Dimitrianakis Manolis

Manolis was born in Crete. When he was student in Law school of Athens he started to play bouzouki and to approach rebetiko. Then he met MARKOS VAMVAKARIS and becames his first student and biographer. Rebetiko lived in Greece till 1954-55. In 1967-70 when Manolis was impressed by Markos, nobody was in favour of this kind of music. The discs were lost and Marcos was poor and alone. In about 1966-1970 some students, musicians, painters, poets started to rediscover the magic of rebetiko, to find the old discs, to meet the persons who were alive and played first the rebetiko in '30, '40, '50 like Markos, George Batis, Stelios Keromitis, Stratos Payioumtzis, Dimitris Gogkos "Bayianderas". Manolis founded the first group in 1971 that played again rebetiko "unplugged", discovered rare songs and resulted in a rebirth of rebetiko. After Dimitrianakis and his group "rebetiki kompania", followed much more singers, bouzouki-players who started to play rebetiko and rebetiko becames very popular. Groups were born, Babis Goles, George Ksintaris from Skopelos and others began their careers and play till nowadays rebetiko.