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Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora

2023; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 136; Issue: 539 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5406/15351882.136.539.11

1535-1882

Tina Bucuvalas,

Diaspora, migration, transnational identity

Rarely does there emerge an ethnographer whose description and analysis strike so close to the beating heart of the topic that readers palpably experience its beauty and pain. Panayotis League is such a writer. In Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora, League explores the ways that musical traditions from the island of Lesvos have reflected and mediated shifting identities both in Lesvos and in its diaspora. In the process, he touches upon the essence of diaspora—to be exiled from what is perceived as home and thus impelled to constantly re-create it.From the late 1880s to the early 1920s, almost 500,000 Greeks emigrated to the United States. Most left because of agricultural failures and an economy overburdened with refugees from the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) and Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922)—the latter precipitated by the Megali Idea (Great Idea) of uniting Greek populations in Asia Minor and elsewhere with the Greek nation-state. But Greek forces were defeated, climaxing with the tragic burning of Smyrna and the death or dispersal of its large population of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne mandated a population exchange of 1.5 million Orthodox Christians from Anatolia with 350,000 Greek Muslims—increasing Greece's population by 25 percent. It was a humanitarian disaster, with the newcomers—most of whom had never previously seen Greece—often living in desperate circumstances. This Megali Katastrofi (Great Catastrophe) had long-term economic and social effects. It also enormously impacted Greek music by gradually incorporating Anatolian music into the repertoire, integrating talented refugee musicians into the music scene, and creating powerful new synthetic forms, such as rebetika.In Asia Minor, Greeks were among many groups inhabiting the sprawling Ottoman Empire. Socially and musically, they mediated creatively and daily between Greek, Turkish, and other cultures. As League discerns, “unlike the independent Greek state that had emerged in the nineteenth century, Anatolian Greeks defined their Greekness not in opposition to ethnonationalist Others, such as Turks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, and the like, but rather in relation to them” (p. 10). Because the population of the Aegean Island of Lesvos, near Turkey, has long been predominantly Anatolian, newly arrived refugees found many social and business ties. Other refugees emigrated directly to America, joining communities previously established by their Anatolian Greek compatriots and easily adapting to the multicultural milieu.League primarily sought to interrogate how members of the transnational Anatolian Greek diaspora performed, embodied, and negotiated their music and dance traditions. To that end, he conducted research in the Lesvian community near Boston and in several villages on Lesvos. League's friendships within the diaspora community and performances with a band specializing in its music, as well as the discovery of historical manuscripts and recordings collections, facilitated his research. Although League's Greek regional affiliation is not with Lesvos, he—as a musician performing the community repertoire with Lesvian colleagues—had liminal status as both outsider and insider.In his introduction, League chronicles his methods and motivations, as well as crucial information on the sociopolitical context of the Anatolian Greek community, history of the Great Catastrophe, and decline of the Ottoman world. League perceives the group's beliefs about itself as “founded on the dynamic copresence of the pluralistic Ottoman world in which it originated, and the traumatic event, the Great Catastrophe of 1922, that resulted in that world's definitive end” (p. 26). He then delves into concepts deployed throughout the book, while consciously endeavoring to move beyond a single disciplinary tradition by applying theories drawn from ethnomusicology, anthropology, classical philology, literary criticism, sound, and media studies—resulting in a work that has utility in many fields.Core concepts include the nature of Anatolian Greekness; intercommunality, or maintenance of harmonious relationships among diverse groups; diaspora; and mimesis. In the latter, social and musical activities functionLeague's discussion of the ways that the diaspora relates to the homeland is illuminating, ranging from attachment to its current reality to attachment to a past homeland no longer physically attainable, but which imagination and practice may enact. And music was a central way to attain, negotiate, and enact the homeland.League subsequently teases out the core concepts via case studies of music performed by Anatolian Lesvians in different times and places. The first two chapters examine informal archives of manuscripts and audio recordings brought from Lesvos to Lynn, Massachusetts, or created in the United States. The third chapter focuses on social and musical perspectives verbalized by musicians and dramatized in a festival on Lesvos. Finally, League chronicles his experiences performing with diaspora musicians and the way different contexts shape the narrative communicated to audiences. Poignantly, he finds that “in their interactions with the music that bears the records of their past, they historicize and personalize memories awakened by sensory experience, recomposed through the performative process of mimesis, and carried along on the never-ending journey toward a home that is forever present and forever just out of reach” (p. 97).As a public folklorist who applies a more pragmatic approach to the documentation and interpretation of traditional culture, I cannot fully evaluate the theoretical models. However, League ably documents the musicians and their communities and relates them to the core concepts via a series of universally engaging vignettes detailing his encounters and conversations. I find these personal recollections not only more interesting, but generally more reliable than the pretense of a removed and “objective” stance. Moreover, the author acknowledges the tension between the objective and subjective: “I also strive to contextualize and critically reflect on my biases. After all, I am no omnipotent, objective narrator: I too am a character in this story, both minor and central” (p. 6).Overall, Echoes of the Great Catastrophe is an important addition to the discourse about the Greek diaspora. As such, it contributes to modern Greek studies, ethnomusicology, folklore, cultural anthropology, or any discipline that values integrated studies of cultural communities. Moreover, the exceptional writing and inside/outside perspective revealed through vignettes make it a pleasure to read.