Domna Samiou Sings Songs of Nature and of Love

This videotaped stage performance, held at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus on 11th of October 2005, includes songs and rituals related to the cycle of the agricultural year, rewarding human labour and telling of man’s relationship to nature.

Songs

1. The dawn of dawn Crete
2. Little white bird a-sitting Macedonia
3. River, dry gorge Central Greece
4. I went up high on Olympus Thessaly
5. Into the vineyard Central Greece
6. My broad-leaved vine Peloponnese
7. Do ta pres kotside te Central Greece
8. Fragrant little lemon Central Greece
9. Winter and autumn Central Greece
10. Come out, my sun, come out Peloponnese
11. Ploughed garden of mine Central Greece
12. January violet Sporades
13. Last night in the starlight Epirus
14. Beam, dear moon Peloponnese
15. Forty five lemon trees Macedonia
16. Call
17. High on that mountain Macedonia
18. Come out, dear mother-in-low Macedonia
19. Wrapped up warm in kisses Macedonia
20. Hasapiá Macedonia
21. Vangelítsa Macedonia
22. Improvisation on the bowed tambourá
23. My curly basil Asia Minor
24. River, dear river of mine Eastern Aegean
24. All the birds, two by two Peloponnese
25. The maid climbed up to the summer pasture Pontus
26. Sérra Pontus
27. Kótsari Pontus
27. A partridge I did tame Dodecanese
28. What did I do to you, my sun Eastern Aegean
29. Hitzaíri Central Greece
30. Moiná Nená Central Greece
31. Lepeniótiko Kangéli Central Greece
32. Saint John Thrace
33. Asia Minor Kledon
34. We have a wedding today Eastern Aegean
35. Red apple of mine Macedonia

Production: Domna Samiou Greek Folk Music Association
Year of release: 2007
Type: DVD
Sponsors: Alfred Kärcher GmbH & Co. KG

Introduction

by Domna Samiou

Our people have turned everything into song: everything from landmark events to the little things that fill our lives – from birth to death, from lullaby to lament – and it's natural that many songs are dedicated to LOVE.

Almost all these 'love songs' are linked to Nature and its beauty.

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 (2005)

...Because every season has its songs

by Zoe N. Margari

Few people would disagree with the view that Man has distanced himself from the natural world despite remaining indirectly and directly dependent on it. Nonetheless, though the years go by and times change, many of our contemporary customs still underscore Man's eternal anxiety over goals shared with Nature.

Indeed, ritualistic customs are still performed across the whole of Greece whose aim it is to ensure a smooth transition from one season to the next, and whose prime focus is fertility and plenty. Seemingly ignorant of the deeper meaning of ‘frantic orgiastic’ rites in which the core elements of the old ceremonies are preserved with Doric frugality, these rituals and their celebrants serve to reconcile the animate with the inanimate.

Though steering an adaptive course, taking on new forms that often provoke older generations, these customs have never drifted away from their primary objective: the harmonization of the magic cycles of growth and physical toil. The unbroken link between Man and Nature is expressed in an enormously varied body of blessings, practices and artistic creations. The customary rites and rituals, matched to the corresponding songs, reveal the multiple meanings of the interaction between the tangible and the intangible world in pursuit of 'the good'.

Popular wisdom expressed though myths, legends and traditions guides contemporary initiates towards performing them anew.

Beginning with autumn, which marks the start of the working – and ecclesiastical – year, a journey through Greece becomes a conceptual meander through time and space as we listen to the songs linked to the customs in question. But such a journey will reveal more than musical traditions; contemporary traditions of worship will also come to light which we believed long-since extinct or forgotten.

From September and the customs associated with this stage in the agricultural cycle (the polysporia¹, the astrologisma² and the roditi³), we move on to the customs linked to the grape harvest and performed to this day in line with the social dictates of the cycle of agricultural toil, even in urban areas like the Attic hinterland. Next in the yearly cycle we come to the winter fertility rituals which culminate in twelve days in which Man goes about in the guise of beasts, and, in parts of Northern Greece, in wedding reconstructions.

The second phase of the year, spring, is dedicated to the rebirth of nature and hosts a deluge of country festivals. Ritualistic customs like the helidonismata⁴ seek to ensure a good crop by magical means, proclaiming the coming of the 'Sower' and the new light. Lenten and Easter customs, dual manifestations of the harmonic link between ecclesiastical and popular rituals of rebirth, soothe the people s metaphysical unease with the balm of symbolism.

The Lenten balloons of Kalamata⁵, allegorical travellers of the reborn light, initiate us into the renewal of life,while Megara's May Day customs connect the rebirth of Nature and of Man. Nature risen from the dead and illustrated in condensed form in the victory wreathes of May, is harmonized with the victory of the light in the celebrations of the summer solstice.

The light-worshipping customs of Saint John of Kledon, the celebratory summer displays which form an epilogue to the magic cycle of the agricultural year, complete our journey through the popular fertility rituals/blessings of Greece. The rites and songs can thus, as means of expressing and passing on popular wisdom, remind the old of – and initiate the young into – the mysteries of the traditional 'natural' world we share.

‘Songs, by marrying words and melody, provide an unmatched measure by which parallels may be drawn between Man and Nature’ *.

Zoe N. Margari (2005)

¹Customs associated with the consumption of foodstuffs containing seeds (as bearers of life).
²Star-gazing as a method of divination.
³Divination by means of a pomegranate. The fruit is rolled or broken depending on locality, and the results interpreted.
⁴In which children go from door to door holding wooden swallows on sticks and singing festive songs.
⁵Miniature paper airships (balloons) made and launched by children.

(*) Loukatos Dimitrios. 1977. An Introduction to Greek Folklore. Athens: National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation.

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