exalted the likes of composers like Markos Vamvakaris and Vassilis Tsitsanis. Putting theory into practice, he adapted classic rembetika in his 1951 piano work, Six Folk Paintings (Έξι Λαϊκές Ζωγραφιές), which was later also presented as a folk ballet. Parallel to the post-war career of Tsitsanis, the career of Manolis Chiotis took rebetiko and the Greek popular music in more radically new directions. Chiotis developed much more the "europeanisation/westernization" of the rebetiko. In 1953 he added a fourth pair of strings to the bouzouki, which allowed it to be played as a guitar and set the stage for the future 'electrification' of rebetiko. Chiotis was also a bold innovator, importing Latin and South American rhythms (such as flamenco, rumba, mambo etc.), and concentrating on songs in a decidedly lighter vein than the characteristic ambiance of rebetiko songs. Perhaps most significantly of all, Chiotis, himself a virtuoso not only on the bouzouki but on guitar, violin and oud, was responsible for introducing and popularizing the modified 4-stringed bouzouki () in 1956. Chiotis was already a seemingly fully-fledged virtuoso on the traditional 3-stringed instrument by his teens, but the guitar-based tuning of his new instrument, in combination with his playful delight in extreme virtuosity, led to new concepts of bouzouki playing which came to define the style used in (laiko) and other forms of bouzouki music, which however could no longer really be called rebetiko in any sense. A comparable development also took place on the vocal side. In 1952 a young singer named Stelios Kazantzidis recorded a couple of rebetika songs that were quite successful. Although he would continue in the same style for a few years it was quickly realized, by all parties involved, that his singing technique and expressive abilities were too good to be contained within the rebetiko idiom. Soon well-known composers of rebetika—like Kaldaras, Chiotis, Klouvatos—started to write songs tailored to Stelios powerful voice and this created a further shift in rebetika music. The new songs had a more complex melodic structure and were usually more dramatic in character. Kazantzidis went on to become a star of the emerging laiki music. Kazantzidis, however, did not only contribute to the demise of classical rebetika (of the Piraeus style that is). Paradoxically, he was also one of the forerunners of its revival. In 1956 he started his cooperation with Vassilis Tsitsanis who, in addition to writing new songs for