Rembetiko - Kegome Kegome

Artist: Stavros Xarchakos Recording: 1983 Performer: Stavros Xarchakos Collection: Rembetiko 1983 Tags: Rembetiko , Film Performed for the 1983 film Rembetiko

Αμάν Αμάν

Όταν  γεννιέται ο άνθρωπος 
ένας  καημός γεννιέται 
όταν  φουντώνει ο πόλεμος 
το  αίμα δε μετριέται 

[Chorus]
Καίγομαι,  καίγομαι 
ρίξε  κι άλλο λάδι στη φωτιά 
πνίγομαι,  πνίγομαι 
πέτα  με σε θάλασσα βαθιά 

Ορκίστηκα  στα μάτια σου 
που  τα χα σαν Βαγγέλιο 
τη  μαχαιριά που μου δωκες
να  σου την κάμω γέλιο 

[Chorus]

Αμάν Αμάν

Μα συ βαθιά στην κόλαση 
την αλυσίδα σπάσε 
κι αν με τραβήξεις δίπλα σου 
ευλογημένος να σαι 

[Chorus]

Aman aman

When a person is born
a sorrow is born with them,
when war flares up
the blood is past counting.

[Chorus]
I'm burning, I'm burning
throw more oil on the fire,
I'm drowning, I'm drowning
cast me into a deep sea.

I swore by your eyes
that I held as my Gospel,
the knife wound you gave me
I'll turn into laughter for you.

[Chorus]

Aman aman

But you, deep in hell,
break the chain,
and if you pull me down beside you,
may you be blessed.

[Chorus]

Historical context

Καίγομαι, καίγομαι is one of the central Nikos Gatsos / Stavros Xarchakos compositions for Kostas Ferris’s 1983 film Rembetiko, which traces the life of a fictional rebetissa from early-20th-century Smyrna through the 1922 catastrophe, refugee Piraeus, WWII, the civil war, and the junta. Gatsos was already in his seventies when he wrote the Rembetiko lyrics, and they sit at a height he reached only late — folk-rooted, Anatolian in voice, and pitched at the historical sweep of the century the film covers.

The opening Αμάν Αμάν deliberately locks the song into the amanes tradition — the improvised vocal lament that Asia Minor Greeks carried with them to mainland Greece after 1922. By 1937 Metaxas had banned the amanes outright from recordings (along with hashish lyrics) as “oriental” and “alien”; Gatsos’s choice to open with that vocable in 1983 is a quiet reclamation.

Reading

This song is one of those Gatsos pieces where the emotion arrives instantly and the meaning resists a single reading. What follows is one possible walkthrough, stanza by stanza.

V1 — two scales of pain

When a person is born, a sorrow is born with them when war flares up, the blood is past counting

Two scales of grief in two couplets. The personal one — you arrive into life with a καημός already attached to you, a deeply Greek folk pessimism. The collective one — when war breaks out, the blood escapes counting. Gatsos opens by saying: there is no scale at which life is gentle. You are born into pain; your people die in numbers no one can total.

Chorus — finish me off, don’t save me

I’m burning, I’m burning — throw more oil on the fire I’m drowning, I’m drowning — cast me into a deep sea

The death-wish at the heart of the song. The speaker is not asking for rescue; they are asking for the destruction to be completed. Fire and water are both killers, and the speaker wants more of each. In the rebetiko / mangas tradition this is a posture: I’m past help, don’t insult me by trying. Pour the oil. Throw me deeper. Let the thing kill me already.

V2 — sacred betrayal, performed as comedy

I swore by your eyes that I held as my Gospel the knife wound you gave me, I’ll turn into laughter for you

The “you” was sacred — their eyes were scripture. And they stabbed the speaker. The response isn’t rage, it’s a perverse generosity: I’ll laugh it off for you. He’ll turn his own wound into entertainment to spare the person who inflicted it, or to deny them the satisfaction of seeing him hurt. Both at once, probably.

V3 — blessing the damner

But you, deep in hell, break the chain and if you pull me down beside you, may you be blessed

The inversion that makes the song so strange. The “you” is already in hell — bound, chained. The speaker doesn’t ask to be spared; they tell the beloved to break free. And if breaking free drags me down with you, I bless you anyway. Preferred company in damnation to lonely salvation. Or: an act of grace toward the very person damning you.

Who is “you”?

Gatsos doesn’t say, and the ambiguity is the point. Plausible readings, all valid at once:

• A specific lover who betrayed the speaker
• Greece itself — the homeland that gave the wound (Smyrna, the catastrophe, the wars)
• Fate, or God
• The audience — anyone listening who has caused or witnessed harm

The film context makes the historical reading especially live: a survivor’s voice, someone who has lived through every scale of loss and has stopped asking for relief.

The emotional shape, in one line

I am beyond rescue; I’m not even angry at you; finish me, take me with you, blessed be you.

That’s why it’s hard to grasp — the speaker isn’t asking for anything the song could give them. There’s no resolution, no revenge, no plea. Just a kind of fierce grace that looks, on the surface, like resignation.

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