“A mangas is distinguished by three basic principles: seriousness, consequence and prudence,” Takis Binis, the famed rebetiko musician, has said. The mangas’ street philosophy is based on the calculable relativity of life. He has a good time and takes his pleasure very seriously. He knows when to open his mouth and when to keep it shut. He keeps a low profile – he does not need the limelight. He is “heavy”. He respects others and commands respect in turn. He does not bother and does not like to be bothered. He will not hesitate to speak his mind, nor to take the law into his own hands, when it is the only way. He smokes his hashish in a waterpipe and rolls his tobacco in newspaper. He has a double-edged knife. He dances, alone. He is of the night.
The mangas’ playground was the port of Piraeus in the 1930s, a place that was riddled with poverty, prostitution and hashish-infused rebetika music. As is so often the case in Greece, the political climate was unstable and fanatical. Booming industrialisation, abject housing conditions and a dramatic increase in the number of free-minded female factory workers left many with a shaken belief in the future. Most such women were refugee widows from Asia Minor, after the 1922 catastrophe that left nearly 25,000 Greeks dead and 1.6 million deported back to the motherland. Between World War I and the Asia Minor catastrophe, an entire generation of Greek men had been decimated. For the few who remained, the underground was hot, uncertain, erotic and high. This betrayed population existed in a haze of drinking, dancing and hash smoking, to delay – or perhaps defy – the indignities of daily living, if only until dawn.
The record companies at the time were run by highbrow classical composers from Asia Minor, who maintained a cartel over popular discography until the start of the dictatorship in 1936. The bouzouki – the long-necked Greek lute that was busy shaping the sound of modern music – was, for them, strange and subversive, censored by the government, hunted down by the police and driven ever deeper underground. The mangas, though, will resist an unjust social system not only out of political belief but out of personal pride. It is a dignity that is also his Achilles’ heel. He is a simple, solid, straightforward man. It is hard for him to understand change. He sometimes collides with his surroundings, and with himself. And even when he does understand, he will refuse to agree.
Even in Hell I want to be alone
Not love anybody and not be loved
—Vasilis Tsitsanis, 1958
Tsitsanis, the founder of modern rebetiko, articulates a sentiment that is practically the mangas’ motto. It is a proud refusal, manifest in the wineglasses he crushes in the palm of his hand as he dances for the heart of a woman, and in the quick motion of slashing his own arm in plain view, expressing an anger at his provoker that is far more incisive than an attack. It is total control of utter abandon.
It is also a more sophisticated moral code than that of the manges’ predecessors in the second half of the 19th century, the koutsavakia, who set out to provoke like spoiled children. It was only in 1833 that the small village of Athens was named the capital of the young Greek state, following the 1821 uprising from four centuries of Ottoman rule. Half of Athens was still dressed in kilts and the rest in three-piece suits, and thousands of landless, penniless liberation-front fighters, who had expected (in vain) some money from the government, turned back to banditry in the mountains. The rest moved to the city, many winding up in Piraeus.
Koutsavakia wore a black cap or a hat with a black band (χλίψη), showing their mourning for their dead friends and the enemies they had not yet felled. They oiled their hair and used a perfumed cream (μαντέκα) to keep their moustaches in pristine form. They painted their eyes and drew false moles with coal. They had a cross tattooed above their knuckles, which became evident as they brandished their two-edged knives when dancing. They had black coats (γιακέτα, τσάκα, σουρτούκα) with ivory buttons, and wore them with just their left arm inside, the right side of the jacket hanging over their shoulder (αναπεταρίκι). In the left sleeve, they could hide a double-edged blade (δίκοπη, διμούτσουνη), and could wrap the spare sleeve around any stray knife-wielding arm. Folded hems revealed red velvet linings. Their chequered pantaloons were wide above the knee and so narrow round the ankles they said you needed a shoehorn to get your foot in, and were held up by a Turkish-style cummerbund, half-concealed by a waistcoat that held an extra blade or pistol (διμούτσουνο). One end of the cummerbund was left hanging, daring you to tread on it and spark a quarrel. In one sock, they kept a small shoemaker’s knife, just in case. When it was hot, they wore beige handkerchiefs round their necks; when it was cold, they slung an overcoat (πατατούκα) over their shoulders. They loved their high heels (στιβάλια), on which they would walk with ceremonious grace, shoulders bowed.
The manges graduated into a gentlemanly attire of Cheviot Hills blue-black jackets with a wide pinstripe and a white kerchief in the breast pocket, for shining their shoes. It was buttoned up or draped over their shoulders, and underneath were shirts with the collar cut off and tight pleated pants. The manges gradually abandoned the provocative cummerbunds, instead wearing their trousers beltless. Concealed pockets held a pen-knife, revolver, tobacco pouch and comb. Their moustaches were paired with a meticulous sideparting of the hair, beneath the koutsavakia’s black republica cap, which was pulled down low on the brow. Bow ties and bulldogs were essential accoutrements as they drank and smoked, legs crossed or dancing into the night like there was no tomorrow. A stray lyric from the late 1930s reads,
gimme a light
set my spleen on fire
and from the flames
you’ll burn the town down
By the 1960s, most were dying, destitute and in total oblivion. They died singing.
Originally published in Dapper Dan, Issue 02, September 2011. Styling by Nicholas Georgiou. Modeled by artist Paul Zografakis.