Kostas Bezos: the man who married Hawaii and Greece in the 1930s
You’d be forgiven for not recognising the name Kostas Bezos, and no, he’s not a relative of Amazon founder Jeff. Rather, Kostas Bezos is an influential musical figure whose legacy even catches heavy shade in his homeland of Greece. Today, we shed some light on the remarkable life and works of Bezos, the man who constructed a cultural bridge between Hawaii and Greece in the 1930s.
Born in 1905, Bezos, a part-time journalist and cartoonist for Athenian newspapers, led a double life as a singer and guitarist in the ancient city’s innumerable taverns and nightclubs. He achieved nationwide fame as the frontman of The White Birds, a band that became synonymous with ‘hawaiias’, a Hawaiian-inspired musical style born in wartime Athens.
Dressed all in white, this audibly and visually striking band enjoyed runaway success in the Athenian nightlife scene through the 1930s and into the early ’40s. Although similarly influential, they never quite matched the prevalence of Joseph Korinthiou and his famous ‘hawaiias’ orchestras.
A blend of traditional Greek music and transportive Hawaiian steel guitars and ukuleles identified Bezos and the White Birds’ unique style. The music was also enriched sporadically with obscure flavourings, including Alpine yodelling and political satire.
What sets Bezos apart is his bold embrace of both ‘hawaiias’ and rebetiko, the latter genre rooted in the working-class culture of Piraeus and other impoverished neighbourhoods. Recording in the studio as A. Kostis, he delved into rebetika, showcasing guitar duets in a marked departure from the more traditional bouzouki sound.
Tragically, Bezos succumbed to tuberculosis in 1943 during the German occupation. His music faded into obscurity until 2015, when Portland-based Olvido Records resurrected a collection of 32 of his songs, originally released on 78rpm records. The reissue caught the contemporary vinyl resurgence wave, introducing a new generation to the unique sound of ‘hawaiias’.
The long-lost recordings, compiled by Olvido Records in the album The Jail’s a Fine School, perplexed rebetiko historians for several decades until amateur researchers Gordon Ashworth and Tony Klein unravelled the mystery of A. Kostis’ true identity.
Among Bezos’ surviving songs, ‘Pame Sti Honolulu’ (‘Let’s Go To Honolulu’) has gained the most attention in recent years after featuring in an iPhone commercial shot in rural Greece. More than seven decades after its prime, ‘hawaiias’ has become one of several oblique historical traditions to enjoy a 21st-century renaissance.
Listen to some of Kostas Bezos’ music and watch the iPhone advert below.
