There was a lot of Greek music in season two of HBO’s The Wire. There was a bunch of rembetica, the genre (understandably) listened to almost exclusively by Greek gangsters, and a few Greek pop songs here and there. And then in the penultimate episode of the season as Frank walks to his doom, there was this gem from Stelios Kazantzidis. In a rare stylistic departure for The Wire, the song was played in full music montage, not as source music. It was one of my favorite music moments of the last three years I was working as music supervisor on the show.

Kazantzidis was the legendary Greek singer who, among other things, lived some of his later years in New Jersey and sang heart-wrenchingly moving nationalistic ballads about exile. I spent quite a bit of time in exile myself, hunting through Greek record stores in Astoria Queens with my friend Persephone before settling on this track. We were lucky to be able to get the rights and use it in the show, and it has been one of the more sought-after tracks on The Wire’s discussion boards.

You can find it on The Very Best of Stelios Kazantzidis at Amazon.

See also Women of Rembetica, a good compilation from which several tracks were used in The Wire.