George Dalaras, who sparked the rebetiko revival in Greek music in 1975, played rebetiko and laïko at indigo at The O2 in North Greenwich.
George Dalaras, who has sold more than 18 million records, performed rebetiko and laïko at indigo at The O2 in North Greenwich on Monday 27 April 2026.
Dalaras was born in Piraeus in 1949, and his first musical memories were the port’s rebetiko, laïko and folk songs. His break came in 1972, with the singer Haris Alexiou, on Mikra Asia, an LP by Apostolos Kaldaras that went gold.
In 1975 he released the double LP 50 Chronia Rebetiko Tragoudi, fifty years of rebetiko song. Its success brought rebetes half-forgotten for decades back onto stages.
He has since made almost 90 solo albums and become a UN Refugee Agency Goodwill Ambassador. In 1983 two nights at the Olympic Stadium in Athens drew more than 160,000 people.
His London history runs to 1992, when he sold out Wembley Arena for the largest Greek concert ever held in Britain. At indigo, the concert hall beside The O2, the programme returned to his founding repertoire in a room built for a fraction of those audiences.