Sing In Me Muse, and Through Me Tell The Story: Greek Culture Performed

Sing In Me, Muse, and Through Me Tell the Story: Greek Culture Performed is a collection of ethnographic essays that meditate on Greece through the looking glass method. The book investigates how ancient mythologies shape modern identities at the crossroads of East and West while it also provides an ample description, both broad and deep, of various aspects and incarnations of Greek folklore performance, such as song, literature, music and dance. In an era of globalization, Greeks insist upon going local by proudly celebrating their multifaceted past as they carry it into a turbulent present. From the time of Homer to contemporary forms of resistance, the poetics of Greekness provide an excellent ground for investigating the ecology of expressive behaviors that may inhabit any mountain or plain. When Greeks, for instance, sing the olive tree and speak without words through music and dance, performance becomes a means of dialogue and communication that raises ecological awareness of one’s place by also creating a strong sense of belonging. In a part of the world where life revolves around the centripetal idea of freedom in opposition to any form of tyranny, a community is willing to be sacrificed for a slice of bread. As the Greek future is predicated upon a stubbornly unfinished past, ultimately, one is at the same time exalted and despondent, grounded and soaring, rationale and passionate — elements in counterbalance that define the very essence of being Greek. All in all, being Greek in the 21st century offers fertile territory for re-discovering the fundamental nature of life by actually experiencing Greece’s truly rich, “baked” realities that have been so much stigmatized as being in “crisis.” By building bridges and understanding the wealth and uniqueness of Greek culture, the clues to our own identities may unfold, albeit via labyrinthian pathways, capable of leading us to a catharsis, by realizing that, after all, nothing in our cosmos is … Greek.