Nicoletta Demetriou CAARI lecture

The Cypriot Fiddler: An oral history of traditional music-making in Cyprus in the twentieth century
In mid-twentieth-century Cyprus, weddings and festivals were filled with the sounds of the island’s traditional musicians: violarides or fiddlers. With the passing of time and the changes in Cyprus’ political and cultural landscape, this class of musicians slowly died out. Even though the fiddlers’ music had to a large extent been recorded (in sound and in transcriptions), their life stories had, until recently, not had the same fate. The Cypriot Fiddler has done precisely that: it has recorded the life stories of the last traditional fiddlers on both sides of the Cypriot divide, and presented them both in a book, and in a documentary. This talk will focus on how The Cypriot Fiddler came to be, as well as on what the fieldwork for it brought to light. It will also focus on the importance of recording this type of microhistories not only with regard to music, but also - perhaps primarily - with regard to the society in which they emerge. The talk will also include excerpts from The Cypriot Fiddler documentary, which was funded by members of the public through an online crowd-sourcing campaign.

[@jelef001]

Fantastic lecture!

[@parisayiomamitis2683]

Excellent. thank u for this!