Marika Papagika

Between 1918 and 1929, she recorded at least 232 performances[3] of café-aman styled songs, including kleftiko demotikο (Greek traditional songs about Klephts, heroic brigands), rebetiko, and light classical pieces, many of them overlapping with her chief rival in Greek music sales in the United States, Koula Antonopoulos (known on her recordings as Kyria Koula or "Madame Coula").

[6] Marika Papagika distinguished herself from most of her contemporaries by virtue of her sweet soprano voice with its relatively high tessitura, her vocal timbre, somewhat reminiscent of Western classical singers, and her diction.

The style and sound of her recordings is further distinguished by the particular accompaniment which graced most of them, namely the unusual combination of cymbalom and violoncello, plus a violin or a clarinet, and, very occasionally, a xylophone.

It is perhaps reasonable to understand the performance styles of Mr. & Mrs Papagika & Co. as a true echo of the "santouro-violi" (santouri and violin) music of late 19th century urban Ottoman and mainland Greece.

The major source of information as to Papagika's accompanists is Richard Spottswood's Ethnic Music On Records Vol 3 pp 1197–1204.

The upper instrumental part was usually played by one of various violinists, including Athanasios Makedonas, Vangelis Naftis (to whom she calls out on the song "Aïdinikos Horos"), George Theologou, and the Epirot master Alexis Zoumbas (1883-1946), or by a clarinettist, most frequently Nicholas Relias (1922–1925), and on one session Pete Mamakos.

During the analogue reissue era Papagika was thus represented as generously on LP as her colleague Roza Eskenazi, and considerably more than Rita Abadzi and Madame Coula.

In 1995, Marika Papagika was the subject of an episode of NPR’s All Things Considered where Dick Spottswood introduced her music to the North American audience.