Vasilis Tsitsanis (January 18, 1915 – January 18, 1984) was a Greek singer and songwriter. He became one of the leading composers and singers of rebetiko music, which was banned in Greece during its early years, and on the later laika style.

Tsitsanis was born in Trikala on January 18, 1915. From a young age, Tsitsanis was interested in music and learnt to play the mandolin, violin and the bouzouki which were the mainstay of so many of his songs. In 1936 he left for Athens to study Law, and by 1937, had made his first musical recording.

During the German occupation of Greece, Tsitsanis lived in Thessaloniki. There he wrote many of his best songs that were later recorded after the end of the World War II.

In 1946, Tsitsanis returned to Athens and began recording many of his own compositions that made famous many of the singers that worked with him, such as Sotiria Bellou, Marika Ninou and Prodromos Tsaousakis.

From then on, Tsitsanis enjoyed wide acclaim throughout Greece.

Tsitsanis died in London on January 18, 1984; the day he was born sixty-nine years prior. He was mourned across Greece, where his music is still enjoyed to this day and he is regarded as a legend of rebetiko music.

Vasilis Tsitsanis, a young middle class Greek law student, who had cut his first records in 1937, emerged as the first Rebetika 'star' of the postwar period. Before Tsitsanis, Rebetika had been a style without a champion. Its performers -even the great ones like Batis and Vamvakaris- were still regarded as dangerous outlaws. Tsitsanis, however, was a smooth, good looking, well dressed young man. Deep as well as macho, he wrote great songs, sung convincingly and played his bouzouki with a passion. In short, he turned Rebetika around by widening its appeal. Gail Holst, in her excellent "Road To Rebetika", calls this the "Indian Summer" of Rebetika. Rightly so as Tsitsanis' popularity gave Greek music the jump-start it needed following the traumatic decade that had preceded. It also, in that curious way that fate often decrees, sowed the first seeds of destruction for Greek traditional music.

www.myspace.com/vasilistsitsanis

www.tsitsanis.gr

www.kithara.vu (the largest greek song text site)