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.