Rembetiko - Μπουρνοβαλιά

Artist: Sotiria Leonardou Recording: 1983 Performer: Sotiria Leonardou Singer: Sotiria Leonardou Collection: Rembetiko 1983 Tags: Rembetiko , Film Performed for the 1983 film Rembetiko

Ώπα ώπα ώπα ώπα
σου το λέγω και σου το 'πα
το κορμάκι το φιδίσιο
μην το γέρνεις μπρός και πίσω
το κορμάκι το φιδίσιο
κράτα το και λίγο ίσιο

Χόρεψε μπουρνοβαλιά μου
να σου στείλω τα φιλιά μου
χόρεψε χανούμισα
μου 'μοιασες και σου 'μοιασα

Χόρεψε μπουρνοβαλιά μου
να θυμάμαι τα παλιά μου
χόρεψε αγαπούλα μου
παραμύθι πούλα μου

Ώπα ώπα ώπα ώπα
κοίτα γύρω σου και σώπα
μάτια σε τρυπάνε χίλια
μέσ' απ' της καρδιάς τη γρίλια
μάτια σε τρυπάνε χίλια
με χαμόγελο και ζήλια

Χόρεψε μπουρνοβαλιά μου
να θυμάμαι τα παλιά μου
χόρεψε χανούμισα
μου 'μοιασες και σου 'μοιασα

Χόρεψε μπουρνοβαλιά μου
να σου στείλω τα φιλιά μου
χόρεψε αγαπούλα μου
παραμύθι πούλα μου

Opa, opa, opa, opa,
I am telling you, I told you before:
that snakelike little body,
do not lean it back and forth;
that snakelike little body,
keep it a little straight.

Dance, my girl from Burnova,
so I can send you my kisses.
Dance, my lady,
you looked like me and I looked like you.

Dance, my girl from Burnova,
so I can remember my old days.
Dance, my little love,
sell me a fairy tale.

Opa, opa, opa, opa,
look around you and stay quiet.
A thousand eyes are piercing you
through the grille of the heart;
a thousand eyes are piercing you
with a smile and jealousy.

Dance, my girl from Burnova,
so I can remember my old days.
Dance, my lady,
you looked like me and I looked like you.

Dance, my girl from Burnova,
so I can send you my kisses.
Dance, my little love,
sell me a fairy tale.

Historical context

A Nikos Gatsos / Stavros Xarchakos composition for the 1983 Ferris film Rembetiko. The song belongs to the Asia Minor refugee thread of the film — the world of Smyrnaic Greeks who landed in Piraeus after the 1922 catastrophe, carrying their music, their dances, and their Turkish honorifics with them.

Μπουρνοβάς (Bornova) was a wealthy Greek-majority suburb of Smyrna with a history going back to the 17th-century Levantine merchant communities. By the early 20th century it housed a flourishing Greek bourgeoisie. After September 1922, with the fire of Smyrna and the forced population exchange of 1923, Bornova’s Greeks were among the more than a million refugees who arrived destitute in mainland Greece — settling, in large numbers, in the working-class neighborhoods of Piraeus where rebetiko was being born.

The song speaks from inside that world. Its vocabulary is the vocabulary the new Greek state would soon try to erase:

• χανούμισα — a Turkish honorific (hanım) for a lady, a word a Smyrna Greek would have used daily before 1922.
• τσιφτετέλι — the undulating Anatolian solo dance the song accompanies. After Metaxas’s August 1937 decree banning “oriental” and amanedhes-style music from commercial recordings, this whole register went underground.
• παραμύθι in the sense of a deliberate, beautiful illusion — borrowed from the café-aman tradition where the singer’s job was to make the audience believe the old world for a few minutes.

Gatsos’s 1983 lyric reaches back into a register that, by the time the film was made, had been culturally suppressed for nearly fifty years.

Reading

On the surface, this is a tsifteteli — a man watching a woman dance, telling her how to move, sending her kisses. Underneath, it is one of the most layered songs in the film, because the dance is not what the speaker actually wants. He wants memory.

V1 — the careful protector. The opening is a gentle warning. That snakelike little body — don’t lean it forward and back; keep it a little straight. On its face this looks like a man telling a woman not to be too provocative. But the next stanza supplies the reason: a thousand eyes are watching. The speaker is not policing her sensuality — he is protecting her from the room.

V2 — recognition. Dance, my Burnova girl, so I can send you my kisses. Dance, my hanım — you looked like me and I looked like you. The Turkish honorific χανούμισα identifies her as one of his own — a Smyrnaic, a refugee, someone who shares his lost world. And then the line that gives the song its emotional center: μου ‘μοιασες και σου ‘μοιασα. We resembled each other. Not in features but in fate. The dance is happening between two displaced people who recognise one another.

V3 — the request for a beautiful lie. Dance, my Burnova girl, so I can remember my old days. Dance, my little love — sell me a fairy tale. This is the song’s real ask. Not seduction. Memory. He wants the dance to function as a time-machine — to bring back τα παλιά μου, his old things, his Smyrna, his pre-catastrophe life. And he is honest about the cost: sell me a fairy tale. He knows the past is gone. He’s asking her to perform the illusion anyway.

V4 — the surveillance. Opa, opa — look around you and be silent. A thousand eyes are piercing you through the grille of the heart, a thousand eyes with smile and jealousy. The image of της καρδιάς τη γρίλια — the heart with its own slatted blind, like an Anatolian window — is one of Gatsos’s most beautiful. The room is full of people who can see into her even through the lattice of her chest. Some smile. Some envy. All are watching.

The closing recapitulation loops V2 and V3 in a slightly different order: dance for me to remember, dance for me to be kissed, sell me a fairy tale. The repetition is the song’s whole emotional logic — memory needs to be summoned and re-summoned, and even the illusion needs to be sold and re-sold for it to hold.

What looks like a simple tsifteteli is actually the quietest of the film’s refugee songs — a man asking a woman from his lost city to dance him back home for a few minutes, knowing she can’t, asking anyway.

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