Manges (;

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

: μάγκες ;

sing Singing is the art of creating music with the voice. It is the oldest form of musical expression, and the human voice can be considered the first musical instrument. The definition of singing varies across sources. Some sources define singi ...

.: mangas , μάγκας ) is the name of a social group in the

Belle Époque The Belle Époque () or La Belle Époque () was a period of French and European history that began after the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and continued until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Occurring during the era of the Fr ...

era's

counterculture A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Ho ...

of Greece (especially of the great urban centers of

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

and

Piraeus Piraeus ( ; ; , Ancient: , Katharevousa: ) is a port city within the Athens urban area ("Greater Athens"), in the Attica region of Greece. It is located southwest of Athens city centre along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf in the Ath ...

). The nearest English equivalent to the term "mangas" is

wide boy ''Wide boy'' is a British term for a man who lives by his wits, wheeling and dealing. According to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' it is synonymous with spiv.Oxford English Dictionary accessed 13 Dec 2010 The word "wide" used in this sense mean ...

, or

spiv A spiv is a petty criminal in the United Kingdom who deals in illicit, typically black market, goods. Spivs were particularly active during the Second World War and in the post-war period when many goods were rationed due to shortages. According ...

Overview

Mangas was a label for men belonging to the Greek

working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...

, behaving in a particularly arrogant/presumptuous way, and dressing with a very typical vesture composed of a woolen hat (''kavouraki'', καβουράκι), a jacket (they usually wore only one of its sleeves), a tight belt (used as a knife case), stripe pants, and pointy shoes. Other features of their appearance were their long moustache, their bead chaplets (κομπολόγια, sing. κομπολόι), and their idiosyncratic manneristic limp-walking (κουτσό βάδισμα). A related social group were the Koutsavakides (κουτσαβάκηδες, sing. κουτσαβάκης); the two terms are occasionally used interchangeably. Manges are also notable for being closely associated with the history of

rebetiko Rebetiko (, ), plural rebetika ( ), occasionally transliterated as rembetiko or rebetico, is a term used to designate previously disparate kinds of urban Greek music which in the 1930s went through a process of musical syncretism and develope ...

Etymology

The three most probable etymologies of the word Mangas are the following: * From the Turkish ''manga'' "small military troop" via Albanian ''mangë''. * From the Latin ''manica'' (from the same root as Modern Greek μανίκι "sleeve") "hand-related" (''cf''. the sound change from the Latin ''manicus'' to the Spanish ''mango'' "handle"). * According to a more marginal proposal, its origin is from the Latin ''mango, -onis'' "dealer, trader".Andriotis, Nikolaos. ''Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής'' (''Etymologiko lexiko tis koinis neoellinikis''), Manolis Triantafyllidis Foundation, 1995.

In popular culture

Most rebetiko songs refer to manges, even when this is not explicit, as rebetiko was part of this subculture. Examples are: "Στην Υπόγα" ("In the Basement", by Kostis, 1930), "Ο Μάγκας του Βοτανικού" ("The Mangas of Votanikos", by Kasimatis, 1934). The admiration of manges was carried on with the later genre of Greek music

Laïko Laïko or laïkó (, ; "

ong Ong or ONG may refer to: Arts and media * Ong's Hat, a collaborative work of fiction * “Ong Ong”, a song by Blur from the album The Magic Whip Places * Ong, Nebraska, US, city * Ong's Hat, New Jersey, US, ghost town * Ong River, Odisha, ...

of the people", "popular

; ) is a Greece, Greek folk-pop music genre in accordance with the tradition of the Greeks, Greek people. Also referred to as "folk song" or "urban folk music" () in its plural for ...

. Examples are: "Πού 'σουν μάγκα το Χειμώνα" ("Where Were You, Mangas, During the Winter", by Giorgos Mouflezis, 70s), and others.

Karagiozis Karagiozis or Karaghiozis (Greek : Καραγκιόζης), ( ) is a shadow puppet and fictional character of Greek folklore. He is the main character of the traditional Greek shadow puppet theatre, which dates back to the Ottoman era. He is t ...

shadow play Shadow play, also known as shadow puppetry, is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment which uses flat articulated cut-out figures (shadow puppets) which are held between a source of light and a translucent screen or scrim (material), ...

s portray a recurrent character called ''Stavrakas'', Σταύρακας. In modern Greek language, mangas has become a synonym for "swash guy, swagger" or (in dialogue) simply "

dude ''Dude'' is Regional vocabularies of American English, American slang for an individual, typically male. From the 1870s to the 1960s, dude primarily meant a male person who dressed in an extremely fashionable manner (a dandy) or a conspicuous ...

"; depending on context it may have more negative ("bully, thug, hooligan") or more positive ("brave, crafty man") connotations.

Notes

Notes and references

Bibliography

* Stasinopoulos, Epaminondas. ''Η Αθήνα του περασμένου αιώνα (1830–1900) – Last Century's Athens (1830–1900)'', Athens, 1963 {{in lang, el. Culture of Greece Counterculture Belle Époque Working class in Europe