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55 albums · 1938–2022

Music of Greece, from rebetiko and Theodorakis to laïko, Vangelis, rock, rap and today

· 3 min read · by 1001 Albums

Mikis Theodorakis conducting on an open-air stage, Maria Farantouri singing at the microphone on the left, bouzouki and guitar players seated between them
Psarantonis, with long curly hair and a grey beard, playing a long-necked lute at a microphone under purple stage lightHaris Alexiou bowing at the microphone on a stage lit by spotlights, a bouzouki player and other musicians beside her, the heads of the audience in front
Mikis Theodorakis and Maria Farantouri in concert at Caesarea in the early 1970s. Photo: Mordo Avrahamov, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Psarantonis of Crete in concert in Warsaw in 2011. Photo: Henryk Kotowski, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Haris Alexiou in concert in Berlin in 2006. Photo: Inge Kanakaris-Wirtl, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.

Greece's records begin with the bouzouki and the urban song of Piraeus and Athens, rebetiko, from Roza Eskenazi, Markos Vamvakaris and Vassilis Tsitsanis to the laïko of Stelios Kazantzidis, and beside them the older songs of the villages and the islands: the clarinet of Epirus in Petroloukas Halkias's hands, the songs Domna Samiou gathered, Psarantonis's Cretan lyra and Nikos Xylouris's Erotokritos. In the sixties Mikis Theodorakis set the poets to the bouzouki, Epitafios with Grigoris Bithikotsis and To Axion Esti, Manos Hadjidakis wrote Never on Sunday and later O Megalos Erotikos, Maria Farantouri sang the Mauthausen ballads, and Arleta and Dionysis Savvopoulos came out of the boîtes of the Neo Kyma; after them Yannis Markopoulos's Rizitika, Stavros Xarchakos and Manos Loizos, George Dalaras, Haris Alexiou, Dimitra Galani, Vicky Moscholiou, Dimitris Mitropanos and Eleftheria Arvanitaki's Kontrabando. Aphrodite's Child, Demis Roussos and Vangelis took Greek players onto the charts abroad, Socrates Drank the Conium played hard rock in 1971, Lena Platonos made Sun Masks on synthesisers, and Nikos Papazoglou, Haris and Panos Katsimihas, Sokratis Malamas and Thanasis Papakonstantinou wrote their own songs; then Trypes, Xylina Spathia and Pyx Lax for rock, Kaiti Garbi, Antonis Remos, Anna Vissi and Helena Paparizou, who won Eurovision in 2005, for the pop and laïko of the radio, Active Member, Terror X Crew and Imiskoumbria for rap, Rotting Christ and Septicflesh for metal, Mode Plagal and Savina Yannatou for jazz, Imam Baildi putting old records to new beats, Iannis Xenakis in the concert hall, and Keep Shelly in Athens, Monika, Planet of Zeus, Villagers of Ioannina City, Snik and Marina Satti since. The list has 55 records from 1938 to 2022, one or two by each of the names above and only a small part of what they made; the oldest are the collections Deezer has, dated by their recordings, Marinella and Nana Mouskouri are missing because Deezer has their Greek records mostly as later collections, the singers of Cyprus are left for a list of their own, and Byzantine chant, the songs of each region beyond a few records and most of the classical tradition would each need one too. The bouzouki and rebetiko have their own list, which shares a few records with this one. About 46 hours of music, 5 days of a few records each.

By genre

World 49%Folk & Country 9%Rock 9%Other 33%
  • World 49%
  • Folk & Country 9%
  • Rock 9%
  • Other 33%

The genres named most: greek, entekhno, laïko, pop, folk, rebetiko.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 1 country: Greece 55. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1930s

The 1940s

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Countries first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.