This musician is bringing cultures together in Greece

“Good evening, I am your white friend,” says Afro-Greek rapper Negros Tou Moria, also known as NTM, as he steps on stage to the sound of rebetika – the traditional Greek protest music that has always been his inspiration. Dressed in a suit and carrying Greek komboloi worry beads, NTM’s provocative and fiercely intelligent music, which blends the language of a bygone era with references to life in Athens today, has made him one of the most talked-about rappers on the Greek music scene.

More than 60,000 refugees have made the perilous journey by boat to reach Greece in the past few years, joining the country's existing ethnic minority populations – who are themselves struggling to survive in an environment where they are often denied documentation and other basic rights because of their non-Greek status. Against this backdrop 26-year-old NTM is working with a music collective called the 307 Squad to connect musicians from different backgrounds and give them a much-needed voice. 

The son of Ghanian parents, NTM – real name Kevin Wessun – was born in the suburbs of Athens, baptised Greek Orthodox, went to school in Greece, and speaks fluent Greek and English. However, he still hasn’t been accorded Greek citizenship. “The system is racist, because there’s a law that says you have to be Greek by blood to have an ID,” he fumes. “When you’re born some place, man, you’re born! Here in Greece, if you ain’t got no ID – no VO – you can’t do nothing: you can’t rent a house, you can’t even rent a car for a couple of hours.”

Citizenship has become a burning issue in Greece over the last decade, in part due to a basketball player from the Milwaukee Bucks,  Giannis Antekounmpo, one of the NBA’s biggest stars, who was born in Athens to Nigerian parents and eventually awarded a Greek passport after bringing fame and attention to the country. Before that, he could technically have been deported at any time.

NTM explains that, for a brief time, the process was made easier by the previous left-wing Syriza government. However, he was slow to take advantage – something he regretted when the conservative New Democracy came to power in 2019.

“I blame it on myself and the government of Greece as well,” he explains. “The previous prime minister [Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras] had this issue open for kids that were born in Greece but I was kinda sleeping on that. I could say, yeah, New Democracy is stricter on immigrants.”

Although Greece has an active alternative scene, with documentaries such as The Band of Greeks exploring its underground music acts and Indie record stores, including Athens’ Habeat, doing their best to promote many obscure Greek labels, very few upcoming musicians get the break they need. 

Costis Nikiforakis, creator of the Black Athena record label and manager of Jungle Juice, a hip hop-focused label associated with the 307 Squad, first spotted NTM in 2015 at a show called Underground Jam, which promotes Greek artists from immigrant backgrounds. “I saw these two guys who have an incredible rapport and movement, and their rapping – their flow – is incredible,” he remembers. “They were just totally different from anything else that was on and I was like ‘wow who are these guys?’.”

Rapping alongside NTM on that day back in 2015 was Greek-born Lefteris, known as L Professor. One of the founders of 307 Squad, he says that Greece’s music scene is stagnating. “The music industry in Greece is only for Greek pop, laiko and stuff – that’s why Black Athena started something new,” he says. 

Leftheris’s frustration is reflected by many young people in Greece, for whom music, like so many other aspects of Greek life, is slow to change. Another of these ‘slow to change’ aspects is what NTM describes as the country’s ‘ambient racism’, which he says he has faced since his childhood in the rundown central suburb of Ambelokipoi. “There’s a whole discrimination when you’re black – it’s in the society,” he says. “When I was growing up it was kind of worse. But now, you can see a new generation with both Whites and Blacks – Greeks and immigrants – chilling together.”

This strong sense of injustice is one of the themes that feeds his music. The other is rebetika. First springing out of the hashish dens of the port city of Pireaus at the beginning of 20th century,  it became Greece’s protest music through different periods ranging from world war two to the country’s military dictatorship between 1967 and 1974. Unlike most of his fellow rappers who are generally inspired by American music, NTM prefers to use the complicated language of rebetika. “It was traditional music, but the system declared it was bad because of the lyrics,” he explains. “They were talking about drugs, sex and having a good time.”

Even his name, Negros Tou Moria, is a clever transformation of the name of his hero Geros Tou Moria. “He was a sergeant in Greece during the revolution days [in the 19th century when Greeks sought independence from the Ottomon empire] and he was The Man,” he enthuses while playing with his well-worn komboloi. “I took his name. I love his history because he was a sergeant who sacrificed his whole life for Greece to be independent and one country.”

Similarly, Aisling O’Brien says that people were “enjoying themselves responsibly” any time she went to places like the Royal Canal or Fairview Park. Any issues around littering or public urination could be resolved with more bins and public toilets, she says. As Dublin emerges from lockdown, she believes the city should be more receptive to drinking and socialising in public places.

“It’s time for Dublin City Council to revitalise our outdoor spaces for public use whether it’s our parks or our streets,” she says. “This is less about drinking and more about community and catering for businesses that have taken a hit during the pandemic.”

Using his experience of growing up Black in modern Greece, NTM released his debut album Akougontas Kai Mathainontas (‘Listen and Learn’) in 2015. The title of his next album, Ygeia, is inspired by the popular drinking toast ‘stin ygeia mas’, which means ‘to our health’, and seems almost visionary given the current pandemic.

Recent projects include working on the album Kompilation with Greek rappers including  Kareem Kalokoh, DJ Grandbois and others, and working with Moose, another of Costis’ protégées.“Moose and Negros Tou Moria are two of the most exciting artists to have come out of the Greek rap scene in the last few years,” Costis exclaims. “Moose’s impact has been so great that his recent non-inclusion in local pop music awards as a nominee for best newcomer sparked social media outrage.”

Moose, who was born in Nigeria and has lived in Greece since he was eight, is excited about the current opportunities in Greece for musicians from immigrant backgrounds. “We are a small country and we are just getting started in the rap scene, so we are in the era of Greece in the making,” he says.

Unlike Moose, who often raps in English, NTM prefers to perform in Greek. Using the powerful, poignant rebetika songs as his inspiration, NTM says he wants his music to inspire other migrants in Greece to stand up for their rights and fight for what they believe in. His lyrics, which paint a vivid picture of the dramas and difficulties of life for a young Black man in Greece today, deal with racism and dreams of a brighter future. 

“People that are not racist, they have double love, because I’m an African, speaking Greek, and they think that it's crazy new – that I like the history, I like talking, writing and speaking Greek while my parents are from Ghana and speak English,” he says. “I could speak in English, but, no, I decided to speak in Greek.”

With his use of Greece’s ancient music to create modern sounds, NTM has launched an assault on Greek society resembling the mythological tale of the Trojan horse: working from the inside he hopes to empower a new generation of Greek immigrants, for whom music is an ideal means to break down racial barriers and finally be heard.