Sofia Karivali was born in Smyrna in 1918. She and her family came to Greece along with over a million refugees who lost their homeland in the 1922 Asia Minor Catastrophe. They settled in Kokkinia, the refugee community that sprang up at the edge of Pireaus.
In 1936 Sofia, married by now, began her singing career. Both she and her husband made a trip to Crete, and the pair ended up working together, Sofia singing, her husband waiting on tables in a taverna. Her sister Rita Abatzi had already begun to make a name for herself with her accomplished renditions of dimotika and Smyrnaika-style rebetika.
Although she made few recordings, Sofia spent a number of years singing with bouzouki in Pireaus and performing dimotika all over the Greek provinces. She was the very first woman to appear in public singing with bouzouki, a bold step considering the low esteem in which the instrument, its players, and the whole social context to which it belonged was held by “respectable” people at the time. Her voice can be heard on several recordings by Markos Vamvakaris, including “Me planepses boemissa”, though Markos went under a pseudonym for this particular song, most likely so as to not steal the limelight from Sofia.
Sofia Karivali died in 1995.