- Symposium has been organized by the School of Global and International Studies, Hamilton Luger School
- of Global and International Studies. And we have. Tom's here. Can I turn it up, please? OK,
- I could do this. So as you know, there is a two-day symposium going on.
- Global Area and Perspective Symposium. Every year it takes place. And the dean of the school and his
- wonderful crew asked us if we could also contribute to the theme of the symposium this year,
- which is Music, Culture, and Conflicts, if I'm not mistaken. That's the theme. And on that note, I would
- like to thank the dean of the school, please, Professor John Cioccioli, please.
- setting for us and we are very delighted to be here. We will be playing five, six, seven tunes for you
- from different regions of the world. You have the program in your hand, short snippets of the translation
- of some of the songs so that you know what we are talking about. And the first song that we sang, it
- was dedicated to the people of Afghanistan who have gone through horrific
- of life. And recently I heard that two weeks ago, the regime there, they just shut down all the communication
- systems. So they were worried that people would talk to each other, send messages. That's the theme,
- one of the symposiums. So I feel sorry for the younger generation, so then they can now have access
- to basic internet to educate themselves and know what's happening in the world. So that was dedicated
- to them, telling them that the world
- Tomorrow will be different. The good old days that you experienced in the past will come back to you.
- You will again be happy and free in your choices. Thank you so much. And the next tune is a Turkish
- tune. It's called Bir Demetli Asaman, a bouquet of flower, a flower of jasmine. And also in Italian,
- as well as in Persian, that we would like it. You would like it.
- So, here they might use them.
- in 1960s, but they made a Tajik movie. In that movie, there was a girl who had a black mole on her face,
- and this is how the song became known. And we also had Persian lyrics here with the translation that
- you look at. So before we continue, I'd like to say, introduce the member of the ensemble. It's a pleasure
- to share this
- stage with these wonderful people. We have Mehran Fanous, who is in the School of Music, and we are
- delighted to have him here. It's been a pleasure working with him. His family, his brother, father,
- they have their own ensemble. They have given concerts at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, you just name
- it. They have been all over. So we are very pleased to have him. Originally, he's from Afghanistan,
- so we are happy to have him here. Next to me is...
- Next to me is Christian James. He just joined us a couple of months ago. We are very happy to have him
- here because our pianist, Jack Shchuka, right now is in London at the School of North African and Middle
- Eastern Studies there. He's pursuing a degree, a master's degree in music, particularly in Mugam of
- that part of the world, working with great artists there. So we are very happy that we will
- able to have this gentleman who studied music, graduate from different prominent schools here, and he
- played organ. So come from a family of musicians, and we are happy to have him here. And he's a PhD
- student. At the end of his writing, he has interesting topic that he's working on. It is in the paper
- that you could read about him what he does. And to my right is
- Jermaine Butler, who has been working with us, or given us the honor to be working with us. He plays
- oud and guitar and percussions, drum sets. He is really in demand. We are happy that we could have him
- here summertime. He was traveling, he was in Europe for two months, traveling all over Europe. We are
- happy to have him here. He plays oud. He's also a student in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology.
- He's also working on music of the East. He's looking into the
- music of the Oman in the Persian Gulf region, so that's his area of expertise. We are very happy to
- have him with us. Thank you. And then we have Elijah Casilla, who's a percussionist, he's in the School
- of Music, plays in various groups and ensembles, and we have been working together for two years prior
- to him. We had his girlfriend who worked with us and finished, so we are happy that
- Sophia introduced him to us because we needed to have a percussionist, particularly the one who could
- play Middle Eastern as well as Latin American music for us. So we're going to move on. Thank you. Our
- next piece is, again, all the information is there for those who know the languages. We have a few lines
- there in Arabic, in Ladino, and in Turkish, so you could follow that to see what they mean.
- So it's called la rosa in florescent. That means the rose blooms in May. We hope that you like it. And
- it is in three languages, again in Ladino, in Arabic, as well as in Turkish. We hope that you like it.
- The goal is to play the music of the Mediterranean, Southern Mediterranean music with the Central Asian,
- Middle Eastern music. And some of these pieces have become so popular despite the fact that there might
- be conflicts, regional political conflicts. But yes, you see that the Turks, they sing Greek songs.
- Greeks sing the Turks songs. That's a very positive thing that they
- together and they say, you know, the past is past. What we all enjoy is nice music, traveling around,
- good food. Who cares who makes it? As long as it tastes good and as long as the sound is good to our
- ears, that's what we care. So this song was composed by a Greek artist. It's called Kaiksi. That means
- boatman. And it is in Greek as well as in Turkish. We hope that you like it.
- Kayak comes from the kayak, so then the Middle Easterners and others, they borrowed that kayak chip.
- piece dedicated to a beautiful blue lake in the country and was composed by a very prominent Azerbaijani
- composer, Fikret Amirov, whose work you will be hearing in the West, in America. They played his Kurde
- Afshari and Shur, very famous, prominent artist. So we hope that you like it. Again, the translation
- of the words are here, so that way we will save time. We hope that you like it.
- these great artists here. Of course, what do you expect to study at one of the greatest school of music
- in the world? So the quality has to be good, otherwise you don't get in. So I'm very happy to have them
- here. So we have two more songs. We want to sing a song in Uyghur, the song of the Uyghur people. It
- is called Senutun, because of you.
- Again, the translation is there, you could follow.
- target. So one more time, I would like to thank the organizer of the symposium, Dean John Shishkari,
- for having us here, and the guests who came out of town. We have some friends from Cincinnati, Indianapolis,
- and Columbus, Indiana, to come and join us here, and Indianapolis, of course. We are very delighted
- to have everyone here. We really like being part of this academic
- symposium. And I keep telling people that when you study global studies, it's not only in the history
- books. It is a language that we study, because the language expresses the feelings of the people. And
- this is the best opportunity for our students to listen to songs in different languages that they study
- here. So the songs become life for them. So they realize that music is performed and composed in these
- languages that we all enjoy.
- One more time, thank you for coming. I'd like to thank Heather. I'd like to thank Jason and Josh, Kelly.
- All of them, they work very hard. And I would like to thank the Bloomington Cable Access TV crew. Please
- give them a hand. We have recorded the program, and it was live streamed around the world. We have a
- friend watching us in Iran, in Turkey, in Europe, in China, different places.
- So it's amazing what the technology can do. So we are very happy to share this music with the rest of
- the world. And also I would like to thank Zach and Nathan for providing the sound support for us. We
- really thank you. Okay, our last piece is, this piece became very popular in the 60s in Spain.
- It is called prom-pum-pum. So it is just non-sense. Prom-pum-pum. Anyways, the information is there.
- And it was such a big hit that it just caught the fire. And a very famous Lebanese artist by the name
- Fayrouz, she started singing that. And a group of Iranian artists who happened to be in Egypt, and they
- listened to this song, said, whoa, what a nice song. They came back.
- They ask a poet to write words for it. So we have in Arabic, in Spanish, and also in Azerbaijani here.
- We hope that you like that. So thank you for coming out here. We wish you a wonderful evening. And we
- hope that you come back tomorrow to attend the rest of the symposium here. That is very important for
- us. Thank you so much. Thank you.