Welcome to the new episode of our podcast series « Crossing the Aegean: A Century of People on the Move » where we explore the historical and contemporary dimensions of migration in the Aegean. In this episode, we continue our exploration of the deep connection between forced migration, memory, and music with our guest, Stelios Moraïtis, a French-Greek PhD student in Social Anthropology.

Stelios is a member of the Migrations and Society Research Unit (URMIS) at the University of Côte d’Azur. He conducted fieldwork for a year and a half in Greece and Turkey, focusing on music and migration. He also completed a Master’s thesis in History, examining the governance of Greek refugees at the end of the Greek-Turkish War and during the population exchange.

In this episode, Stelios discusses how music followed the path of exile. He explains how displaced populations, particularly those from Asia Minor, used music to preserve their cultural heritage, maintain connections to their lost homelands, and forge new cultural identities in their host countries. As refugees fled from Asia Minor to Greece, they brought with them a rich diversity of musical traditions, instruments like the lyra, qanun, and oud, as well as musical systems such as makams. They also introduced rhythms like the hasapiko, zeibekiko, and karsilamas.

Finally, Stelios highlights the Aegean as a vibrant, intercultural space where tradition remains alive and dynamic. Musicians from diverse backgrounds continue to interact, blending their memories, heritage, and personal experiences into their music. The creativity of the people in this region is deeply rooted in their relationship with tradition and memory, as they transform and give new meanings to their cultural practices.

This episode’s interview was conducted in English by Ozan Mirkan Balpetek. Mert Koçak summarized and interpreted Stelios’s remarks in Turkish, and our friends from Community Peacemaker Teams provided the same in Greek.