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Dervisi

When: Wednesday, July 10, 7pm

Where: Open Source Gallery, 306 17th St, Brooklyn

Dervisi (literally “dervish”) is a slang word from the 1930s that describes a typical member of an old-time Greek underground hipster scene. This scene was centered around the partaking of certain well-known herbal remedies, while playing, listening and dancing to the old-time Middle-Eastern-influenced urban folk music called REMBETIKA, which DERVISI  describes as “Exotic Greek Gangsta Blues” due to its subject matter, and attitude.

Dervisi founder George Barba Yiorgi  (Greek for “good ol’ Uncle George”) grew up listening to Rembetika and bouzouki music as played by giants of the genre who performed at the night club his Greek father ran in NYC. After some childhood years playing rock and roll, he was abducted by an international smuggling ring and sold as a roadie-slave to the manager of a Greek World Music act called ANNABOUBOULA (which included guitarist/producer George Sempepos, with whom Barba Yiorgi is often confused) 

That group went into hiding, but Barba Yiorgi re-appeared in the 21st century as a guitarist for the Surf-Rock combo THE BYZAN-TONES, and started hanging around a clubhouse called a TEKE where herbal remedies are avidly consumed and tales of Old -time Greece are told. Eventually he obtained a bouzouki and started playing and singing the songs of this crew, passed down from the old Rembetiko  minstrels of Piraeus, the port city of Athens. 

He assembled DERVISI to bring these songs to a wider public.