![]() ![]() Few of the emigrants had the musical literacy of Kereakoglow, whose transcriptions, some of which are reproduced in League's book, are a joy to behold, but recordings, rough notations, and regular performances nevertheless kept the Anatolian musical tradition vibrant even when traditional instruments were hard to find. The performers League introduces, musicians-especially the remarkable Konstantine Kereakoglow and his descendants-who lovingly transcribed and performed the Anatolian Greek music of their or their ancestors' youth, treasured the music they had learned and through it they listened to another time and place. Pain, longing, and sweetness are blended in a remarkable expression of nostalgia that satisfies at the same time as it reminds the listener of loss. In the Anatolian Greek musical tradition, the despairing lyrics of an amane, for example, are always balanced by the beauty and skill of the singer's improvisation. It suggests that the pain of loss or exile may be accompanied by something sweet, a longing for a place or time that is out of reach but might possibly be retrieved. Music and dance, like food and drink, were a means to keep that lost, pluralistic world of western Anatolia alive. The trauma of their uprooting from Smyrna, Aivali, and other centers of Ottoman Greek life, especially the island of Lesvos, not only marked these immigrants for the rest of their lives but touched their children's and grandchildren's lives as well. As forced emigrants who entered the recently established Greek state or traveled to America or Australia where they joined the broader Greek diaspora, they remained outsiders in their new homes. Encouraging his subjects to talk at length about their families and their music-making, League makes a strong case for his belief that the diaspora Greeks and other minorities who lived in the cities of western Anatolia before 1922 continue to be nostalgic for a world of "Ottoman intercommunality" where they felt as if they belonged. ![]() This is a musician's book, filled with the pleasures of performing and of listening to musicians tell their stories. It is League's conversations with these musicians, some of them three generations removed from the catastrophe that marked the end of the Greek presence in Asia Minor, and his experience performing with them that form the core of Echoes of the Great Catastrophe. Panayotis League does not neglect theory, but he presents his theoretical framework succinctly and swiftly and then leads us into a fascinating world of music and of musicians-especially Anatolian Greeks-who are engaged in preserving and performing the music of the former Ottoman Empire. So often books based on an author's doctoral dissertation require wading through a thicket of theory before you get to a clearing where the real story begins. ![]()
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