"Rebetika
Playing for Cange: Rebetika Performance in Troubled Times"
Music is powerful. Just how and why music can have such power has been the subject of numerous scientific and anthropological studies. Ethnomusicologist and Rebetika performer Yona Stamatis discussed the power of music in executing social change. Using the rebetika performance of well-known musician Pavlos Vassiliou as a case study, she examined the ways in which music can be used to help the Greek people navigate the difficult socio-eocnomic climate in Greece. The lecture included an introduction to rebetika and a discussion of the contemporary rebetiko scene.
Yona Stamatis received her doctorate in Ethnomusicology from the University of Michigan in 2011. Her primary research as former Fulbright scholar is Greek national identity formation in Contemporary Rebetiko Performance. She received the Fulbright Award for Research on Rebetika in 2009 and the Platsis Prize for Work on the Greek Legacy, Modern Greek Program, in the University of Michigan in 2006. She has been a guest lecturer at the Department of Classical Studies, and served as a committee member in the "Music Conversations Conference" in the University of Michigan. Currently, she is a postdoctoral scholar in Ethnomusicology at Kalamazoo College where she teaches courses in American Music and World Music. As a rebetika performer, she has toured the USA with the ensemble of Rebetiki Istoria.
This event took place at the Athens Centre on February 8, 2012.
