Musical Practice and Memory on the Edge of Two Worlds: Kalymnian Tsambouna and Song Repertoire in the Family of Nikitas Tsimouris 1

Abstract

Over a century ago, hundreds of sponge fishermen and their families settled in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Their large numbers combined with continuing immigration to create a community that has preserved much of its culture. Anna Lomax Chairetakis Wood recorded the music of Kalymnian tsambouna player and National Heritage Fellow NikitasTsimouris and his family, with whom she shared bonds of friendship and fictive kinship. "Musical Practice and Memory on the Edge of Two Worlds: Kalymnian Tsambouna and Song Repertoire in the Family of Nikitas Tsimouris,” is a sensitive and carefully delineated contextual exploration of the social, lyrical, and ethnomusical dimensions of an increasingly rare musical tradition. The author covers such diverse topics as transmission and performance practice; singing styles; song function; repertoire; Kalymnian musical genres such as table songs, poetic duels (pismatika), dance songs, task songs, and ritual songs.

Global musical diversity is largely independent of linguistic and genetic histories

“…Ozaki et al, 2022 for an example of how perceptions of muscians themselves can be incorporated in comparative analysis). At the same time it is equally possible that culture members may well find outsider's observations interesting, useful, and validating when there is dialogue (Wood, 2011). Similar limitations apply to the other datasets used for comparison: for example, linguistic phylogenies based on basic vocabulary data only capture certain aspects of language evolution (Evans et al, 2021), and biases in the design of genotype platforms can lead to skewed estimates of genetic diversity (Clark et al, 2005).…”