Sotiria Bellou

Sotiria Bellou ranked among the foremost interpreters of rembetika tragoudi, the genre widely labeled Greek blues. Late composer Vassilis Tsitsánis first brought her to public attention in 1945, after which she maintained a professional singing career that spanned nearly fifty years. During the 1950s decline in rembetika’s appeal she sustained herself by peddling cassettes in the streets, only to recover her earlier prominence when interest in the style reawakened from the mid-1960s into the early 1980s. Born in the tiny village of Drosia, now called Haila, near Halkida, she performed as a youngster in the parish choir directed by her grandfather, the local priest. A short-lived marriage contracted in the late 1930s ended violently when, after repeated abuse, she threw acid at her husband’s face; convicted and sentenced to three and a half years, she served only four months before moving to Athens on the eve of World War II. Throughout the occupation she earned a living as a street performer and took part in the resistance by distributing the Communist newspaper Rizospastis, an activity that led to repeated arrests, beatings, and further imprisonment. Following her 1945 discovery by Tsitsánis she began performing in Athenian nightclubs with the composer at the piano, a partnership that lasted until his death in 1984. Her first of many 78 rpm discs appeared in 1948, yet the repressive climate of the Greek junta in the 1950s and early 1960s brought professional hardship even as her recordings continued to circulate among students and collectors. A sequence of Lyra sessions launched in 1966 restored her standing as one of Greece’s most cherished vocalists, and from 1975 onward she worked with leading figures that included composer Dionysios Savopoulos. Offstage, however, chronic gambling at clandestine dice tables repeatedly depleted her earnings, leaving her nearly destitute until the Greek government intervened with financial assistance and coverage of mounting medical costs. She succumbed to throat cancer two days before her seventy-sixth birthday and received a State funeral on August 29, 1997.