In this talk, Professor Panayotis League explores the legacy of the “Great Catastrophe”—the death and expulsion from Turkey of 1.5 million Greek Christians following the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922—through the music and dance practices of Greek refugees and their descendants over the last one hundred years. Drawing on original ethnographic research conducted in Greece (on the island of Lesvos in particular) and in the Greater Boston area, Dr. League will analyze handwritten music manuscripts, homemade audio recordings, and contemporary live performances, tracing the routes of repertoire and style over generations and back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean and investigating ways that the particular musical traditions of the Anatolian Greek community have contributed to their understanding of their place in the global Greek diaspora and the wider post-Ottoman world.

The lecture will be followed by a concert drawing on Dr. League‘s lifelong immersion in Greek traditions, exploring intertextual relationships between songs from the Greek Aegean islands and associated poetry, performed on laouto (steel-string lute), guitar, and tsambouna (goatskin bagpipe).

Panayotis (Paddy) League (Professor of Musicology & Director of the Center for Music of the Americas, Florida State University) is a musicologist, author, performer, and composer specializing in the traditional music, dance, and oral poetry of the Greek islands, Brazil, and Ireland – as well as the electric guitar music of the American South. His research has been published in several leading academic journals and his first monograph, Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-Sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora, which focuses on the legacy of Late Ottoman intercommunality in the music and dance practices of Greek refugees and their descendants, was published in 2021 by University of Michigan Press.

Information for attendees:

UCLA Faculty, Students and Staff must complete the Daily Symptom Monitoring Survey in advance of coming to campus.

Masks are highly recommended, but not required, for all guests attending indoor events. Those attending events on campus (and who are not third-party contractors or specifically invited guests) are required to wear masks at all times at indoor events if they are not up to date on their COVID-19 vaccinations (including boosters).

Parking:
Guests may park in self-service pay station areas in parking structure 2, located near the corner of Hilgard and Westholme Avenues on the east side of campus.  For additional information about accessible parking, additional structures, and a campus map, visit https://ucla.app.box.com/s/n49sussjcbo6e9s1ljs9j9icc053mqaq

For questions, please contact us by email at hellenic@humnet.ucla.edu.