Lecture 50: The Peregrinations of a Princess: Urban Popular Music of the 20th Century in the Network of Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the South-Eastern Mediterranean
With Nikos Ordoulidis

The Promiscuous World of Jewish Music Series
DATE: Monday, June 7
TIME: 11am California/2pm Eastern/7pm London, 8pm/Paris, 9pm Tel Aviv. There is a Zoom limit of 100 participants.
Length: 1 - 2 hours.

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Around June, 1936, ‘I want a princess’ by Panagiotis Tountas, is recorded, constituting one of the most emblematic and timeless favourites of the rebetiko. Tountas recorded it three years earlier, with a different title, different lyrics and a different introduction. The very same melody was recorded in 1910 by Jews in Lithuania, in 1927 in Serbia, even in Romania, America and elsewhere. This presentation follows the path of this melody in historical discography, focusing on and studying 20 of its recordings. Through the examination of the discography, an effort is made to construct a model for the (more than a few) wandering melodies, examining various historical, social and cultural elements of the places that convey them, in order to highlight the appropriation, from the aspect of the musicians, but also the open nature of cultural borders.
Nikos Ordoulidis is an Academic Scholar and Lecturer
Department of Music Studies, University of Ioannina
This project has been made made possible in part by a grant from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, in partnership with the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Grants for the Arts, and The California Endowment.