Ioulia Karapataki, a voice of Greece's current rebetiko generation, made her first London appearance at Camden's Electric Ballroom.
Ioulia Karapataki, the rebetiko singer and long-standing partner of Socrates Malamas, made her first London appearance at Electric Ballroom in Camden on Sunday 9 November 2025.
Karapataki was born in Athens in 1986 and grew up in Ilioupoli. She took up classical guitar at eleven and studied electronics before retaking her exams for a place in the Department of Music Studies at the University of Athens.
Her career has run through work with musicians who carry rebetiko and its neighbouring traditions forward. They include Giannis Papavasileiou, Antonis and Thodoris Xintaris, Manolis Pappos and Babis Tsertos. Since 2017 she has sung in a standing partnership with Malamas.
She sang alongside Thanasis Papakonstantinou in 2018 and remains a regular collaborator of the folk ensemble Kompania. That work places her in the generation now carrying rebetiko and laïko forward, not performing them as a revival.
Electric Ballroom has traded on Camden High Street since 1938. On the night she and her band moved between her most-loved songs, traditional repertoire and newer material.