The book by Petropoulos is closer to the deeper essence of rebetiko culture, without attempting to "analyze" it and even more so to idealize it. It took time for me to understand the superiority of Petropoulos. Today I think I know the answer. But I'm not sure in which language I should express it. Because Petropoulos' book is one of those rare cases where empirical research and poetry meet, traversing a terra nova almost inaccessible to conventional language.

Petropoulos was the first to make rebetika the subject of research. Like all pioneers, he not only discovered a new world, swimming against the current, but he also apprehended it, almost intuitively, in all its dimensions. He suspected all its secret paths, all its hidden corners, all its mysteries. And precisely because he saw it in its entirety, he described it allusively rather than analytically. Those who followed moved in the direction he indicated or insinuated. But most lost sight of the whole. And so they lost the essence of what they were researching.

Petropoulos is one of the few remaining masters of the essay. Very few Greeks write such beautiful Greek, so that their language balances so admirably between precision and elegance, between science and aesthetics. Very few know how to present their subject in such a way as to captivate their reader on a charming journey, where the most familiar forms, the most everyday objects, prove to be hiding places of unknown and exquisite treasures.

Petropoulos' book is part of rebetiko culture. It is also a historical document.
Demosthenes Kurtovic
Eleftherotypia, 14-3-1990