Anestis Delias

Delias was born Anastasios Delios (Αναστάσιος Δέλιoς) in about 1912 in Smyrna, on the Aegean coast of Anatolia.

His father, Panagiotis Delios, was a shoemaker by profession and was a well-known professional musician in Asia Minor.

The Delios family had a significant musical heritage; like his father before him, Panagiotis Delios played the santouri and his brother Michalis (Delias' uncle) played the violin.

Delias' mother, Photina, was also a singer.

Panagiotis Delios was known as 'Μαύρη Γάτα' ('Black Cat'), an epithet later given to Anestis Delias by his fellow musicians.

In July 1922 young Anestis, aged about ten years, arrived at the port of Piraeus in Greece with his pregnant mother and younger sister, refugees from the final stages of the Greco-Turkish war.

His father had remained in Smryna and was killed that year during the destruction and atrocities that occurred when the Turkish forces captured the city.

The family settled at Drapetsona, one of the refugee neighbourhoods of Piraeus (on the northern side of the inlet), and Delias' sister Eleni was born soon afterwards.

By 1928 the population of Athens almost doubled as a result of the mass movement of Christian refugees from Asia Minor to the Greek mainland, with the result that the city was surrounded by encampments and shanty towns such as Drapetsona and Kokkinia, with a largely impoverished population mostly speaking Turkish as their first language.

As the only son of the family, Anestis worked in many different jobs to support his widowed mother and two younger sisters.

He became an accomplished player of the bouzouki and joined with other musicians in the refugee suburbs of Athens and Piraeus, creating music in the 1930s that exemplifies the genre known as Piraeus rebetiko.

Delias played on early rebetiko recordings, including songs of his own composition released under his name.

He became addicted to heroin and died of starvation, aggravated by his drug dependency, during the Nazi occupation of Greece.

Despite his short life, Anestis Delias was an important figure and an influential exponent of the Piraeus-style of rebetiko.

In about 1930 Delias found work in a tavern in Drapetsona, where met older bouzouki players such as Nikos Aivaliotis, as well as players closer to his own age such as Markos Vamvakaris and Stratos Pagioumtzis.

In the inter-war years in Greece the bouzouki was an instrument of low social standing, which was embraced by the new generation of musicians based in the urban refugee suburbs.

By the early 1930s Anestis Delias had become known as a proficient player of the bouzouki and baglamas.

Piraeus rebetiko borrowed themes from the underworld (prison life, disdain of the police, use of hashish) which appealed to groups of the lower socio-economic strata and became popular in Greece as recordings became available during the 1930s.

Individual members of The Famous Quartet of Piraeus began recording songs from late 1932, with recording sessions which often included one or more of the other members of the quartet, as well as other rebetiko musicians.

In about 1933 he joined with fellow musicians, Yiorgos Batis, Stratos Pagioumtzis and Markos Vamvakaris, to form the first professional rebetiko orchestra called I Tetras i Xakousti tou Peiraios (Η τετράς η ξακουστή του Πειραιώς, literally The Famous Quartet of Piraeus).

Delias was the youngest member of the quartet.

Both he and Payoumtzis were refugees from Asia Minor and Vamvakaris had moved to Piraeus from the island of Syros.

Batis was the oldest of the group and the instigator for the formation of the ensemble.

In 1933 Batis released a song he had written called "Spanish zeïbekáno (Quietly into a boat)" ["Ζεϊμπεκάνο Σπανιόλο (Ζούλα σε μια βάρκα μπήκα)"].

From acknowledgements between the musicians during the song, heard on the live studio recording, those playing on the record can be identified as Pagioumtzis (vocalist), Delias (bouzouki), Vamvakaris (bouzouki) and Batis (baglamas).

The early recordings by the members of The Famous Quartet of Piraeus, while dominated by the sounds of fretted instruments (the bouzouki and the baglamas), nevertheless "bear a distinct imprint of eastern modality and language" revealing the influence of the Anatolian refugees on the music.

In acknowledgements and greetings between the musicians on the recorded songs, Delias was sometimes referred to as 'Anestaki' (Ανεστάκι), an affectionate version of Anestis (literally 'little Anestis').

He was also referred to as 'Artemis' (Αρτέμης) or 'Black Cat' ('Μαύρη Γάτα'), in both song lyrics and musicians’ acknowledgements.

The members of the quartet, and other rebétes (ρεμπέτες; rebetiko musicians) of the period, were the early exponents of the genre referred to as Pireaus rebetiko (Pireotika).

The style of music featured a mix of modal and tonal structures performed on tempered instruments (mostly the bouzouki and the baglama, sometimes the guitar), with less ornamented voices and a rough style of singing.

In 1934 the quartet gave its first professional performance at Sarantopoulos' tavern in Drapetsona.

This quartet, and the recordings and subsequent careers of its individual members, influenced subsequent generations of musicians and composers.

Delias began to release songs under his own name in 1935; his first release was "The harem in the hamám" ("Το χαρέμι στο χαμάμ") backed with "The jacket" ("Το σακάκι"), released on the Greek division of the Columbia label.

A total of ten songs were recorded under his name from 1935 to 1937, issued on the Columbia and His Master's Voice labels.

On two of the songs issued under Delias' name, Stratos Pagioumtzis features as the vocalist, but Delias himself sings on most of his recordings.

Delias also continued to play as a studio musician on the recordings of others during this period.

Soon after the imposition of the totalitarian Metaxas regime in Greece in August 1936 the Ministry of Press and Tourism was formed and given the responsibilities of supervision of the Greek and foreign press, the supervision of Greek cultural production and the 'enlightenment' of public opinion.

By 1937 the Ministry had begun to impose censorship on musical records, with particular focus on rebetika, which was considered to be a debased Oriental music from the slums and outside of Greek tradition.

Anestis Delias (Ανέστης Δελιάς c. . 1912 – 31 July 1944) was a Greek bouzouki player, composer and singer of rebetiko.

Delias was from a musical family of Smyrna in Anatolia, who arrived on the Greek mainland as a young refugee during the Greco-Turkish war.