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Shortly before I was called up, in 1924 or early 1925, I happened to hear Nikos playing bouzoúki and I liked it so much that I swore an oath that if I didn't learn to play I'd cut my hand off with the meat cleaver . . . he couldn't believe it . . . in six months I'd become a `terror' on the instrument. . . . No one had given me lessons. My only school was the teké.' --From the autobiography of Márkos Vamvakáris Márkos, the 'Patriarch' of the bouzoúki, was born dirt poor on the island of Syros and came up in the slums of Piraeus. '. . . there I was initiated into the harsh life of a working man, married for the first time, got hooked on hashish, and, above all, was seduced by that instrument -- the bouzoúki.' 'The man was an inexhaustible river. If he'd lived a thousand years, he'd have gone on writing beautiful Rembetica.' --Spyros Garízas