Rebetiko music
==============

Rebetiko is the Greek musical genre that John Kiriakou names, across several interviews, as one of the two things he listens to.

The question that produced the answer

Asked in 2023 to name a piece of music that would give him memory recall if he ever ended up in "the old whistleblowers home," Kiriakou replied that he did not have to think about it at all.

"I listen to two kinds of music I listen to classic rock and I listen to Greek folk music that my parents and grandparents used to play when I was growing up so every morning as soon as I roll over in bed I put on 70s on 7 or a classic vinyl on Sirius XM."

What he plays when he is low

The second half of the answer named the genre. "If I'm feeling particularly down I go to something called rebetiko music which is music that came out of the the opium dens of Constantinople in the 1920s and 1930s."

The same answer, elsewhere

He has given the description repeatedly and consistently, with small variations in dating. In one 2026 interview: "I listen to a lot of classic rock, mostly early to mid70s classic rock. Um, I listen to folk specifically from the 30s and 40s and 50s. And more than anything else probably, I listen to Greek music."

In the parallel telling he completes the sentence: a genre "that came out of the prisons and the opium dens of Constantinople around the turn of the 20th century called Reetica. It's a Greek like blues is is the way most people describe it." Elsewhere the auto-caption renders the name Rebetika, and he adds that mostly this is what he listens to, confirming, when pressed, that the classic rock means "Zeppelin, the Eagles, stuff like that."

The dating moves between the 1920s and 1930s and the turn of the century across his tellings; the origin, the prisons and opium dens of Constantinople, does not.

See also

- The Greek community of Warren, Ohio
- The Greek Orthodox Church
- Origin of the Kiriakou name
