It's tempting to think of rebetika, the hashish-den-born music of the diasporic Greeks of Asia Minor, as a kind of Mediterranean blues. Start with the themes of sex, drugs and longing. Each is represented here on an anthology of recordings made from 1911 to 1937 in Athens, New York and Istanbul and collected by Arhoolie's indefatigable Chris Strachwitz. For the first theme, there's Yiangos Psamatyalis' 1911 "Smyrneiko Man�s" with it's lyrical promise to "thrust my cock between your legs." Come to think of it, Psamatyalis sounds quite properly ripped, which directly addresses the second theme (though Rosa Eskenazi's "Yiati fumaro koka�ni" ("Why I Smoke Cocaine") perhaps makes a stronger case - all of this is delivered (as far as my half-forgotten Greek permits me to say) quite directly, without the wit and allusion the best blues can summon. But it is the chilling evocations of dislocation and death that most directly invoke the blues. Stratos Payumdzis "Saba Manes," with its imprecation to "Open the graves!" has the dire tone of one-chord Mississippi hills country music, and like Charley Patton's, Payumdzis' rag of a voice is capable of incredibly acrobatic melisma. Not surprisingly, it's less the blues that one hears in rebetika than its antecedents, namely Malian music. Fans of goni and kora music will recognize their enthusiasms in the lyrical turns and curlicues of the kanun and the modal melisma of Arabic-influenced singers in Giogios Papasideris' florid singing of a "Ghazeli Mustaar." Mostly what you'll hear is singing and playing that's raw - almost frighteningly so - and desperate. Blues or not, it's the music of restless souls - people who have fallen off the earth and have yet to touch down.