AUGUST 22: Sotiria Bellou (1921-1997)
On this day in 1921, the Greek singer Sotiria Bellou was born. Today, she is remembered as one of the greatest performers of the traditional rebetiko style to ever live and as one of the few celebrities of her time to live openly as a lesbian.
Although she was forced into marriage by her family in 1938, the marriage ended after Sotiria threw sulfuric acid onto her husband and spent several months in prison. After escaping her abusive husband and moving to Athens, she lived as an out lesbian (x).
The oldest of five siblings, Sotiria was born on August 22, 1921 in Halia on the island Euboia. Her grandfather was an Orthodox priest and her family was one of great wealth and prestige. She was first exposed to music in the form of Byzantine hymns heard in her grandfather’s church and she began singing at the young age of 3. As a child, Sotiria made homemade guitars out of wood and wire, but after much internal discord between her family – her conservative mother disapproving of artistic careers – it was decided that Sotiria could began studying music seriously.
Sitting in the center of a crowd with her guitar, Sotiria performs live with her band in 1948 (x).
Sotiria moved to Athens to pursue music in 1940, but in the madness of World War II, she lost touch with her family and without their financial assistance she was forced to take on menial jobs. For a while, she worked as a waitress in a rebetiko club in the Exarheia neighborhood of downtown Athens and one night after losing a bet with a customer, she was force to sing a song. Wowed by her obvious talent, an agent named Kimonas Kapetanakis signed her on the spot and introduced her to the powerful music producer Tsitsanis, with whom she recorded the first of her many 78 rpm gramophone records. Sotiria would go on to become one of the most sought-after nightclub acts in Greece and performed in some of the most popular clubs of the time such as the Rosiniol, Tzimis o Hontros, Hydra, Triana, and Falirikon.
Sotiria Bellou’s performance of “O Bohoris” in the traditional Rebetiko style.
Although she was a celebrity, Sotiria was also a hugely controversial figure. It was well-known that she had joined the Greek resistance against the Nazi occupation of World War II, had supported the leftist Greek People’s Liberation Army during the Dekemvriana (Greek Civil War), and made no effort to conceal her many lesbian love affairs. In December of 1948, Sotiria was performing at a club called Tzimis O Hontros when a group of extreme right-wing men entered the club and demanded that she perform a nationalist anthem. When Sotiria refused, the men dragged her out of the club and beat her severely. The inability of anyone else in the club to intervene on her behalf haunted her the rest of her life. Although the Greek government and many public figures were reluctant to acknowledge her fame or her artistic contributions during Sotiria’s lifetime, after her death on August 27, 1997, her discography slowly but surely came to be a staple of 20th century Greek art and culture.
