Laïkó is the popular song of postwar working-class Greece, built around the plaintive tone of the plucked bouzouki. Sobbing, ornamented vocals sing directly of heartbreak, poverty, and the loneliness of migrant labor. It rides distinctive dance rhythms such as the slow 9/8 zeibekiko, and was typically performed live in tavernas (bouzoukia).

Laïkó is the popularized, refined form of rebetiko, a music born in the early 20th century in the underground dives of refugees and the lower classes, adapted to postwar urban life. In a Greece scarred by world war and civil war, it became the national music alongside radio, records, and taverna culture.

First, listen to the shimmering melody and tremolo of the bouzouki. The peculiar gait of the 9/8 zeibekiko, the rich, ornamented singing, and imagining the scene of patrons dropping to one knee to dance in the taverna all help you enter the world.

Stelios Kazantzidis's 'Yparxo' conveys both his anguished singing and the charm of the bouzouki at once, and is an easy standard entry point.

Rebetiko, the source of laïkó, was once policed as 'outlaw' music tied to hashish dens (tekedes). That rebellious air still lingers in laïkó.