Rebetika is the unique soulful music of the two million Greeks who fled this Turkish region during the forced immigration of World War One. In 1923. the Greeks living in Anatolia left businesses, homes, money, friends and family to live in the slums of Greece with whatever they could carry They went from being well-off and established to being underground and unwanted in Greece Although they had become outcasts in Turkey they arived in Greece only to be shunned as Turks. Suddenly as poor refugees in a country they had never lived in. they sat together improvising the classical music of their homeland into Greek creating a new voice -Rebetika This folk music, usually accompanied by the boxouki. a sort of lute, is described as the Greek Urban Blues, It tells the heartrending tales of these people who moved from the fertile lands of Turkey to a small mountainous country that could not support them and the refugee settlements in Pireaus and Thessaloniki. It is the music of these forgotten outcasts, with lyrics reflecting their new surroundings, poverty, pain and oppression. This music genre, often compared to the American blues is generally melancholic with songs full of grief, passion, romance, and bitterness Though after World War Two, rebetika became a calmer form of music, it remained an anthem for the oppressed Greeks Also during this time in a major ethnic swap, the Turkish people living in the Greek Islands similarly had to leave their homes for Turkey In fact the family of Sulyeman Cerci. owner of this hotel, originates from the Greek island of Crete but were forced into Turkey where they settled here in Selcuk With movies and music playing for guests, it is the mission of Rebetika Hotel to revive rebetika - the lost sounds originating from this Agean area