Musical Traces of a Lost Past

This book offers a music-centered approach to the contested history, memories, and identities of greater Dersim. Through laments, songs, oral history, and shifting performance contexts, it reveals how music captures violence, loss, migration, and longings for a lost, idealized past. Combining ethnography, archival research, and multi-sited fieldwork, the study uncovers fragmented traditions, hybrid styles, and the emotional worlds they express.The book is aimed at researchers of music, memory, trauma, and (Eastern) Anatolian cultures.