European Art Music as a Modality of the Greek Crisis: Identities, Practices, and Discourses

European art music in Greece has been considered the imaginary musical ideotype that serves the creation of a distinctive cultural policy by retaining the role of “high art.” Greek organizations that deal with European art music have always had the opportunity to engage in the broader cultural arena and shape national, artistic, economic, local, and supra-local policies. Each one with their own diverse goals, trends, interests, and perspectives. For about 30 years, cultural and economic policy in Greece has been relatively stable. Nowadays, it has become evident that the field of European art music has significantly been transformed, since the social and economic crisis has led to radical changes, new directions and transformations of practices. In order to highlight some aspects of the political economy of European art music in Greece, I will provide specific examples that demonstrate, in brief, how the crisis affected Greek cultural organizations and the people associated with them, in terms of two perspectives: the economic-administrative and the cultural-artistic. Through both an ethnographic and a textual approach of a case study, I will critically examine various issues of identity, practice, and discourse that concern the multimodal relation between modern Greek and European music culture

Melodic contour representations in the analysis of children's songs

http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/math/2013-0604-200726/UUindex.htmlInternational audienceChildren's songs is a particular musical genre related to folk music, with its own musical characteristics. This paper sets out to explore melodic contour in children's songs from seven different countries/nations across Europe. We look for distinctive contour patterns which differentiate the songs of each country. For pattern representation we use different viewpoints related to melodic contour, two of which also relying on beat information. Preliminary results are presented, and some initial observations regarding the patterns found, the representations used, and the genre as a whole, are discussed

Ecos del trauma en la banda sonora cinematográfica: La música y el melodrama cinematográfico griego de los sesenta

Major traumatic crises, such as the Asia Minor Catastrophe (1922) and the forced uprooting of more than 1.5 million Greek people from their homelands to the Greek mainland by the Turks, have been displayed in numerous popular films of the so-called “Old Greek Cinema” of the sixties. Klak Film, a B-movies production company, specialized in low-budget cult melodramas starring Nikos Xanthopoulos, a much-loved actor and famous singer, some of which refer to the aforementioned disaster. These films reproduce the widespread Greek perception of cultural controversy between the East and the West by forming an epic musical and filmic illustration built upon conceptual generalizations and naïve representations of the past via popular/national memory of collective traumas. The paper presents Klak Film’s production The Odyssey of an Uprooted Man with particular focus on its music as an example of nationalistic nostalgia that echoes previous traumatic episodes but also present-day anxieties and inconveniencies.Grandes crisis traumáticas, como la Catástrofe de Asia Menor (1922) y el desarraigo forzoso de más de 1,5 millones de griegos de sus países de origen al continente griego por parte de los turcos, se han mostrado en numerosas películas populares del llamado “Cine Griego Antiguo” de los años sesenta. Como parte de esa realidad se encuentra Klak Film, una productora de películas de serie B especializada en melodramas de culto de bajo presupuesto, protagonizados por Nikos Xanthopoulos –un actor muy querido y cantante famoso–, algunos de los cuales hacen referencia al desastre mencionado. Estas películas reproducen la percepción griega popularizada de la controversia cultural entre Oriente y Occidente al formar una imagen musical y fílmica épica construida sobre generalizaciones conceptuales y representaciones ingenuas del pasado a través de la memoria popular/nacional de traumas colectivos. El artículo presenta la producción de Klak Film La Odisea de un Hombre Desarraigado con un enfoque particular en su música como un ejemplo de nostalgia nacionalista que se hace ecos de episodios traumáticos anteriores, pero también de las ansiedades e inconvenientes del presente

The high-resolution map of Oxia Planum, Mars; the landing site of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission

This 1:30,000 scale geological map describes Oxia Planum, Mars, the landing site for the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission. The map represents our current understanding of bedrock units and their relationships prior to Rosalind Franklin’s exploration of this location. The map details 15 bedrock units organised into 6 groups and 7 textural and surficial units. The bedrock units were identified using visible and near-infrared remote sensing datasets. The objectives of this map are (i) to identify where the most astrobiologically relevant rocks are likely to be found, (ii) to show where hypotheses about their geological context (within Oxia Planum and in the wider geological history of Mars) can be tested, (iii) to inform both the long-term (hundreds of metres to ∼1 km) and the short-term (tens of metres) activity planning for rover exploration, and (iv) to allow the samples analysed by the rover to be interpreted within their regional geological context

Music, Documentaries and Globalization

This paper deals with the relationship between sound and image as expressed in the cinematic genre of music documentary. In particular, it tries to explore the way in which musical cultures are audiovisually expressed through filmic representation of music performances and artists/groups portraits. By applying a critical and comparative approach, the films Buena Vista Social Club (1999) and Café de los Maestros (2008) become vehicles to investigate images and sounds of music in everyday life, with an emphasis on the impact of globalization and commercialization during their creation and interpretation procedures. The focus is on the commercial exploitation of these films in the context of world capitalism and the way in which it influences the construction of visual representations of non-European musical cultures and identities, as cultural industry shares today a comparable postmodern situation through the concepts of "world music" and "world cinema". In this light, the paper discusses Latin American (Cuban and Argentine) identities and local music cultures which spread internationally via films and gain a place in the global music scene. Consequently, it points towards issues of authenticity, nostalgia, exoticism, hybridity, folklorization, and the Western domination upon musics as well as films.Este trabajo trata de la relación entre sonido e imagen expresada en el género cinematográfico del documental musical. En particular, trata de explorar la forma en que las culturas musicales se expresan audiovisualmente a través de la representación fílmica de actuaciones musicales y retratos de artistas/grupos. Aplicando un enfoque crítico y comparativo, las películas Buena Vista Social Club (1999) y Café de los Maestros (2008) se convierten en vehículos para investigar imágenes y sonidos de la música en la vida cotidiana, con énfasis en el impacto de la globalización y la comercialización durante su desarrollo, procedimientos de creación e interpretación. La atención se centra en la explotación comercial de estas películas en el contexto del capitalismo mundial y la forma en que influye en la construcción de representaciones visuales de culturas e identidades musicales no europeas, ya que la industria cultural comparte hoy una situación posmoderna a través de los conceptos de «música del mundo» y «cine del mundo». Bajo esta luz, el artículo analiza las identidades latinoamericanas (cubana y argentina) y las culturas musicales locales que se difunden internacionalmente a través del cine y ganan un lugar en la escena musical mundial. En consecuencia, apunta hacia cuestiones de autenticidad, nostalgia, exotismo, hibridez, folclorización y la dominación occidental sobre la música y las películas