only be tackled by composers of rare talent who boast a mastery of the form. And Toundas is genuinely that rare instance where a deep grasp of Western music did not destroy the natural Greek element within his music. Quite the contrary – it helped him in fact to expand it.”

With its artistic program for this year, the Hellenic Project has chosen to showcase and spotlight the rebetiko song tradition, with a view to reactivating and resetting the form in the process. That is, to pick up from where the generation of Manos Hadjidakis left off, but heading off in new conceivable directions, seeking out old sources of intensity and truth in the present day. The commissioned works are fully aligned with the core philosophy of the Hellenic Project, namely to foster and promote original music output forged by both emerging and established composers.

As part of this program, the composer Tassos Rossopoulos was commissioned to write two new works –“Con Tricks: Five Underworld Dances for Solo Guitar” and “Working-Class Knights”– which are set to receive their Greek premieres. The composer notes:

“Con Tricks” is a work that combines rebetiko with the urbane guitar repertoire, in a creative attempt to make best use of the tradition within a new form. Five familiar figures are looking to dance before heading out to play their con tricks. Each has their own theme, their own rhythm, and they all dance to achieve at a moment of freedom, a moment of vindication and consolation.

“Working-Class Knights” is a piece written for a chamber ensemble that relates fragments of rebetiko life centered on the unwritten and inviolable code by which rebetiko artists once defended and preserved their morals, appearance, and behavior. It is a work about many things: a specific type of bouzouki tuning (known as “karantouzeni”), moustaches, eroticism, guns, endless plaint, suits, frustration, a sense of freedom, pride, isolation, song, hashish, dance, and dissent.

All Hellenic Project activities and events are supported by the Onassis Foundation.