Róza Eskenázy

Roza Eskenazy (in Greek modern: Ρόζα Εσκενάζυ ) was a singer of Rebetiko but also of other musical genres. Its true name was Sára Skenázy.

She would have been born about 1890 with Constantinople in an Jewish family Séfarade, which moved when she was 7 years old with Salonique. Its exact birth date unknown and it is forever revealed its real age.

It made its beginnings as dancer with the Pirée in 1910, but started soon to sing Greek, Turkish and Armenian songs. She was " découverte" at the end of the years 1920 by Panayótis Toúndas which carried out its first recordings. She quickly became rather known and in the middle of the Thirties she had recorded more than 500 rebétika , smyrneika and other popular songs. During its 60 years of career it remained since the beginning related to the rebétiko . Although she interpreted all the types of Greek song, the beginning of its career marks the apogee of the kind, of which she is one of the principal feminine voices. Impeccable interpreter, with height, technique and passion, it constituted a reference and a model for all the singers thereafter. Tragedy coincidence, the rebetiko of the tekés, that it had been useful ideally, failed to disappear because of one of its songs, Imé prezakias (" I am a camée"). This one was the pretext of the launching of the censures of Metaxas, which opened the way at the school of Tsitsánis, and rejetta strokes of them the rébétes of the entreguerre; this song was taken again thereafter by others with more inoffensive words, under the name " When I drink Ouzo ".

During the Forties and before the Second world war, she sang in the Balkans, the Turkey and the Middle East. After the war, it made rounds in the United States and in Turkey.

In the Seventies, she knew a renewal of celebrity following the " redécouverte" rebetiko by youth.

It disappeared on December 2nd, 1980 with Athens.

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