Rebétika songs - or simply Rebétiko - appears, from the mid of the nineteenth century, in the urban Greek centres and in some Asia Minor cities inhabited by Greek communities.
The Costantinople and Smyrna lanes, the Syros island uphill roads, the Athens, Pireus and Salonika suburbs, but also the big American cities... every part of the world where Greek people persecuted by fate found themselves live, are places strictly connected to the birth of this musical genre.
Rebétiko quickly spread among Greeks living in Asia Minor, then among the emigrants in the North America and finally, after 1922 - when Greek people from Ionia were forced to leave their homeland to look for shelter in the motherland - took roots in Greece.
In the ports and in the slums of Greek cities the oriental, more cosmopolite and refined character of these refugees - among them a lot of famous musicians and composers - melt with the blues, the passionateness and the non-conformist protest of local artists songs. This encounter begins the Golden Age of the Rebétiko.
The gradual abandonment of the more radical themes, gained Rebétiko, rules in the 20s by the art of the "School of Smyrna " musicians and in the following decade by the representatives of the "Company of Pireus" and their bouzouki, a more and more broad social space, that enabled it to reach, in the 40s and in the 50s, the top of popularity, before it turned to the decline phase.
Nowadays, after the rediscovery of the 70s, Rebétiko, unquestionably one of the great symbols of Greek musical tradition, keeps on being played and keeps on touching new generations.