"Singing Alaturka, Singing Alafranga" by John Morgan O'Connell"Singing Alaturka, Singing Alafranga" by John Morgan O'Connellhttp://www.haverford.edu/calendar/details/123882Union Maccrate2010-02-23T16:30:002010-02-23T18:00:00
February 23, 4:30PM
Union Maccrate
Talk by John Morgan O'Connell, from Cardiff University, Wales "Singing Alaturka, Singing Alafranga". This event will be held in MacCrate Recital Hall, Union, and is free and open to the public.
Description
John Morgan O'Connell, Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at Cardiff University in Wales and a leading authority on Turkish vocal music, will be making two open class presentations on Monday, February 22 and Tuesday, February 23, both at 4:30 in MacCrate Hall (Union Music Building) as part of the bi-college Chamber Singers’ preparation for their forthcoming cultural exchange trip to Turkey.
Dr. O'Connell will examine the ways in which Ataturk attempted to "alafrangize" alaturka. We will look at a musical competition held in Ataturk's presence, showing how alaturka was equated with a multicultural Ottoman past and alafranga was viewed in terms of a monocultural Republican present. The case study will focus on a contest between a Jewish hazan (representative of the alaturka camp) and an Islamic hafiz (representative of the alafranga camp). I will also look at the ways in which the Ashkenazim (especially those escaping Nazi persecution) came to represent alafranga and the resident Sephardim came to represent alaturka. In this way, he will argue that the stylistic split in musical taste seemed to represent a wider fragmentation in Jewish culture, an issue that served to validate anti-semitic prejudice during the early republican period (1923-1938).
Prof. O'Connell's visit is sponsored by the Department of Music and the Distinguished Visitors Office.
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