Few people know that in Thessaloniki, on the seaside L. Nikis, where today the Garcon Brasserie is housed, first appeared in 1933 Sophia Vembo, in the entertainment center “Astoria B” at the time, opening a path that would lead her to become the voice of Greece in the war of the 1940s.
There, at the corner with Agia Sophia, a marble inscription will be placed that will say “This is where the “Singer of Victory” Sofia Vembo began her singing career in 1933″, so that the people of Peratsia can learn the history and heritage of this neoclassical building.
The revelations were made yesterday, on October 28, by the Deputy Minister of the Interior (responsible for Macedonia – Thrace) Kostas Giulekas at an event held inside the Garcon.
Mr. Giulekas spoke to the audience about how Vembo found herself in Thessaloniki and how she started singing, revealing unknown stories about her and her playwright and husband, Mimi Traiforos.
The story behind Niki’s voice
As Kostas Giulekas recounted, Sofia Vembo came to Thessaloniki in 1933, by ship from Volos, to find work and help her family financially. There, on the railing, she sang for fun, strumming her guitar. Among the passengers was the artistic impresario Kostas Tsimbas, who asked her if she would like to pursue singing professionally. She, considering it flirting, threw his card into the sea.
A few days later, fate brought them face to face again on the main street of Thessaloniki. Accompanied then by her brother, Vembo agreed to listen to him. The tempting daily wage and the need to survive convinced her to overcome the social qualms of the time. Thus, she appeared at Astoria II, where she immediately impressed the audience and began the journey that would turn her into “the voice of a nation.”
Tsimbas soon promoted her to Athens and the record label Columbia, where she recorded her first album and almost immediately became known throughout Greece.
The song that became a legend
In 1940, when the Greco-Italian war broke out, Sofia Vembo was already an accomplished singer. At the “Montial” theater he knows Mimi Traiforos better, with whom they had a mutual dislike. When she asks him to write her a war song based on the melody of her pre-war love song “Zechra” by Michalis Soyoul, Traiforos creates “Children of Greece children” that very day, the song that will forever be associated with the national anniversary.
Vembo, although moved by reading the lyrics, disagreed with the point that Traiforos wrote “if you don’t come victorious, never come back”. “He told him “this is too harsh, I can’t say it” and he promised to soften it by replacing it with “with the branches of victory we await you guys”, noted the deputy minister.
From the same paper, he performed the song for the first time that night, returning to the stage even though the show was over, with Soyul himself at the piano. When one of the amputees wounded in the war told her that when he listens to her he feels no pain, Vembo burst into tears and could not continue. Then, Soyul played the national anthem and the entire theater stood up and sang along.
With the occupation of the country by the Germans, Sofia Vembo was arrested for singing satirical and insulting songs about the Italian nation.
Her work permit was revoked and she was banned from public appearances. “One night while returning home, in a corner was the artistic impresario who discovered her and beat her saying “to learn to discredit Mussolini”. He was, after all, a partner of the Germans,” said Mr. Giulekas, shocking the audience.
Source :Skai
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