Rena Koumioti: The voice of the Greek New Wave is silent

Somehow, even before her name became well-known, Rena Koumiotis, who passed away at the age of 82, became part of the history of Greek music. Her voice, this wonderful voice, which uniquely combined popularity and emotion, found, early on, the ideal "Path" to reach the world. And he immediately embraced her, giving her a place among the leading performers of the New Wave era.

There could not be more luck for the girl who was born in Nea Ionia and grew up in Kokkinia without a mother, whom she lost when she was only 7 years old. The personal tragedies that marked her life came too early. Her father and grandmother did everything they could to fill the great, irreplaceable void of the mother. She and her two siblings were raised with few comforts but with lots of love

At school, little Rena realized that she was singing correctly. Sometimes, in fact, she took a hairbrush, "christened" it a microphone and stood in front of the mirror singing. An indomitable force has been driving her ever since to what she was born to do, singing

Her first opportunity came through a friend of hers, working at Finos Film, who introduced her to Tassos Schorelis who was selecting new voices and giving them the opportunity to sing in front of an audience. Her first opportunity was "Apanemia", in Plaka, where the creators of "Dromou" discovered her. In addition to the enormous success of the record, which has exceeded 3 million sales, "Dromos" was also made into a musical performance, in 1970, at the "Katina Paxinou" theater. The success was huge, people formed queues every night at the same time as the Junta censorship banned the State Radio from playing "Statue" and "Sunday Dawn". 

Despite this, Rena Koumiotis' musical "Road" was now wide open. In the following years he will become one of the most characteristic voices of the New Wave and will record more than 200 songs. Among them are "Stop the hands of the clock", "Light my new moon", "Sea clover", "Daughter of the sea", "Our candle has gone out", "My Saint Demetrius, my Thessaloniki", "Talk to me about freedom »

In the same period, she appears in the biggest nightclubs of the time, from "Athinaia" and "Deilina" to "Fantasia" and "Can Can" and collaborates with great names of Greek music including Grigoris Bithikotsis, Giorgos Zambetas , Stratos Dionysiou, Stamatis Kokotas, Yiannis Poulopoulos, Lefteris Mytilinaios, George Dalaras.

In the mid-70s, having already made a marriage that would not last long, she met her second husband in Canada, where he had gone to sing. She will stay there for almost a whole decade to return, in 1983, to where it all began, in Plaka, in the legendary "Zygos" bar, and to sing, once more, with her performing alter ego, the one and only Yannis Poulopoulos.

However, although luck smiled on her professionally, the same did not happen with her personal life. Because in addition to the premature loss of her mother, she was about to experience, a few years ago, the unspeakable pain of a mother who loses her child when her first-born son suddenly passed away after suffering a heart attack. Somewhere there it seems that "the hands of the clock stopped" for the performer with the voice that carried, through time, giftedness, sweetness but also a permanent invisible melancholy.