Sotiria Bellou

One of the most famous rebetisas of all, mentioned in many music guides, and contributer to the 1984 British Documentary entitled Music of the Outsiders, Sotiria Bellou was born in Halkida in 1921. She learned to play the guitar at an early age.

After a brief and abusive marriage at age nineteen (which ended when she took revenge by throwing vytriol, a corrosive acid, in her husband's face), she wound up in Athens in October of 1940, as Greece was becoming involved in World War II. In the years of Italian and German occupation, Sotiria earned her living by using her skills as a guitarist and singer to survive while others perrished of starvation.

In 1947, she came to the attention of Vassilis Tsitsanis (another legend, who began his own recording career ten years earlier), and with him recorded the first of her many 78 rpms. As the times changed, and rebetika was no longer sought after, Sotiria, like many other artists of her generation, found very little work in night clubs.

The mid 1960s brought with them a sense of cultural awakening, and a new-found interest in rebetika among young people which peaked in the 1980s. Suddenly, people couldn't get enough of the surviving rebetes, and Sotiria, with her deep voice, full of emotion and pride, was heard on many recordings, and helped usher in a new era for rebetika. That, combined with her honesty, her love for gambling, her participation in the struggle for civil rights (for which she was beaten several times), and the fact that she was openly a lesbian in a time when this was practically unheard of, ensures her a place not only on the rebetic charts, but in the hearts and minds of those whom she touched during her lifetime, and in those whom she continues to inspire. Like her or not, she was an outspoken woman of her generation.

Sotiria Bellou died in Athens in 1997. She was buried per request in First Cemetery next to Vassilis Tsitsanis.