This touching documentary is moved by the personal journey and research of filmmaker Mary Zournazi as she attempts to connect with her Greco-Turkish roots through history and rembetika music. With her mother’s memories of her grandmother and a few scraps of documentation, Zournazi travels the Greek Isles, Anatolia, and Egypt searching for the genetic memories which have haunted her since childhood. She and others discuss the history, cultural roots, and political realities surrounding rembetika music and the mass exodus which birthed the art form.
Zournazi leads interviews with both great musicians of the vinyl era and modern Greek musicians such as Negros Tou Moria. These artists explain their connection with rembetika music and how rembetika stylings drive their creative output. Unable to find documented proof of her grandmother in Greece, Zournazi travels to Turkey and Egypt, speaking to expert historians and archivists alongside musicians in a search for the family history she can feel in her bones and hear in rembetika music.
Rembetika has many faces: it is “a music of exile, a music of outcasts, a music of the underground,” but mostly, it is a music of mass migration. Zournazi explores many types of memory in this incredibly personal documentary. She touches on music as a form of cultural memory but also discusses body memory and ancestral memory. She had many emotional experiences with rembetika music before she even knew its significance to her own family history, cementing the idea of genetic or ancestral memory which is prominently discussed in the field of epigenetics.
These explorations were especially touching to me as someone who has had similar struggles in tacking down my Armenian ancestors' movements in the same time period. Record-keeping was spotty even without disasters such as the great fire in Smyrna. Rembetika serves as an imperfect record of that turbulent time. Such mass movements of people always create a culture and in this way crisis creates culture. Unbelievably deep and multifaceted, My Rembetika Blues will appeal to more than just music and history lovers. Highly Recommended.
Where does this title belong on library shelves?
My Rembetika Blues is a multi-faceted educational documentary that is difficult to tack down. It would fit in music, biography, history, and philosophy collections in both public and academic libraries. If you are a professor of any of these subjects, consider adding this documentary to your syllabus.
What type of film series could use this documentary?
Any series or library programming focused on Greek music, The Fall of the Ottoman Empire, or genealogy would benefit from the addition of My Rembetika Blues.