At the time, these earliest songs of the rebetika tradition were a symptom and a particular manifestation of a wider climate of violence, criminality and despair, whether real or imagined, that permeated the Greek capital around the turn of the century.

Expectation held his look suspense.

“The Vagrants” begins on March 21, 1979 — the spring equinox — which is this careful writer’s way of telling us that a long winter of privation and darkness may be giving way, at last, to the blossomings of spring.

They accepted the blame, but it was an accident.