Seminar #3

12 November 2024 | 2:00-4:00pm on Zoom &
in Lecture Room 1, Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge

Panagiotis C. Poulos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)
“Intercommunal Musical Geographies of Late Ottoman Istanbul: Critical Remarks on Sonic Mapping”

Intercommunal musical geographies of late Ottoman Istanbul (InterMusiG) is a research project that maps and analyses the fields of intercommunal musical interaction and/or exclusion in late Ottoman Istanbul. It focuses on informal modes of sociality, spaces of public musical performance and the field of music publishing, in order to illuminate the collective networks and individual itineraries within the shifting urban environment of late Ottoman Istanbul that constituted and sustained intercommunal musical relations. The first part of this talk will offer an overview of InterMusiG research project focusing primarily on the conceptual models of its central database, the sources and resources used, and its mapping applications. The second part will focus exclusively on sonic mapping and address the methodologies and theoretical challenges posed by the performative aspect of music sociality and creativity in the mapping process. This part draws examples from urban music in late Ottoman Istanbul featured in InterMusiG and aims to foreground the limitations of current mapping practices and to discuss alternative methodologies.

Panagiotis C. Poulos (BA, PhD SOAS, University of London) is Assistant Professor in Ethnomusicology at the Department of Music Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His research centres on the musical traditions of the Middle East, the cultural history of late Ottoman and Turkish music and arts, and the history of everyday life in Ottoman cities. He is author of Music in the Islamic World: Sources, Perspectives, Practices (2015, e-book), and co-editor of Ottoman Intimacies, Balkan Musical Realities (2013, with A. Theodosiou & R. P. Pennanen) and of Ottoman Monuments in Greece: Heritages under Negotiation (2023, with E. Kolovos and G. Pallis). Panagiotis C. Poulos is the principal investigator of the research project Intercommunal musical geographies of late Ottoman Istanbul (Hellenic Foundation of Research and Innovation, 2019-2022) and scientific director (with E. Kolovos) of the research project “Histories, Spaces and Heritages at the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Greek state” (École française d’Athènes 2017-2021).