Tatavla Keyfi on stage in Berlin. Photo: Tatavla Keyfi.

17 September 2011

THOMAS ANDRONAS

In Istanbul there are no Greeks, just Romans. In 2011 they’re engaged in a fight to survive, and the humble rebetiko is leading the way.

In the dirty, smoky rebetiko bars of Istanbul, a movement is forming. It’s an attempt to revive the city’s ailing Greek Orthodox community, with the help of music.

This unofficial movement is being led by Greek political scientist and musician, Haris Rigas. On a steamy summer’s day we meet at a bar in the backstreets of Beyoglu, Istanbul’s teeming social hub.

The city itself is a burgeoning mass of historical and cultural cosmopolitanism, at the meeting point of Europe and Asia, where Greeks have existed for centuries. As a Greek Australian its impossible not to feel a sense of belonging here, an irresistible mystical allure.

“You know, there are two words for ‘Greek’: there’s ‘Romios’ – which comes from ‘Roman’, and its more of a religious term, it means a Greek orthodox person – and there’s ‘Ellinas’, which gained ground after the revolution and it refers back to Ancient Greece, rather than medieval Hellenism,” Rigas says.

“Now these people living here [in Istanbul], they call themselves ‘Romioi’, because at the forefront of their identity is religion, secondarily language and ethnicity. So the turks call them Rums.”

In 2011, the Rums (pronounced ‘Rhoums’) constitute a very minor minority in Istanbul, and they’re engaged in a fight to survive.

The 20th century was a tumultuous one for the Rum community. The 1922 treaty of Lausanne resulted in millions of ethnic Greek Orthodox from across Turkey being uprooted and deported, though the Istanbul Greeks were allowed to stay due to their substantial historical ties to the city.

In 1932 a law was passed excluding Greeks from some 30 professions, thus restricting their influence on Istanbul society.

In 1955 up to 300,000 Turks perpetrated a violent pogrom against the Rums of Istanbul, killing up to 17 people and destroying more than 5000 Greek-owned properties, including  more than 4000 homes, 1000 businesses, 70 churches, 2 monasteries, 1 synagogue, and 26 schools.

As a result of the pogrom the Greek Orthodox population of Istanbul was reduced from more than 65,000 in 1955 to about 49,000 in 1960. In 2011 the city’s Greek Orthodox population sits at around 2500, mostly older people.

“In many ways this community is … frozen in the Ottoman period, so when you speak to the Greek Orthodox here, they have an alternative geography of the city, they have their own Greek names for almost every single street. So its like a time machine…when you come to the city, you go back in time,” Rigas says.

Historically, the Rums are inextricably entrenched in Istanbul. This ethnic group has been here since Byzantine times, yet according to Rigas, in 2011 – after centuries of political and cultural transformation – the Rums are being denied their basic human rights, living in fear and paranoia. This is putting them at serious risk of dying out.

However despite the odds being stacked against them, Rigas says there is room for the Istanbul Rum community to take some steps towards self-determination. Introversion, he says, is something to be avoided.

“Its something of a reflex … but i don’t think it works any more. Being introverted and conservative will just lead to the end of this community. It has to claim its role actively in the Turkish society,” he says.

“This community used to be at the forefront of Turkish society – the best doctors, the best architects, the best artists worked in this community, and now they’re just a relic. I think if they keep being a relic, they will disappear. If they become active and engaged they will prolong their existence here at least some generations.”

Fortunately, political developments in the past decade have created a more amiable environment in which to try to stage such a community comeback. Rigas says that a combination of factors, including the Greek-Turkish rapprochement and a gradual domestic political shift towards democratisation has changed the game for the Rums and other minority communities in Turkey.

“You go around here in Beyoglu and they’re playing Kurdish music on the streets, ten years ago that would have been inconceivable,” Rigas says.

“Ten years ago the Greeks would … hardly ever speak Greek in public, now they do,” he says.

In this environment of social and political reform arises an opportunity for a resurgence. Part of that resurgence lies in the resurrection of the rebetiko, the urban blues of the Greek and Turkish underclasses, led by Rigas’ band Tatavla Keyfi.

Formed in 2008, the band was named to include both Greeks and Turks, to reflect the commonality of the music’s origins.

“Tatavla is the name of a very important neighbourhood of Istanbul, today it’s called Kurtulus but until the 50s it was almost like a Greek ghetto. In the Ottoman period it was an area where if you weren’t Greek Orthodox you couldn’t settle, and it was one of the heartlands of rebetiko,” Rigas says.

“Keyfi also is a common word. In Greek we say ‘kefi’, in Turkish we say ‘keyf’, which means something like fun, but of course its one of those untranslatable words in both languages.”

“In Greek it has more the meaning of huge fun, outrageous fun, like you’re drunk, dancing on tables, breaking plates, whatever. But in Turkish its a more calm state, a state of contemplation, enjoying a view, sipping a bit of tea. Pleasure, simple pleasure,” he says.

Rebetiko was born at a time of social struggle for both Greeks and Turks, in the aftermath of the First World War, the Treaty of Lausanne population exchange, the birth of the modern Turkish nation and the rule of Metaxas in Greece.

“From a sociological point of view its the exact equivalent of the blues, what the blues were for America, is what rebetiko is for Greece, and for a great part of what is today Turkey. So it’s basically music of the underground, it’s urban music…it’s the music of petty bourgeois workers…it’s related to gays, to narcotics, prostitution, all the sorts of activities that were typical of the very lowest strata of an urban setting from the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th [century],” Rigas says.

“Istanbul, Izmir (Smyrni), Athens and New York are the birthplaces of … different schools of rebetiko. If you look at the major artists, even the ones that became very big in Greece, half of them were born here and had their first performances here,” he says.

The commonalities between Greek and Turkish rebetiko are often indistinguishable beyond language, Rigas says, which gives the audience a point of reference from which to relate to the band and the music.

“Many classical rebetiko songs have an equivalent in Turkish, so this is a good starting point for us. We usually sing the song in both Greek and Turkish, the lyrics are often the same, sometimes they can be different but doesn’t matter, its a way to establish contact with the viewer,” he says.

“They’ve been very receptive, they really like them … so we’ve created a bit of a community of very different people from very varied backgrounds, both ethnically, ideologically, socially that have a common interest about this music, about this city’s past.”

Within this community, a relationship of common recognition and learning has begun to develop, according to Rigas, which is helping to bolster the Rum community in Istanbul, and pass on its traditions to the younger generations.

“For us its very touching when local Greeks come, of a certain age, and they remember how it used to be in the old days, and they make requests and dance. This is also important for us, because it’s part of the transmission of know-how, which otherwise would have been lost.”

“For example the way that Istanbul Greek Orthodox dance certain dances is completely different to the way they dance them in Greece, where they’ve been folklorised to some extent.”

“Its a community of knowledge also, so this old guy comes, he dances, he shows us how he dances it, makes corrections, he says ‘this is an Istanbul song but this is not how we sing it, this is how you sing it in Greece’, so its very exciting,” Rigas says.

Ultimately however, rebetiko in Istanbul is working as a part of the mission to bridge the incongruous gap between the few remaining Greek Orthodox Rums, and the city that they have inhabited for centuries.

“It unites people but it does it through the unconventional part [of their brain], it brings out the unconventional part of your mind, the things that you normally wouldn’t say. Also it also brings a lot of ecstasy, the way you dance rebetiko music, its an ecstatic dance, its not the kind of silly dance in the club with your mates, getting drunk. There’s something ritualistic about the way you dance this music, so it goes deep, so its not just casual fun.”

“I don’t know what it is about rebetiko … it’s not that its revolutionary music at all, but it looks at the world from a  certain tilt … and a certain irony … its just the average person on the street saying universal truths, like how unfair the world is, how important money is. These have a class value, whatever society you belong to, they apply somehow.”