This extract is from the film “Ena votsalo sti limni” (A pebble to the lake), directed by Alekos Sakellarios, with the famous Greek comedian, Vassilis Logothetides. It was filmed in 1952 in Egypt (Cairo or Alexandria) some years before the governing of A. G. Nasser, when many Greeks were still living in Egypt.
The music of this superb song has written Mihalis Souyioul, who together with the director of this film, Alekos Sakellarios -who wrote the lyrics- made a number of successes, like this in Greece, which are famous for the combination of the music of the upper Greek classes with the music of the lower ones. So these songs are characterised as “arhontorembetika” in Greek, which is a neologism composed of the word “arhontas” (aristocrat) and the word “rembetis”, which means the person who listens to “rembetika”- the music of the people of the lower classes… It also should be taken into consideration, that the famous Greek instrument the “bouzouki” was expelled from the “official” Greek music as responsible for the corruption of the moral order and was even not broadcast in radio until 1960…
Anyway ,these songs are extremely popular even today!
Incidentally, “Ala !” (the name of the song) is another word for the famous Greek exclamation “opa !”
Το Video “Άλα ! ~ Δημήτρης Σκούταρης ~ 1952” αναρτήθηκε 23/05/2023 στο Youtube κανάλι Manolis Vasilopoulos Favourite Things