The Washington DC-based National Endowment for the Arts announced a $35,000 grant to support the Greek Music in America Archives Project.
The project will create a comprehensive and publicly accessible collection of commercially released Greek music recorded in America or by American companies in Greece that will be incorporated into the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University.
The collection will encompass multiple formats, including analog discs, audiotapes, piano rolls, cylinders and associated ephemera such as record catalogs, sheet music or images.
The project is being led by the Florida Cultural Resources, Inc., a privately held company in Tarpon Springs, Florida.
“Florida Cultural Resources is honored to receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts for this much-needed project,” Project Director Tina Bucuvalas said. “It will be implemented by a team with expertise in folklore, anthropology, ethnomusicology, Greek music history and archiving, including Meletios Pouliopoulos, Stavros Frangos, Andy Kolovos, Dick Spottswood, Michael Kaloyanides and Panayotis League.”
The Greek diaspora brought with them the many permutations of music in Greece. From 1896 to 1942, more than 1000 analog discs and other media with Greek recordings appeared in the US on labels large and small — and thousands more have since appeared.
The recordings encompass traditional music from all regions of Greece as well emerging urban genres, stylistic changes, social commentary and reflections of the daily lives of Greek immigrants in America.
