Domna Samiou

about

Domna Samiou (Δόμνα Σαμίου), born in 1928, in Athens, Greece, is a Greek musicologist, educator, and singer. Samiou’s mother fled to Greece from Turkey in 1922, her husband having been taken prisoner of war; each thought the other dead, but they were reunited after he was released in 1924. Domna Samiou was born in a refugee camp in Kesariani, Athens. Despite their deep poverty, the family used to sing around the stove on winter nights. Having been brought up with the music known as Smyrneika or Smyrniotika, a cosmopolitan music from Constantinople (now Istanbul) and Smyrna (now Izmir), mixing Eastern and Western influences, she experienced the development of Rembetika as smyrneika met and merged with the urban music of places like Piraeus. During World War II the family suffered under the Nazi occupation; both her father and her sister died of starvation. Samiou and her mother were saved by the Zannou family for whom her mother worked. It was Mrs Zannou who, recognising Samiou’s passion for music, arranged for her to audition at a music school run by the eminent musicologist Simon Karas. In the 1930s Karas, with no recording gear available, had transcribed folk songs by hand, in Byzantine notation, as they were sung by elderly people. In 1937 he had produced a pioneering series of authentic folk music records, and when in that same year he was appointed head of Folk Music for National Greek Radio, he had introduced it into the daily broadcasts. After hearing her sing, h

you might also explore

top songs

albums

Kaneloriza

Τραγούδια Της Ξενιτιάς

Της Φύσης και του Έρωτα

▥

14 Megala Tragoudia

▥

Τα Αποκριάτικα

14 Megala Tragoudia - Domna Samiou

Ιστορικά - Κλέφτικα Τραγούδια

EHE GIA PANAGIA

▥

The Great North Wind and Other Traditional Songs for Children

Ο κυρ Βοριάς… και Άλλα Τραγούδια για Παιδιά

Music from Greece

▥

Η Δόμνα Σαμίου Στο Μέγαρο Μουσικής

similar artists