Extending our senses: music, nostalgia, space, artefact and the Mediterranean imaginary among the Greek- and Turkish-speaking Cypriot diaspora in Birmingham (UK)

My PhD research focuses on Greek- and Turkish-speaking Cypriots, their musical performances and Mediterranean transbordering tropes, and their diaspora to Birmingham (UK). It introduces a new spatial construction in diaspora which I term "The Mediterranean Imaginary"—an informed, playful, and re-structured space in the triangle of Cyprus, Turkey and Greece, defined by the history of the Cypriot di-ethnos, assessed in modern life through ethnographically-informed lived realities, yet geographically determined in the not-so- Mediterranean UK. After describing the ethnos in question (Preface) and orienting the reader to the methodological and theoretical approaches employed (Chapter 1), focus turns to the notion of nostalgic musical ends in Chapter 2, which via performance avenues foregrounds emotionality and a gender-play with feminine undertones alongside the diasporic masculine imperative. Part II, ‘Extending Our Senses’, analyses four YouTube videos. Chapter 3, ‘Zorba’, takes us to the Bullring Shopping Centre and a dance flash-mob; and in Chapter 4, a father-son duo (Stavros Flatley) reprises the famous neo-Celtic performances of Michael Flatley for Britain’s Got Talent. Chapter 5 examines Lil Maaz’s music-video Eat Kebabs and its effect on Turkishspeaking Cypriot migrants, while Chapter 6 looks into a parody of 50Cent’s Candy Shop named Kebab Shop, dubbed with lyrics from the Cypriot YouTube user hasandinho95. Part III compares native and diasporic practices against the background of Cyprus’ Mediterranean appeal. Following the construction of the Mediterranean imaginary, Mediterranean ethnomusicologies are advanced with the analysis of a set of versions of the Cypriot traditional tune Tillirka. Tillirka’s timeline traces a distant ecumenical past and a translocal native modern with fragmented censorial claims, peaking in diaspora where it recapitulates to the ecumenical and Mediterranean, turning into a contemporary paradigm of pan-Mediterranean culture and performance in diaspora