I started the Saturday by buying my ticket for the journey back to Pireas on the Flying Cat, which costs a couple of Euros more than the Flying Dolphin, but is actually extremely comfortable, and does not bounce like the hydrofoils do.
The morning session began with a recorded talk, postponed from Friday, by Bulent Axoy, entitled "Music in Exile: Greek Rebetiko singers who sang in Turkish".
As part of our Markos Vamvakaris Centenary celebrations Ed Emery gave a talk about two butcher's songs by Markos Vamvakaris, and read excerpts from Markos' autobiography, which he is currently translating into English. I will be buying that as soon as I can.
Ed then explained that he had been hoping to be able to show the excellent documentary "I Like Hearts Like Mine", by George C Zervas. Unfortunately, the copyright holders of this fine film demanded a fee of a thousand Euros for the film to be shown to us. You really have to wonder about the people who somehow make a living, sitting in an office and preventing films from being seen. Apparently they would rather make no money than make a sensible amount, say, a hundred Euros. I hope something extremely unpleasant happens to them, because I don't think George Zervas made this film to have it kept secret by sleazy bean counters.
Instead, we watched the almost completed film of the Hydra Rebetiko Gathering that Emilio Della Chiesa has been making, and made a few suggestions for further editing. It's pretty good.
I had lunch with several friends in a place I had not tried before, the upstairs part of Christina's Taverna. I had soutsoukakia, gigandes, horta and beer. It was all excellent.
The afternoon session was dynamically rescheduled by Ed as it happened, as there was no sign of the people who were to have been first. We heard a recorded talk by Martin Schwarz of the University of California, Berkely, about Greek Donkey Songs. We also saw some film of Athanasios Athanasiou, the rebetis from Aigina who had been one of Gail Holst's main sources for her book "Road to Rembetika". Gail apparently now disagrees with some of what she wrote, but this is still an excellent introduction to Rebetiko.
Next came a "Small program of Smyrnaika and Asia Minor Music", played by Souzana Raphael, who lives on Paros and Nikos Politis. Between them, they played some very enjoyable music, which is on this year's CDs.
As they had now arrived, Ali Fuat Aydin and Cenk Guray gave a presentation about Zeybek music and dance, including a film to which they added commentary.
Next we heard from Rena Stamou about her "Life and Times" as a Rebetiko singer. It was very interesting to hear from a singer who had worked with both Markos Vamvakaris and Tsitsanis. From what Rena said, working with Markos was by far the more pleasant experience.
Next,when the applause had died down, we were shown a rather good film made by Nefin Dinc, "Rebetiko: A Song of Two Cities". I have no photograph to put here.
The next event was to have been a mini-concert by Ali Fuat Aydin and Cenk Guray at the cafe in the market place, but when we opened the hall doors to go there, we found it was raining hard. So the concert was held in the hall instead. Very enjoyable music, which is on the CDs for all to enjoy. There can not be many two-necked sazes in existence.
By the time that was over, it was getting quite late, and the battery of the Archos needed charging. I rushed back to the hotel, and gave it as much charging as I dared, bearing in mind how crowded the Douskos Restaurant had been for last year's concert, and rushed out again. It was still raining, and the waiters at the Douskos were putting up their plastic sheeting over the outdoors tables. The inside of the restaurant was packed out with the locals, who had obviously known all along what the weather was going to do. People were making up silly rumours, such as "the band are going to play inside" and I wandered off and had a beer. When I came back, I found a nice spot at the front to make my recordings. One of the waiters came and explained how we were going to be served, and what we would get. I imagine this was something to do with the bizarre complaints people made last year about the meal. (Expecting to be served quickly when there is a huge crowd is bizarre to me.)
Anyway, the food was good, and so was the wine. Unfortunately, the wine was too good, and I drank too much of it. I still managed to make some good recordings, and I have managed to remove most of my excessively enthusiastic applause. Eventually the Archos started warning about battery problems, so I rushed off and got the charger, and moved inside the restaurant. They were very nice to the drunk Englishman, and showed me where there was a power socket I could use. Somewhat later, the Archos became as erratic as me.