In love: performances of the (post)political

The article discusses the dissensual ontology of the Greek popular musician-poetsinger YiannisAngelakas and the emergence of 'counterpublics', as theorized by Michael Warner, in the regime of musical performance. It focuses upon an ethnographically-grounded discussion of the ongoing successful remediations of the song “De horas pouthena” (You don't fit anywhere), which are explored as sensibilities of disagreement disputing the 'distribution of the sensible' in Jacques Rancière's terms. “De horas pouthena” voices a self-exiled form of subjectification regulated within and against the crisis of democracy―an ontology of “not-fitting-in” materializing utopian notions of civility within the affective economies of its punkrock aesthetics. Angelakas' musical dissensus is also discursively explored in the memory-work of his life-story relationally produced in the context of the ethnographic encounter. Τhe discussion is further elaborated through the discussion of the song 'Airetiko' (Heretic) and the performative emergence of affective counterpublics objecting disciplinary mechanisms of subjectification in the public sphere.

Studies in Eastern European Cinema, 2018

In the 1990s Poland, a young generation of musicians attempted to reinvent jazz in a spirit of playful experimentation. Miłość, meaning ‘love’, was one of the pivotal bands in this movement, which came to be known as yass. Filip Dzierżawski’s documentary of the same title offers a candid look on the intimate and difficult relations between Miłość’s musicians, as they discuss a possible reunion in 2008. As such, it provides an opportunity to reflect on how the emotional bond that connects them impacts their music and their capacity to play together. Therefore, in this paper, I employ affect theory to provide a rereading of the film’s plot and audiovisual content. Specifically, I argue that through its combination of archival footage, interviews, and depiction of real-time interaction during the band’s rehearsal, Dzierżawski’s documentary encourages us to think of music making in terms of affect, that is, as emerging from intensive relations between different entities as they come into contact and undergo a series of transformations in their capacities to affect and be affected by each other and their environment.

2015

Rast Musicology Journal, 2019

After the interaction of Turkish maqam (tune) music elements with arabesque tunes and popular music types after 1960s, the combination of lyrics, composition and performance were moved to different dimensions and significant transformations in terms of music were experienced in the second half of the 20th century. In the music history of Turkey, each period, which can be separately categorized into 1960s, 1980s and 1990s, determined its own actors representing different musical elements it contains. From the recording technologies used in records, cassettes and CDs to composition techniques, and from preferred instruments and performing techniques to visual elements, musical periods fed from different sources emerged. Zeki Müren, Orhan Gencebay and Sezen Aksu, whom Martin Stokes masterfully chose to include in his book published in 2010 TheRepublic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music (Aşk Cumhuriyeti: Türk Popüler Müziğinde Kültürel Mahrem)1 with their common characteristics of lyrics writer, composer and soloist, are among the important representatives of the mentioned periods. This abstract, written for the purpose of promoting the book, examines the conceptualization of these iconic artists selected as period representatives.

Journal of Inclusive Methodology and Technology in Learning and Teaching, vol. 4, fasc. 4, 2024

In Apocalittici e integrati Eco laid the foundations not only for a pedagogy of mass technological consumption, but also for a pedagogy of the Italian song. This aspect, although little explored in the following sixty years, nevertheless seems to have left some traces in Italian popular music studies. In this field in fact several of Eco's concepts, such as the axiology between the consumer song and the different song, the emotional function of songs and the discursive function of performers, have been taken up through new perspectives and defunctionalized as analytical elements. The scholar's merit is thus to have provided a pedagogical-mediological key valid in any media system to objects such as songs and performers. These two elements, as cultural constructs, once conveyed in the media system in a mediated form, urge the identity substrates individual and collective, and stimulate re-appropriative processes that interpellate dynamics of distinction due to various factors. His epistemological model thus proves to be topical even today, and his research trajectories can be applied in a mediological and educational key in order to understand certain media and consumption logics even of today's digital soundscapes, to stimulate conscious listening by the new generations, and finally to reflect on the use of song as an inclusive and educational vehicle for sharing values and behavior.

New Sound

Considering that "music of resistance" is the expression of the dialectic relation between society and history as well as the reflection of the ideological and intellectual position of the creator-interpreter in the face of social and historical reality, the aim of this paper is: a) to present the social-political context which inspired Fernando Lopes-Graça and Mikis Theodorakis, to be creative, b) to highlight how their ideology is expressed in their musical and literary works and c) to reveal the 'epic character' of their music through a music-poetical analysis of the Cançôes Herôicas of F.L. Graça and of the Trauoûbt toû Ayœva of M. Theodorakis.

Popular Music Worlds, Popular Music Histories, 2009

In Greece, one of the consequences of the World War II was the onset of the Civil War. Conflict between the Right and Left wing parties was running high. Having been defeated the leftists were obliged to go into exile; among them was the Greek composer, politician and philosopher Mikis Theodorakis. However, his exile did not prevent him from continuing his musical and political activities. On the contrary, he was very productive and composed many musical works, such as “The Songs of Exile A’”, the “First Symphony” etc., during his incarceration. In 1949, after the end of the Civil War, he was liberated but his fate was to reserve for him a new period of exile. Almost twenty years later, during the Dictatorship of Colonels (1967-1974), his lack of freedom made his will to struggle stronger and so, he composed new musical works, among them: “The Songs of Exile B’”, “The Songs of the Struggle”, “The Sun and the Time”, the last one based on his own poetry. The aim of this paper is firstly, to examine the general historical and social context and the specific conditions which gave birth to these musical works of Mikis Theodorakis, and secondly, to highlight, through a specific poetical and musical analysis (prosody, melody, rhythm, harmony…), their diachronic value.

Crimson Publishers, 2023

The concept of the popular in Greek indigenous contexts and mediaesthetics resonates with the notion of ‘laiko’. The notion of laiko conveys a combination of working class and provincial elements and intersects urban and rural boundaries. Very often this notion takes the form of a music idiom describing the laiko subject deriving from the genre of ‘laiki’ music often performed with a stringed music instrument called bouzouki while its cultural meanings and aesthetics stem from a Turkish colonized past and the orient (e.g. rebetiko). Contemporary laiki music is usually performed in laika night venues such as ellinadika night clubs and pistes (or bouzoukia). What is more, in these environments traditional masculinities and femininities are privileged and performed while sexist, homophobic and heteronormative narratives circulate and reproduce heteropatriarchal, phallocentric and ethnocentric norms. This article analyses the incarnations of laiko and pop music in Greece by queer performers belonging in the Greek LGBTQ+ communities and the drag and ballroom underground scenes who use them in frameworks of alternative music and club entertainment to deconstruct and subvert existing patriarchic and conservative national and religious narratives as well as gender conforming binaries. These queer groups are influenced by female and queer Greek, British and American pop music icons and amalgamate laiko, rap, pop, EDM and EBM qualities to produce drag outcomes and performances. Thus, the article designates the emergent possibilities of an alternative modality of the Greek “popular” and its power for queering and agonistic carnivalesque.

Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 2009