Let’s talk about Bollywood’s influence on Greece !!!! (Thread)

Stelios Kazantzidis , Giota Lydia (both pictured here) and many other Greek musicians recorded around 105 Greek versions of Indian songs

Asia Minor refugees and poor villagers all embraced Bollywood...

It all started in the 1950s when Greece had just ended a bloody civil war

A new type of civil war was occurring

This war was a cultural war between the classes

The upper class looked to Europe for culture and the working class looked to Asia for culture

The working class of Greece had already been introduced to music from Asia such as “rebetiko” which was created by Asia Minor refugees

Rebetiko was looked down on by the Eurocentric upper classes of Greece because it was Asian/eastern/Turkish music

The Greek Asia Minor refugees had such a huge impact on the Greek music scene, that rebetiko became the sound of the working class all over Greece, not just the refugee community

This opened the door for the working class to look east for art and this is where Bollywood came in

The plots of the movies resonated with the wounded Greek psyche. Suffering women, street children who had to drop out of school, interdependencies, betrayals, and frequent unhappy ends resonated with the difficult choices of poorly educated Greek people subsisting in large cities

It didn’t take long for the Rebetiko artists to create their own versions

From 111 movies (such as Awaara, Sri 420, Mother India, Ghar Sansaar, Laajwanti, and Aan) there are around 105 Greek versions of Hindi songs

The name given to this genre became indoprepi (Hindi Style)

One legendary Greek singer, Stelios Kazantzidis, saw a movie starring Indian actress Madhubala and was struck by her beauty

He used Aajao tarapt hai arma~” from Awaara to create “Mantoubala”. A song dedicated to the Indian actress.

Below is the song itself. Now considered a timeless classic that has been covered many times

“I wish I could see you and then die, my dear.
My soul wants only this.
Since I lost you, I’m nothing,
I cry out your name in pain,
Mahdubala, Mahdubala.”

Some Greek musicians accused others of plagiarism

“Those irresponsible so-called composers, without a trace of shame, took music from Indian records and, after changing the lyrics into Greek, presented them to the public as their own creations and genuine Greek songs” Tsitsanis

However musicologists who have studied Indian music have been noticed patterns of similarities with Greek music. It was this similarity perhaps that musicians Kaldaras and Derveniotis evoked when they stated they were not copying Hindi songs but instead recreating byzantine music

Centuries of trade with various Med/Asian cities have created a musical tangle, where patterns are shared by many neighboring countries (scales, rhythms, musical instruments). In addition, Greece has strong eastern traditions, dating from when Asia minke was the cultural center

Many “educated” Greeks did not look kindly on Hindi movies and songs. They saw them as a threat to the country’s drive for modernization. The middle class admired the West and associated Indoprepi with refugees from Asia Minor, poor people, villagers, and backwardness in general

However the Greek working class’s love for Hindi movies was phenomenal

Mother India premiered in Kotopouli 1960. The first audience were so moved by it, that they stopped strangers on the way out and told them not to miss that “social gospel”. It played in Greece for 10 years

As time went on, so did the decline of Bollywood presence in Greece

The Greek movies that imitated the Indian family dramas, eventually imitated them too well and won over the audience

American movies had more sex and action and appealed to a now more westernized Greece

A defining event in the decline of indoprepi was the military junta that ruled Greece in 1968-73

The wanted to emphasize the glory of ancient Greece and to repress 400 years of Turkish occupation.

Anything that reflected Turkey was banned such as indoprepi / rebetiko

This was not the 1st time Greek music with an eastern sound was banned.

Metaxas (pictured) banned rebetiko in the late 30s for the same reason.

Ever since Greece had gained independence from Turkey, many leaders wanted to disregard any eastern heritage to steer it westward

Anyhow, increased contact with western Europe and later membership in the European Union made the country look ever westward and forget the eastern side of its heritage. A sequence of events lead up to the eventual decline of indoprepi and Bollywood influence on Greece

For a deeper look into this subject please read this essay by Helen Abadzi.

She goes into depth about Greece and India’s shared ancient history such as indogreek kingdoms

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.587.6314&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Also please check my friend’s thread containing some Greek versions of Indian songs. Really cool https://twitter.com/AlexiouJunior/status/1298528443370438656