Publication on the concert in honor of Samuel Baud-Bovy in Geneva in 1988 (extract).
Under a sky lit by the full moon people crowd to overflowing the raised tent. There are smells of fried food, the noise of chatting diners. Can it be a wedding?
In spite of the retsina and the mousaka enjoyed by some of those present, it is not a wedding. It is the second concert of Greek Folk Music given as a tribute to the memory of Samuel Baud-Bovy, in the annex of the Ethnographic Museum, in Conches.
In the soft evening air the musicians tune their instruments. Under the tent the temperature is reminiscent of Greece itself. Domna Samiou appears. A small woman that one guesses to be generous, she has a handsome energetic face with eyes sparkling with life.
She is not a figure from an ancient tragedy. She is a person of flesh and blood who, with joy and seriousness, simultaneously expresses the Greece of the simple, common people, the Greece of the thousand-year-old and the present, the Greece of the East and the Greece of the West.
Her deep voice circuits from body to heart making people beat time clapping and swaying and calling out joyfully.
Whether she be singing wedding songs or songs of homesickness and leave-taking, her voice is always without affectation, commanding perfect technique.
Constantly accompanied by inspired musicians – among whom the one who plays the clarinet and the oud stands out – full of passion, Domna Samiou proved to us that authentic folk music has the same relationship with the folklore of the Club Méditerranée as the flames of a fire have with electric light.
[…]
