Καλλιτεχνικός Σύλλογος Δημοτικής Μουσικής Δόμνα Σαμίου

Two songs from Asia Minor sung to the rhythm of the syrtos dance. The first melody was widespread around the Sea of Marmara, where it was sung with minor musical variations on the Kyzikos peninsula, the Marmara islands, Moudania and its environs, the coastal villages of Nicomedia, the Thracian coast of Silyvria and Raidestos and elsewhere, even travelling as far afield as the Aegean islands (Ξύπνα, διαμάντικαιρουμπλί [Wake up, diamond and ruby?, Xypna, diamanti kai roubli], for example, from the Dodecanese). The fifteen-syllable couplets with their thirteen-syllable tsakismata are romantic in nature, conveying modestly, comprehensively and with poetic perfection the sorrow of a love lost or unfulfilled. Other versions feature couplets which exhort the listeners to dance or praise good dancers (Σηκώστε να χορέψουμε, να φύγουνε τα ντέρτια, Get up to dance and banish your sorrows, Sikoste na chorepsoume, na fygoune ta dertia, for instance). Many, like the three couplets here, are very fine as poetry.

And Theonitsa’s song was first sung around the Sea of Marmara, with its dozens of coastal hamlets inhabited by Thracians and Greeks from the Asia Minor seaboard. However, we encounter it with several variations in the words and of the girl's name (Theonitsa, Theanitsa, Theofanitsa, Dionitsa etc.) in various parts of the Aegean and as far afield as Cyprus. Most likely, the song was born out of a real and tragic event. A maid is in love with someone she isn’t allowed to love, either because they are related or because her family does not want the match; when she reveals her passion to them, they kill her. In other versions, the girl falls to her death, because her family does not consent to the marriage. Wherever it took place, the event shocked the small community and became a song spread far and wide, due to its shocking and dramatic content. 

In his monumental 260 Demotic Greek Melodies (Athens, 1905) Georgios Pachtikos mentions an almost complete variation from the Greek village of Kontzes near Nicomedia (pp. 153–155).

Theodor Kondaras (2022)

Live recording from the concert Songs of Asia Minor with Domna Samiou at the Megaron, the Athens Concert Hall, on 8/3/2005.

Based on Simon Karas' recording which belongs to the Association for the Dissemination of Greek National Music.