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Contents
Through these songs, Domna Samiou pays tribute to how man, in years gone by, worshipped nature as the measure of ultimate beauty, order and harmony, and treated it with awe rather than with the destructive fury of today. The down-to-earth love of nature in these folk songs doesn’t derive from any form of romantic nostalgia; it lies instead in a pure experience of everyday life.
(barcode: 5204910000920)
CD 1
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1. O Black Dawn, Won't You Break
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2. Come Out, My Sun, Come Out
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3. Little Lemon Tree
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4. Close to Daybreak
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5. The Dawn of Dawn
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6. Winter and Autumn
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7. The Sea Pounds Me
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8. Yiouvarladoum
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9. What Did I Do to You, My Sun
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10. If I Die, Bury Me
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11. River, Dear River of Mine
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12. The Apple Trees Complaint
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13. Ploughed Garden of Mine
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14. I Went up High on Olympus
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15. Virginada
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16. Forty Five Lemon Trees
CD 2
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1. Whoever Saw a Tree of Green
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2. Tamboura Improvisation
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3. My Curly Basil
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4. The Maid Climbed up to the Summer Pasture
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5. A Partridge I Did Tame
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6. Lullaby
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7. River, Dry Gorge
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8. Up Upon the Rose
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9. You, My Little Roses
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10. The Eagle and the Partridge
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11. If I Had an Orchard
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12. In a Fine Orchard
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13. January Violet
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14. Zarkadio
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15. Little White Bird A-Sitting
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16. Beam, Dear Moon
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17. Saint John
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18. All the Birds, Two by Two
- Production: Domna Samiou Greek Folk Music Association
- Year of release: 2006
- Type: CD
- Sponsors: OPAP S.A.
Notes
In days gone by, Man worshipped Nature. Then we lost touch with the environment; we became greedy, and Nature came to be seen as an obstacle. And the result is destruction: forest fires, floods, erosion, climate change and other ecological disasters.
I wanted to share a set of songs, therefore, which could remind us of how people used to love Nature and respect their environment as the most beautiful of all God’s creations: from ‘the moon that beams till morn’ to ‘the orchard strewn with daisies’; from ‘the lean, tall cypress’ to ‘the riotous colours of a field of wild flowers’; and –for those closest to our hearts– from ‘my plumed partridge’, ‘curly basil of mine’ or ‘my blooming violet’ (for her) to ‘an eagle’ or ‘mountain torrent’ (for him).
I collected these songs from all over Greece. They span almost every occasion and every season. My admiration for those folk –our people– from whom the songs come, knows no bounds.
Domna Samiou (2006)
Folk songs’ down-to-earth love of nature has a different starting point, a different mode of expression and different content. The feel for nature is strong and vital in traditional rural societies, but more importantly, it is also more profound and more real than any romantic nostalgia. An unforced and often admirable expression of real experiences, it stems from everyday life lived amidst untrammelled nature. That this love of nature is born of life, and stands a million miles apart from romanticism, is especially clear in the kléphtika (brigands’ songs) of mainland Greece, and in the shepherds’ songs of Crete and other islands. But it is clear, too, in so much else; in the root causes, for instance, of the mountain dwellers’ dislike and even contempt for the morbidity of life on the plains so familiar from folk songs.
Romantic love
The Greek people have created numerous myths and traditions relating to romantic love and the full gamut of emotions that accompany it. Popular love poetry has ancient roots, for it is surely impossible to conceive of its absence once a people is present.
The first modern popular love poetry appeared during the final centuries of the Byzantine empire; in the rhymed popular novels of Byzantium, whose plots centre on love, and whose short songs (katalόgia) display all the features of the later style with which folk songs have familiarized us.
These love songs are as numerous as they are fine, and embrace subjects centring on beauty and love’s incandescent passion, on dialogues and short stories of love. This wide-ranging content corresponds to the mass of different (and often contradictory) emotions coursing through the lovers’ hearts, and is often expressed with an admirably epigrammatic brevity and elegance.
Many of these songs of love have a number of verses, though most consist of just a few. There is also a seeming infinitude of two-line works, which form a sub-category of their own and are known by different names in different places: lianotràgouda, manédes, kotsàkia, mantinàdes and patinàdes which, like the paraklausίthyra of the ancients, are sung by youths beneath the window of their heart’s desire.
Since the majority of popular love songs are danced (though not the two-liners), they display a range of metres that extends well beyond the fifteen-syllable line.
What should be stressed and sought out, especially by the young, who are bombarded by models of song that fail to engage their emotions or their souls, is the interest these songs provoke in a contemporary social setting –not as museum exhibits of interest only to historians, but as a living art form, as the substance of our being set in motion, as national oneness– and the invitation they extend to us to evaluate their poetic content, to savour them as poetry, to feel their vibrations in our soul. To take joy from the presence of Eros, sometimes peaceful and tranquil, sometimes turbulent and disruptive, and to accept the songs’ freshness, the plastic grace so perfectly at one with the Mediterranean landscape. To understand that they are part of us, a part of our spiritual, cultural and national roots.
Yiorgos E. Papadakis (2006)
Multimedia
Videos
O Black Dawn, Won't you Break
From the recording of the album "Of Nature and of Love", 2005

River, dear river of mine (2005)
Concert "Domna Samiou Sings Songs of Nature and of Love", Odeon of Herodes Atticus, 2005

Credits
Production team
- Domna Samiou (Research, Collection, Musical supervision),
- Socrates Sinopoulos (Musical supervision),
- Daphne Djaferis (Production management),
- Tasia Papanikolaou (Production assistant),
- Yiorgos Ε. Papadakis (Musical advisor)
Sound team
- Yiorgos Karyotis (Sound engineer),
- Yiorgos Karyotis (Sound editing),
- Petros Siakavellas (Sound editing),
- Socrates Sinopoulos (Sound editing)
Booklet team
- Yiorgos Ε. Papadakis (Texts and commentaries),
- Michael Eleftheriou (English translation),
- Mary Stathopoulou (Text Editing),
- Konstantina Ananidi (Design and layout),
- Christina Katsichti (Design and layout),
- Marina Orfanidou (Design and layout),
- Thomas Papanikolaou (Design and layout)
Singer
- Domna Samiou (If I Had an Orchard, O Black Dawn, Won't You Break, Little White Bird A-Sitting, River, Dear River of Mine, River, Dry Gorge, Winter and Autumn, My Curly Basil, I Went up High on Olympus, All the Birds, Two by Two, Beam, Dear Moon, Whoever Saw a Tree of Green, Forty Five Lemon Trees, Lullaby),
- Kostas Antimissiaris (The Apple Trees Complaint, The Eagle and the Partridge),
- Achilleas Chalkias (Little Lemon Tree),
- Vangelis Dimoudis (Saint John),
- Zacharias Karounis (Ploughed Garden of Mine, Up Upon the Rose, Come Out, My Sun, Come Out),
- Katerina Papadopoulou (What Did I Do to You, My Sun, In a Fine Orchard, A Partridge I Did Tame),
- Ilias Yfantidis (If I Die, Bury Me, Close to Daybreak, The Maid Climbed up to the Summer Pasture),
- Michalis Zambas (Little Lemon Tree, Virginada, You, My Little Roses)
Choir
- Cretans' Group (The Dawn of Dawn),
- Domna Samiou Greek Folk Music Association Choir (O Black Dawn, Won't You Break, What Did I Do to You, My Sun, River, Dry Gorge, All the Birds, Two by Two, The Sea Pounds Me, Whoever Saw a Tree of Green, Forty Five Lemon Trees, January Violet)
Clarinet
- Thodoris Georgopoulos (Little White Bird A-Sitting, River, Dry Gorge, Ploughed Garden of Mine, Winter and Autumn, Little Lemon Tree, I Went up High on Olympus, Up Upon the Rose, Come Out, My Sun, Come Out, Beam, Dear Moon, Forty Five Lemon Trees, Zarkadio, Virginada, You, My Little Roses)
Flute
Gaida (bagpipe)
Tsambouna
Pontic bagpipe
Violin
- Achilleas Chalkias (Little Lemon Tree, Virginada, You, My Little Roses),
- Nikos Oikonomidis (If I Had an Orchard, O Black Dawn, Won't You Break, What Did I Do to You, My Sun, In a Fine Orchard, River, Dear River of Mine, Ploughed Garden of Mine, A Partridge I Did Tame, I Went up High on Olympus, Up Upon the Rose, Come Out, My Sun, Come Out, All the Birds, Two by Two, Beam, Dear Moon, The Sea Pounds Me, Whoever Saw a Tree of Green, Forty Five Lemon Trees, Yiouvarladoum, January Violet, Zarkadio)
Constantinopolitan lyra
Pontic lyra
Dodecanesian lyra
- Nikos Nikolaou (The Apple Trees Complaint, The Eagle and the Partridge)
Small tambouras
Bowed tambouras
Constantinopolitan lute
- Socrates Sinopoulos (O Black Dawn, Won't You Break, What Did I Do to You, My Sun, In a Fine Orchard, My Curly Basil, A Partridge I Did Tame, Come Out, My Sun, Come Out, All the Birds, Two by Two, Beam, Dear Moon, The Sea Pounds Me, Forty Five Lemon Trees, Yiouvarladoum, January Violet, Zarkadio)
Santur
Lute
- Kostas Papaprokopiou (O Black Dawn, Won't You Break, What Did I Do to You, My Sun, In a Fine Orchard, My Curly Basil, A Partridge I Did Tame, The Sea Pounds Me, Whoever Saw a Tree of Green, January Violet, Zarkadio),
- Kostas Philippidis (If I Had an Orchard, Little White Bird A-Sitting, River, Dear River of Mine, River, Dry Gorge, Ploughed Garden of Mine, Winter and Autumn, Little Lemon Tree, I Went up High on Olympus, Up Upon the Rose, Come Out, My Sun, Come Out, All the Birds, Two by Two, Beam, Dear Moon, Forty Five Lemon Trees, Virginada, You, My Little Roses),
- Kostas Protopapas (The Apple Trees Complaint),
- Yannis Tsambanakis (The Eagle and the Partridge)
Daouli (davul)
- Vangelis Karipis (Saint John, If I Die, Bury Me, Close to Daybreak, The Maid Climbed up to the Summer Pasture, Zarkadio),
- Kostas Meretakis (If I Had an Orchard, River, Dry Gorge, Ploughed Garden of Mine, Winter and Autumn, All the Birds, Two by Two)
Goblet drum
Bendir (frame drum)
- Vangelis Karipis (What Did I Do to You, My Sun, In a Fine Orchard, My Curly Basil),
- Kostas Meretakis (Little White Bird A-Sitting)
Tambourine
- Kostas Meretakis (Little Lemon Tree, I Went up High on Olympus, Up Upon the Rose, Virginada, You, My Little Roses)
Informant (source of the song)
- Babo-Vagia Grammenidou (Saint John),
- Sofia Kounia (If I Had an Orchard),
- Yannis Parisis (Whoever Saw a Tree of Green),
- Yannis Tsirigotis (Little White Bird A-Sitting)
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See also

Song
A Partridge I Did Tame

Song
All the Birds, Two by Two

Song
Beam, Dear Moon


Song
If I Had an Orchard

Song
In a Fine Orchard

Song
It Is May Month

Song
Little Lemon Tree

Song
Little White Bird A-Sitting

Song
Maria’ S Gone to Pick Some Lilac

Song
May Is Come

Song
O April, April, Cool and Fresh

Song
Ploughed Garden of Mine

Song
River, Dear River of Mine
