F-MALE

Installation of 6 female portraits in metal print 30x41 cm using the dye-sublimation transfer printing technique, and of a sound composition with the use of a directional speaker.

My name is Rosa. Eskenazy. I was born as Sarah Skinazi, daughter of a poor Sephardic family of Constantinople, around the year 1986. Few years later, we came to Saloniki. Then to Comotini, where I got married and had a son. When my husband died, in 1917, I left my child at an orphanage and came to Athens to become a dancer in the Cabarets. And to sing.

My name is Rita. Abatzi. I was born in Smyrna in 1914. We came to Greece in 1922. To Pireaus. I stayed in Sistou Street in the Kokkinia neighborhood, married to Koustoumtzis, the “tiny greek guy”, who used to beat me up.

My name is Stella Haskil. Or Gaegou. Or Evangelia Nikolaidou. Or Evangelia Atamian. An Armenian from Constantinople, where I was born in 1918. Then we left for the Caucasus region and later, when I was ten, to Thessaloniki. Others are telling the story of me being born on the ship “Evangelistria” boarded by my family to come to Pireaus. To Athens, I first came in 1945, where we founded an artistic trio with my husband, Mr. Nikolaides, and my son from my first husband, Mr. Mesropian, called “the duet Nino and a half”, performing acrobatics in night clubs.

My name is Ioanna Georgakopoulou. I was born in 1920 at Pyrgos, in Ilia Region. Two years later my father died, and we came to Athens, to Liossion Street. Still a minor, I was noticed at the choir of Saint-Paul church by Mrs. Lykiardopoulou, a friend of the composer Attik, who introduced me to Yannis Vellas, the conductor, with whom I recorded my first songs.

My name is Sotiria. Bellou. I was born in Chalia by Chalkis in 1921. I got married at the age of 17, but my husband was violent and used to beat me up. One night, I poured acid on his face. I was put in jail for six months. Then, in October 1949, I came to Athens.

There I was discovered by Toundas and, by 1935, I have recorded more than 500 songs. I even forced the record company “Columbia” to pay me a 5% percentage on the record sales. During the German Occupation, I was dating a German officer to save myself and others. I did some prison time, three months.

I come late to singing, only in 1927. But I worked with the best of all: Toundas, Skarvelis, Peristeris, Vamvakaris. I entered the recording business in 1931. With songs from Smyrna, Rembetiko songs and traditional ones, more than 400 of them. After the Liberation I came to Athens. In the recording business I only entered in 1946. With the post-war Rembetiko generation and with some popular songs. I recorded 106 songs as the main singer.

In 1948 I discovered by Peripiniadis and presented as a singer in the club “Florida” at the Alexandras Avenue. I started the recordings with Chiotis in the same year. In 1949, I went to the club of “Fat Jimmy” where I met Tsitsanis. I chased the other one, the Georgakopoulou girl, away from his side, Sotiria left as well and so, we became a duet.

From 1939 on I worked with many, even with Tsitsanis. After the War, we went on working together. Till 1949, when Ninou came along. Let alone the fact that she stole my song, “Crazy Gipsy”, that I had written during the war, and I gave it to Manos Hadjidakis, who changed it into “Love, that turned into a double-bladed knife”…

I entered the EAM resistance Movement and participated to the December 1944 events. In 1947 I met Tsitsanis and started working with him. When the episode with the right-wing extremists took place and all men of the group were just staring at me being beaten, without saying a thing, I just left. I used to drink and I liked to gamble. I worked with Papaioannou, Mitsakis, Kaldaras and Chiotis. With great success.

In 1952, I travelled to New York, using the name Sarah Zardinidis- this was the name of my first husband- and as “stateless”. I call the Mediterranean my own real country. I even had an affair with a cop, 30 years younger than me. I died 90 years old, in December 1980, in Athens.

I got divorced and then remarried to a marshal who didn’t want me to sing. After the War, that is. But I even went to America. I died in Egaleo in 1969, only 55 years old by then.

I died of cancer at the early age of 36 in 1954.

At the end of year 1951, we went together to Constantinople. And we split. I left for the States, but my cancer grew back and I had to come back to Greece. I died at the age of 39, in 1957, in Athens. My life was turned into a movie by Costas Ferris.

After the fifties I stopped. I died 87 years old in Athens, in 2007.

Then, I was kind of lost for a while. But I made a fierce comeback in popular music business in 1966. In 1972, I recorded the “Zeimbekiko” with Savvopoulos. I died in Pireaus in 1977, at the age of 76.

Some say “Rembetiko” is men business. But I have sung it.