Greece's Rebetiko Revival Almost Breaks the Top Five

MAY 15 2011 · 12:35

Loucas Yiorkas feat. Stereo Mike · "Watch My Dance" · Greece · 2011 Placement: 7 · Score: 120 · Language: English, Greek · Composers: Sakis Rouvas, Manos Anagnostakis, Giorgos Theofanous · Venue: Esprit Arena · Host: Düsseldorf, Germany · Type: performance innovation · Broadcast: streaming era Loucas Yiorkas — Greek-Cypriot X-Factor winner — performs 'Watch My Dance' with Greek rapper Stereo Mike. The song fuses traditional Greek rebetiko zeibekiko dance-music motifs with modern hip-hop rap sections. Yiorkas performs the soulful chorus; Stereo Mike rides the hip-hop verses. The staging features traditional zeibekiko solo-male dance. 120 points for 7th place. Ell & Nikki win for Azerbaijan. Context Sakis Rouvas, Greece's 2004 and 2009 entrant, co-wrote the song — establishing a Greek composer-dynasty pattern. Rebetiko is the Greek urban blues tradition with roots in 1920s Smyrna refugees. The fusion with rap was culturally bold but stylistically familiar to Greek audiences. Legacy The 2011 card is considered one of Greece's most culturally substantive Eurovision entries of the 2010s. Yiorkas continued recording in Greek and English. The rebetiko-rap fusion didn't spawn immediate imitators but presaged subsequent ethno-fusion Eurovision trends. Greece continued selecting more genre-risky entries through 2015.