Sune’s Teke
Sune Køter:
Vocals + Guitar /
bouzouki
Joachim Robert Hvid:
Oud
Anders Eriksen:
Santouri / cymbalon
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Sunes Teké:
In Sune’s Teke, Sune flings open the doors to the Greek slums of the interwar period, drawing the listener into the Oriental big city blues of Rembetiko with its psychedelic underground songs about social rejection, the hardships of life and the depths of escapism.
The music is slow, twisted and highly Oriental written by Sune, much in the same style and springing from the near-Oriental reality of Piraeus Harbour 1933, gravitating around life in the big city, in all its splendour and horror.
Through a mix of Arabic phrasing, Middle Eastern amané improvisation and Danish multi-culturally influenced lyrics, Sune has created his very own vocal style, accompanied by the traditional Rembetiko string instrument, bouzouki, with Anders Eriksen on santouri / cymbalon, Joachim Rober Hvid on Oud and Samuel Lundström on violin completing the psychedelic Oriental back-drop of Sune’s Teke.
Sune discovered Rembetiko on his Odyssey through Greece, searching for off beats, eventually finding himself the short-time-apprentice of the (now sadly passed away) Rembetiko singer and bouzouki player Alexandros Fleriannos, who initiated him into the Greek/turkish music tradition; a tradition Sune brought back home where he created the now former Rembetiko band, ‘Manges Nargilé’, together with whom he translated a number of the old Rembetiko songs into Danish and produced the legendary live album, ‘Vandpibens Stemme’ (Voice of the Hookah).
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Rembetiko:
The Rembetiko grew out of the multi-cultural and criminal environments that emerged in the Greek cities in the interwar period, following the arrival of 1 million boat refugees from Turkey who tried to integrate into the surrounding society. They fused Greek prison songs, Arabic tonality and instrumental virtuosity with social indignation and rejection, creating the genre known to many as ‘Greek Blues’. Many of the refugees were virtuoso musicians from Turkey who went from being stars in their home country to an impoverished life as refugees, facing massive unemployment, and so this new music came to life around the Turkish coffee/hashish shops, the Tekes, as a result of the meeting between Turkish musicians and Greek prison and hashish songs, transforming into the proud screams of the marginalized, depicting a life of poverty, futureless intoxication and a morbid, pessimistic view of the surrounding society.
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