E187 | The songs and melodies of the Turkey's Alevi communities derive from a long history of song-making in Anatolia that is embedded in local geographies and indelibly tied to notions of worship and belonging. So what happens when, through migration and media, that music enters an entirely new context? In this episode, we sit down with ethnomusicologist and musician Ozan Aksoy to discuss to his research on Kurdish Alevi music in diasporic contexts and hear him perform some of his favorite selections live in the OHP studio.

Ozan Aksoy holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from CUNY, Graduate Center, where he currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Middle East and Middle Eastern Center. He is also currently an instructor at New York University’s SPS-McGhee Division.

Chris Gratien is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University researching the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East.

Ceren Erdem is a curator based in New York and Istanbul. She received has an M.A. in Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies from Columbia University an MFA from Sabanci University, Istanbul. She has curated online projects and publications, and onsite exhibitions in New York, Istanbul, and Seoul.

For more: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2015/03/music-kurdish-alevi-migration.html