The cover of Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora by Panayotis League presents us with an early twentieth-century black-and-white photograph of four male musicians. They are clearly assembled in a professional photo studio, staged with a subtle but elegant backdrop, a vase of flowers atop an oriental rug, and a crocheted cloth adorning the table supporting one of the instruments. The men are nattily dressed in suits and sit attentively with crossed legs, looking into the camera. Most striking are their instruments: a violin, a trumpet, a valve trombone, and a santouri, a Greek hammered dulcimer. Clearly this picture, with its juxtaposition of an instrument of the Levant with those of the West, is intended to introduce the reader to a central theme of the book, what author League calls the intercommunality of Eastern and Western ethnicities that was once integral to the Ottoman world, but is now lost.
The Great Catastrophe in the title refers to the devastating consequences of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922. Most significant in Greece’s defeat was the expulsion of approximately 1.5 million Orthodox Christians from Asia Minor and a corresponding expulsion of 500,000 Muslims from Greece. The result is an Anatolian Greek diaspora that was lost and to this day mourns its treasured intercommunality. This text examines the ways Anatolian Greeks memorialize their sense of displacement and loss through the music they perform and the performances they attend.
In the impressively concise, detailed, and comprehensive introduction, League shares his rationale for writing the book and addresses the methodology he employs. He provides the historical context of the Great Catastrophe and its impact on the Anatolian Greek community and introduces the reader to the conceptual lenses, theoretical frameworks, and analytical approaches he will employ in the ethnographic narratives that he presents in the four chapters that follow.
The stories League weaves in these chapters are the true strength of the book. They are personal, meaningful, and touching narratives of events he participated in and observed among diasporic communities on the Greek Island of Lesvos and in Lynn, Massachusetts. Chapter 1 tells of his discovery of a remarkable collection of musical manuscripts that speaks to the intercommunality of diasporic musicians in the United States and Lesvos, and to the musical world of pre-Catastrophe western Asia Minor. Chapter 2 looks at commercial and home audio recordings made after the Catastrophe and how they are utilized in reenacting, remembering, and reifying the culture that was ostensibly lost.
In chapter 3, the author tells of his journey to Lesvos and his significant but challenging engagement with musicians steeped in the music of the Ottoman and Anatolian Greek diasporic worlds. He attends a controversial religious and music festival and struggles to make sense of the tendentiousness of musicians and other actors participating in the event. For readers, his attempt to make sense of all the anger, sadness, conflict, and pride he encounters is wonderfully engaging and insightful.
In chapter 4, the author returns to the United States to participate in three performances of Anatolian Greek music. He tells of how the wide diversity of the venues and audiences at these events challenge his and his fellow musicians’ notions of how to present the music in ways that are honest and faithful to the nature and intent of the tradition and the musicians who nurture it. In the epilogue, League speaks to the continuing importance of Anatolian Greek music to the communities of the diaspora.
Though the stories League tells will be of great interest to students, musicians, scholars, and the Anatolian Greek community, the complex theoretical constructs and analytical models in this work would benefit from more explication and will be a challenge for many readers.
Echoes of the Great Catastrophe is a remarkable and invaluable resource, particularly for scholars engaged in examining the rich and complicated history and culture of the Levant, the nexus of East and West. It is an excellent case study of a music that ponders, interprets, reenacts, and re-sounds otherness, nostalgia, loss, and intercommunality.
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[Review length: 673 words • Review posted on March 4, 2022]