Sophia Vembo ΣΟΦΙΑ ΒΕΜΠΟ
Born 1904 Died 1978
There are only a handful of people whose art finds a permanent place in the hearts of a nation. Sophia Vembo was one of those people. Her characteristic bass voice became as instantly recognizable as the style of so many of her songs. When Greece was called upon to defend itself from an Italian invasion in 1940, she was already a star and just beginning what would be a life-long collaboration and love affair with lyricist Mimis Traioforos (Μιμης Τραϊφόρος). Together they created uplifting patriotic songs like Children of Greece (1940) and nostalgic songs like Athens and Paris London, Budapest Vienna (1943) which would tug the heartstrings of Greeks during the German occupation and long after. Her songs were easy on the ears and many invited you to either tap your feet or sing along. Everyone did just that for most of the 1940s and 1950s. Sophia became a national icon during that period. Mimis Traioforos wrote:
She sang Greece, and all of Greece sang along with her.
Luckily, we still can. Most of her songs can be found on YouTube and the translations into English of many of the lyrics are available on the internet. It is worth seeking these out because you really have to listen to her sing in order to understand her appeal in those traumatic days before, during, and after the Second World War when she literally became ‘the voice of Greece’.
Her Life
Sophia Vembo was born in Gallipoli in eastern Thrace on February 15, 1904. In 1912, her family moved to Constantinople where her sister, Aliki, and brothers Andreas and Giorgos were born. After the agreement to exchange populations between the Greek government and Turkey, the family moved to Thessaly. They were not well off. Sophia finished her schooling in Volos and then worked as a cashier to help the family finances. From a young age, she played the guitar and loved the music of her era with a special affection for Greek folk songs. Her first professional appearance was in Thessaloniki where she had gone to join her brothers. Luckily for her, she had been playing her guitar and singing on the northbound train and impresario Constantinos Tsibas, also a passenger, heard her voice. He invited her to perform at his club the Astoria in Thessaloniki. That was the beginning. In 1933 she moved to Athens and appeared at the Kentrikon Club where, dressed as a gypsy, she sang a tango entitled The Black-eyed Gypsy (Τσιγγάνα Μαυρομάτα).
Sophia in 1933 at the Kentrikon
More work followed. Her popularity rose quickly and many songs began to be written especially for her. She was accompanied by her sister Aliki during these performances. In fact, her siblings were never far from any stage where she performed. The Vembos were a closely knit family and her career was something of a family enterprise. Her brother Giorgos was her manager and her brother Andreas was involved as well.
In 1934, she signed her first contract with Columbia Records. By 1936, she was travelling to Thessaloniki, Alexandria, and Bucharest, all cities with a large Greek presence. Then, in 1937 she played a part in the film The Refugee (Η προσφυγοπούλα), a melodramatic pot boiler in which she played a mother singing to save her child from hunger and who became an immediate success.
Vembo as the refugee mother
She never did become a cinema star (she appeared in only two other films) but you get the feeling watching that early footage that she could have had a film career were it not that she was already becoming a musical phenomenon. Sophia became so popular that Columbia offered her 10 percent of the profits from record sales, an arrangement unheard of in an era when singers were usually paid a flat fee for their recordings. In 1938 Sophia wore a kerchief on stage for the first time, an unusual accessory that nonetheless would become her trademark.
Wherever she appeared people flocked to hear her. Her recordings broke all sales records and her songs were played constantly on the radio even during the Metaxas dictatorship when censorship was rigorous. She gained the soubriquet ‘the people’s songstress’. Had the war not intervened, that accolade might have sufficed for her entire career, but the Italian invasion of Greece in 1940 and a single song raised her to new heights as the ‘Singer of Victory’ (Τραγουδίστρια της Νίκης).
The Italian Invasion
When the Italians attacked on October 28, the country immediately united against the invasion. The theatre where she was appearing changed its programming to help the war effort. Sophia who had just begun working with the much younger lyricist Mimis Traioforos, asked him to create patriotic lyrics to a popular melody by Michalis Souyioul. Their relationship was always a stormy one and, when Sophia made her request, they had not been on speaking terms. Mimis reportedly riposted with, That’s the first time I have seen the gods asking for help from mortals!
Sophia and Mimis
Still, he wrote the lyrics of Children of Greece. Sophia was so pleased with the final result that she kissed him, and only insisted on one change towards the end of the song. In an echo of the famous Spartan exhortation, “come back with your shield or on it”, Mimis had written, If you do not come victorious, do not come at all. Sophia thought that too harsh and insisted he change it to, With victory laurels, children, we are waiting for you.
The song, sung in a slow tempo, begins with these words:
Around the streets the mothers wander and seek to see their children who had sworn to win when they'd parted at the station. But, about those who have gone and glory embraces them, let us be happy, let not one of you ever cry, let her cauterize her very pain, and let us send this blessing:
Children, children of Greece, who are harshly fighting on the mountains,
Children, to the sweet Virgin Mary we are all praying for you to come back.
(See https://www.greeksongs-greekmusic.com/sofia-vempo/YouTube).
Children of Greece became the unofficial anthem for the soldiers fighting on the Albanian Front and the song by which she is most remembered. It is still sung on October 28, the day Greece commemorates the nation’s unequivocal ‘No’ to Mussolini.
Mimis, Sophia, and many others collaborated on satirical songs for the war effort. A typical example is The Duce puts on his Uniform (Βάζει ο Ντούτσε τη στολή του:
The Duce puts on his uniform and his high cap with all the feathers and, one moonlit night he is going to take Greece. Well, poor devil! Our Evzone, brave man, he’ll encounter in the mountains and he’ll be a trouble to master Macaroni!
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3wsCLJ5ePc)
So many came to hear Vembo sing that the theatre sent half of its earnings to the front. Vembo herself donated 2,000 gold liras to the Greek Navy. Realizing the psychological importance of her contribution to national morale, the General Staff of the army ordered her recordings to be sent to all units on the front lines.
The German Invasion and the Escape to the Middle East
In April 1941, the war entered its darkest phase when Germany invaded. The Germans and Italians were all too aware of her value to the nation’s morale and she was first subjected to anonymous threats, one being that ‘they’ would smash her face so she could not appear on stage. She was interrogated at Gestapo headquarters, imprisoned for a time, and forced to sign a letter promising that she would not sing patriotic songs. The Italian authorities even forbade her to sing Athens and Again Athens. This song in praise of the city and its people was regarded as subversive. In fact, it probably was, in the context of the occupation:
My Athens, how to tell you that I love you like my
mother and even much more.
And when I will be tired from the life I would like to be buried in Athens In
your ground ...In your sweet evenings when the silver nets of the moon take
me and the violet sunsets which in
another place I haven't seen let never die... All our sweet country in your
hands, my Athens was built. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoKKitb40jQ ):
Sophia was not allowed to wear her trademark kerchief, her professional licence was revoked, her recordings destroyed, and her name censored in the press. She did the only thing left for her to do; she and her family escaped, finally ending up in Egypt where she resided for the next three years and continued to help the war effort by giving performances for the troops.
Sophia with troops in the Middle East
With her sister Aliki
In 1943, when victory was conceivable, Mimis would write one of her trademark songs – another paean to Athens along the lines of Athens and Again Athens. Its title was London, Paris, Vienna and the lyrics can still bring a lump to the throat:
Wherever I go, my mind is constantly wandering
Back to the alleys of Athens and to its taverns;
And every night, staggering in the dark,
My soul is drunk with jasmine.
London, Paris, New York, Budapest, Vienna.
Before Athens, none of you hold a candle
Because her aprons are always full of roses
And white lace wraps around her shores.
Imagine the effect of these words on war weary soldiers in 1943, so far from
home. Mimis reportedly told Sophia, This is the song of our lifetime!
It became a symbol of longing for home for all Greek expats long after the war had ended.
The album cover
After the War
Sophia returned to Greece when the war was over but then left for America where, among many other engagements, she sang to a full house at Carnegie Hall. Her stay in America lasted from 1947 to 1949 therefore missing the worst of the Greek civil war and the controversies it evoked. She could have spent the rest of her career singing to welcoming Greek communities abroad but she longed to return saying, Greece has created me and I want to return to it; I want to end my career in the place that gave me everything – and more.
Upon her return, she founded the successful Bembo Summer Theatre in Metaxougio on June 18, 1950. The theatre still bears her name.
In 1955, she appeared in the film Stella playing Maria, the proprietor of the Paradise Club where Stella (played by Melina Mercouri) sang.
Sophia as Maria. Of course she sang too.
She would appear in one other film, a satire, in 1858: Poverty and Aristocracy, Stournaris 288.
Her Private Life
Sophia would have been in her fifties.
In 1957, she and Mimis finally married. They had been engaged since 1943. Her family had been dead against the marriage and not just because he was 12 years younger. (She was born in 1904 but her official birthday was given as 1910). As a couple they could not live together without clashes, but were apparently also miserable apart. Friends would describe how they argued and Mimis would often leave their flat just after Sophia arrived back from a tour until she left again. Αrtists who worked with them claimed her jealousy was not without cause and her constant suspicions sometimes made her combative. There was the famous incident where she struck the actress Speranza Vana in public.... She was a diva, after all.
And yet, after their marriage they adopted Haido, one of the eight children of the caretakers of their apartment building. Haido had been a tiny bridesmaid at their wedding. Apparently, this child was a special favourite of Sophia’s mother, Penelope, and she often spent time in their flat, escaping the poverty and hunger that was her family’s lot downstairs. Penelope suggested to Sophia that adopting this young child would save her from a life of poverty and provide company for her in her old age. Perhaps the trauma of separation from her genetic family along with becoming a witness to a troubled marriage and the depression and drinking that sometimes resulted was not the best recipe for the young Haido, but the adoption was formalized.(1)
Sophia and the Junta
During her life, Sophia would face one more dictator, this time a Greek, when the Junta took over in Greece in 1967. According to one of the Kalouta sisters who performed with them at this time at their theatre, Mimis had written songs satirizing the Junta. The colonels ordered them to cease and desist but they did not, with the result that the Junta’s Security Force closed down the Vembo theatre for a time. Sophia was defiant: I wasn’t afraid of El Duce. I wasn’t afraid of Hitler. Is it likely that I should be afraid of my own people?
She apparently marched into the office of the then minister of the Interior, Stelianos Pattakos, and threw her coat over his head!
She did eventually participate in some Junta events, singing her famous Children of Greece song. Still, Sophia was always Sophia. On the night of the now infamous polytechnic uprising, she opened her house to fleeing students and would not turn them over to the police who knocked on her door, saying to them, I would do the same for you.
Sophia watching the Polytechnic debacle from her balcony
Sophia was in her sixties. Tastes had changed and people were listening to other sorts of music. She was perhaps not ready for new trends. By 1970, she had retired.
In an interview with Freddy Germanos a year before she died
She died suddenly of a stroke on March 11, 1978. Her funeral was massive; the public still saw her as a beloved heroine, their Victory Singer. In spite of the fact that many had criticized her for not taking sides during the Greek civil war, Manos Katrakis a well known leftist actor was one of those who followed her casket to its last resting place in the First Cemetery. With her songs and her talent, she had risen above the deep rifts still existing in Greek political life.
On her grave, Mimis engraved the following: My steadfast Sophia, your glory is so great that it can never rise higher and your soul has risen so high from your body that you are no longer earth, My Sophia, you are sky. With such an epitaph, no wonder she is smiling for eternity:
Section 4, Number 220
The Map
Footnotes
(1) Haido led a very unhappy life, seemingly unable to cope. She died an alcoholic at the age of 71. Her body was unclaimed at first but the city intervened because of her famous step mother and paid for her burial. Haido once said of Bembo: I did whatever she wanted. She was a very good person, but authoritarian; but she would give you her underpants if she thought you were OK.
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