Rembetika Hipsters from Big Sky Sessions on Vimeo.
This is a videi shoot we did back in March for Big Sky Sessions. Shot on the observation deck of the Calgary Tower - the overhanging glass floor. One take only. Don't look down....
Monday, November 29, 2010
Video of "Michaela Tripticho"
This is a videi shoot we did back in March for Big Sky Sessions. Shot on the observation deck of the Calgary Tower - the overhanging glass floor. One take only. Don't look down....
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Palookaville
I'm a big fan of the self-styled underground cartoonist Seth of Drawn & Quarterly Publications, for his ongoing comic Palookaville, for the amazing Bannock, Beans and Black Tea memoir, for his work designing the ongoing Complete Peanuts for Fantagraphics.
So I was surprised and thrilled to find that the Rembetika Hipsters make an appearance in Palookaville #20. In a story called "Calgary Festival", he recounts an existential crisis he experienced while booked to read at the 2001 Wordfest festival. While in Calgary, he attends our CD release party for our first album Architects of Narghile at the late lamented Night Gallery Cabaret.
"the band comes on, they are actually quite good". Love it! - Allen
Monday, November 8, 2010
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
MySpace
New MySpace Page : http://www.myspace.com/rembetikahipsters - includes rough mixes of some new recordings.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Illyas Pagonis
If you're at all a regular at Pegasus Wednesdays over the past 5 years or so, you've probably seen a wild-haired Greek sitting in with us from time to time playing violin. Illyas Pagonis isn't mentioned anywhere on this website yet so I thought I'd correct the oversight. He's one of the Hipsters' best friends and patrons, and we're hoping he'll do the cover art for our next album - you see, Illyas is a pretty phenomenal painter and sculptor. Among his many sculptural projects was the restoration of Calgary's Centre Street Bridge lions. In 1999 the Centre Street Bridge received a major overhaul. Prominent on the bridge were sculpted lions sitting on top of kiosks on the four corners of the bridge. Having been built in 1916, the lions had badly deteriorated. It was decided that the original lions would have to be replaced with exact replicas. Illyas Pagonis did the work. He also designed some of the prehistoric park at the Calgary Zoo. As a visual artist, Illyas' depictions of the Canadian west are represented locally by the Virginia Christopher gallery. He and his wife Margo just celebrated 30 years of marriage. Yiasou Illya!
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Nice Review from the Belleville, ON Intelligencer
Audience on its feet for Hipsters
Westben performance
Posted By JACK EVANS, SPECIAL TO THE INTELLIGENCER
Posted 24 days ago
The best way to end an exciting festival season is with a good party. That seemed to be the deal at Westben Sunday as a Greek folk group from Calgary called the Rembetika Hipsters got the audience clapping and yes, even dancing in the aisles.
The audience didn't seem to care that the music was predominantly eastern Mediterranean, with strange rhythms and often soulful melodies, even strange instruments like a baglana, a miniature version of a bouzouki, similar to a balalaika or a mandolin with a long neck.
The very name of the group clued those in the know into the type of music to be expected. Many people in the audience were Greek, of Greek descent or wished they were.
Rembetika originated in the wake of an early 20th century conflict between Turkey and Greece when large numbers of Greeks formerly residing in Turkey were expelled, forcing them to live in shack towns or slums around major Greek cities. They also brought Turkish culture and music with them, melding it into a distinct style of Greek music called rembetika, born out of poverty, disenfranchisement, oppression and perhaps even hashish, band leader Nick Diochnos explained. He compared it to the American blues, and said that it was outlawed in the mid 1930s and forced underground.
While many of the tunes were soulful, most of the rhythms, while disjointed by western standards, often in a strange nine-beat time, remained infectious, with the audience willingly swaying and clapping.
The eastern Mediterranean flavour also inspired a dancer named Zarqaa from the Meksha Belly Dance Studio in Colborne, to get up and perform, complete with tingling discs wrapped around her middle. She also led several in the audience to move with the music for the final number.
Retired Belleville businessman Bill Yeotes was front and centre in the audience, enjoying his first visit to the Westben barn auditorium and, being Greek himself, especially the music.
Typical of the Greek folklore included in the program was a song called "Tomas's Place," in which a wild party at a remote tavern attracts the interest of the angels in heaven and the demons from hell to join the party and share hands and dance with the people. Orchestra drummer Ben Johnson, spelled off for one number, moved to the back of the stage and demonstrated a Greek dance, "bent over like a hawk eyeing its prey," he explained. That inspired another person of Greek origin from the audience to get up and do a similar dance later on.
Westben performance
Posted By JACK EVANS, SPECIAL TO THE INTELLIGENCER
Posted 24 days ago
The best way to end an exciting festival season is with a good party. That seemed to be the deal at Westben Sunday as a Greek folk group from Calgary called the Rembetika Hipsters got the audience clapping and yes, even dancing in the aisles.
The audience didn't seem to care that the music was predominantly eastern Mediterranean, with strange rhythms and often soulful melodies, even strange instruments like a baglana, a miniature version of a bouzouki, similar to a balalaika or a mandolin with a long neck.
The very name of the group clued those in the know into the type of music to be expected. Many people in the audience were Greek, of Greek descent or wished they were.
Rembetika originated in the wake of an early 20th century conflict between Turkey and Greece when large numbers of Greeks formerly residing in Turkey were expelled, forcing them to live in shack towns or slums around major Greek cities. They also brought Turkish culture and music with them, melding it into a distinct style of Greek music called rembetika, born out of poverty, disenfranchisement, oppression and perhaps even hashish, band leader Nick Diochnos explained. He compared it to the American blues, and said that it was outlawed in the mid 1930s and forced underground.
While many of the tunes were soulful, most of the rhythms, while disjointed by western standards, often in a strange nine-beat time, remained infectious, with the audience willingly swaying and clapping.
The eastern Mediterranean flavour also inspired a dancer named Zarqaa from the Meksha Belly Dance Studio in Colborne, to get up and perform, complete with tingling discs wrapped around her middle. She also led several in the audience to move with the music for the final number.
Retired Belleville businessman Bill Yeotes was front and centre in the audience, enjoying his first visit to the Westben barn auditorium and, being Greek himself, especially the music.
Typical of the Greek folklore included in the program was a song called "Tomas's Place," in which a wild party at a remote tavern attracts the interest of the angels in heaven and the demons from hell to join the party and share hands and dance with the people. Orchestra drummer Ben Johnson, spelled off for one number, moved to the back of the stage and demonstrated a Greek dance, "bent over like a hawk eyeing its prey," he explained. That inspired another person of Greek origin from the audience to get up and do a similar dance later on.
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