Domna Samiou (Greek: Δόμνα Σαμίου; 12 October 1928 – 10 March 2012) was a prominent Greek researcher and performer of Greek folk music. Her parents were refugees from a village near Smyrna (Izmir, Turkey). During her childhood years she lived the harsh life of a refugee. At the age of thirteen, she also began to receive her first formal musical training from Simon Karas at the Association for the Dissemination of National Music, where she was tutored in Byzantine and Folk music, as well as being introduced to the idea of music field research. Her first professional collaboration with the National Radio Foundation (E.I.R.) started in 1954 and in 1963 she started touring the countryside independently, to record music for the archive she was establishing, using her own means and equipment. The Domna Samiou Archive includes more than 3000 songs and tunes from villages, settlements and towns of the Greek territory. In 1974 she started her collaboration with the Columbia record company, which resulted in a number of LPs being produced over the next years. In her work she has collaborated with the most renowned Greek and foreign musicians, musicologists and ethnomusicologists. In 1981 the Domna Samiou Greek Folk Music Association was founded to preserve and promote Greek traditional music and allow for the production of records and the organisation of musical events to the highest standards, free from the demands of commercial record companies.See also www.domnasamiou.gr