A rising star in the revival of rebetiko. Bitter-sweet, devil-may-care songs of an exiled Balkan underclass.

‘Mortissa’ (a strong independent woman) is an album of smyrneika/rebetiko songs in Greek and Turkish with musical roots in Anatolia. This 'Blues of the Aegean' arose in the turbulent times of the 1920s. Rebetiko was at one time banned by both Greek and Turkish authorities for being socially degenerative. Alongside love songs, one song celebrates the Robin Hood style outlaw Mehmet Efe, another is a cry of a woman longing to escape from her veil, yet another talks of “leeks” as a euphemism for hashish, and in “Sto Kafe Aman” the mortissa tells her suitors to go sling their hook. This is the music of the alternative, the underground scene, the music of freedom-loving people; appropriate for the current situation. 2013 is not the first time that the beautiful city of Istanbul has been in turmoil, like a cursed diamond. Full of meaning for all who have experienced it, it is no surprise that singer Çiğdem Aslan, who was born to Kurdish Alevi parents in Sisli, not far from Taksim Square, the focus for the pro-democracy protests, has felt concerned and deeply involved, even from a distance. Back in 1955 state-sponsored riots decimated the Greek population of Istanbul. Before that the Turkish republican movement and war of liberation forced Greeks out of the rest of Anatolia.