Singing the Spring

Publication on the release of the album Easter Songs, extract

Confronted with the ‘new order’, in which we have lost our life relation and communication with nature (and we pass abruptly from winter to summer), stimuli that reconnect us with the symbols and values of the earth and fertility,  and of communication and reconciliation, are a true gift of life. Traditional societies had wisely laid out the life cycle of people, even the annual cycle, through practices, traditions and ceremonies in which song, music and dance held a dominant position.

Domna Samiou, with deep sensitivity, knowledge and respect forour folk traditions, transmits that feeling, that precious life experience, in a record collection titled Songs in the annual cycle.

This effort, part of the activities of the Greek Folk Music Association which bares her name, started four years ago with a record which created a stir, the Carnival Songs. In the period in-between, Domna Samiou worked indefatigably, trawling Greece to collect material to include in her new production which continues along the annual cycle, her Easter Songs (with the elegant subtitle Songs of Death and Resurrection).     

It is an extremely carefully prepared edition, which includes two CDs, a comprehensive book with the lyrics of the songs, and a detailed analysis of their content and function, by the ethnologists-anthropologists Miranda Terzopoulou and the kinesiologist Zoe Margari. 

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By Lambros Liavas

Translated by Alexander Seferiades