The Music Of Time
Sign in to watch this content please.
- Episode
- After The Ottomans
- Broadcast Info
- 2017 (50 mins)
- Description
- How the music of the dying Ottoman Empire was reborn and reinvented in the United States. Between 1895 and 1923, as the empire was unraveling, several hundred thousand Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Jews and Turks emigrated to America from the Eastern Mediterranean, bringing their music with them. In cosmopolitan Ottoman cities like Smyrna and Constantinople, these groups had all played and listened to music together. When war, expulsions and massacres tore their world apart, music helped them preserve their culture and their memories-and, in some cases, to make a living. The Ottoman migration to America coincided with the birth of the phonograph industry and its discovery of a lucrative ‘ethnic’ market. That in turn helped to nurture a lively nightclub scene on Manhattan’s Eight Avenue, where skillful Ottoman musicians and sinuous belly dancers pulled in the late-night crowds into the 1980s. As European-style national states took the place of the old multiethnic empire, the old ‘oriental’ music was often frowned upon or even suppressed back home. But it continued to thrive in the diaspora, which preserved songs and styles that would otherwise have been lost. What happened to the music once it was transplanted? What did it mean to the emigrants, and to the generations that followed? How has it helped to hold their communities together? Maria Margaronis traces the story of those Ottoman musicians, and explores the mysterious power of their makam-based music, which binds together joy and sorrow, spiritual longing and sensual desire. She spins old 78s with Ellis Island discographer Eric Byron, goes in search of the sound of Manhattan’s Greektown with researcher Ian Nagoski, and hears from Armenian father and son Onnik and Ara Dinkjian how they took the lost songs of Diyarbakir back home. And she finds out how the music changed in America, blending with indigenous forms like blues and jazz. This is one of a series of 6 programmes which examine the interactions between music, identity and social change at key points in history.
- Genre
- History; Social Science; Music
How to cite this record
The Open University, "The Music Of Time". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/229128 (Accessed 24 Nov 2025)