Abstract

The concept of the popular in Greek indigenous contexts and mediaesthetics resonates with the notion of ‘laiko’. The notion of laiko conveys a combination of working class and provincial elements and intersects urban and rural boundaries. Very often this notion takes the form of a music idiom describing the laiko subject deriving from the genre of ‘laiki’ music often performed with a stringed music instrument called bouzouki while its cultural meanings and aesthetics stem from a Turkish colonized past and the orient (e.g. rebetiko). Contemporary laiki music is usually performed in laika night venues such as ellinadika night clubs and pistes (or bouzoukia). What is more, in these environments traditional masculinities and femininities are privileged and performed while sexist, homophobic and heteronormative narratives circulate and reproduce heteropatriarchal, phallocentric and ethnocentric norms. This article analyses the incarnations of laiko and pop music in Greece by queer performers belonging in the Greek LGBTQ+ communities and the drag and ballroom underground scenes who use them in frameworks of alternative music and club entertainment to deconstruct and subvert existing patriarchic and conservative national and religious narratives as well as gender conforming binaries. These queer groups are influenced by female and queer Greek, British and American pop music icons and amalgamate laiko, rap, pop, EDM and EBM qualities to produce drag outcomes and performances. Thus, the article designates the emergent possibilities of an alternative modality of the Greek “popular” and its power for queering and agonistic carnivalesque.

Keywords:Homophobic; Music icons; Pop; Music