Corpus Rebeticorum: a preview

Abstract

The need for a corpus of rebetika verses may not be immediately obvious. There are after all at least two massive anthologies of rebetika still in print (petropoulos, 1979 and Schorelis, 1977-81) and the plethora of biographies of rebetes tend to include generous samples of the biographee's compositions (most recently Yenitsaris, 1992). There are also numerous audio-anthologies of rebetika in circulation on LPs and latterly CDs.1