Roza Eskenazi

Róza Eskenázi stands out as perhaps the preeminent figure among all Greek vocalists, having entered the world in Istanbul around the dawn of the twentieth century. A Sephardic Jew whose style absorbed profound influence from the Turkish singers then in vogue, she accompanied her family to Thrace during childhood and settled in Athens in 1922, launching her career by performing for gratuities in local cafés. The celebrated composer and label executive Panayotis Tundas brought her to wider attention and urged her to broaden her songbook with mainland Greek material; her profile steadily rose until, during the 1930s, she ranked among the country’s leading artists, especially within expatriate Greek communities. That standing derived chiefly from acclaimed renditions of rembetika numbers such as “Young Butcher,” “Little Mary” and “Among the Beauties of Athens,” and by the 1940s she had begun making frequent recordings on American soil. Eskenázi died in 1981.