Symposia at Elagaia
I am prepared to tell a story that recalls an ancient tradition of praise song, one that calls us to remember the wisdom of the ancient voices for the present day. The harp is considered by many to be the oldest musical instrument in the world. It was used to accompany the myths and sacred stories in the third millennium B.C. As a contemporary praise singer, I recite, and at times sing verse from various oral traditions that give voice to women and addresses the themes of love and war. In keeping with the ancient tradition, I strive to achieve a fitting musical punctuation that 1) helps me to remember and 2) approximates what might have been a suitable accompaniment for
the ancient verse. At the same time, I answer these voices from my own time with poems that resonate with the words from Alcman’s hymn: For peace we cry, O Artemis, Grandmother of Lions! And those of Hagar the Egyptian whose voice: Let me not see the death of the child, remains the cry of millions. Presentations involve both concert harp and drum and celebrate the voices of hope, struggle and faith that are our collective inheritance as human beings. My purpose is not to present views that conflict with one’s religious beliefs, but to reacquaint a contemporary audience with an ancient art in the hope of fostering greater religious tolerance with a remembrance of a shared legacy of lyric, epic, and sacred verse.
TBA Voice: a Call for Greater Religious Tolerance - at Elagaia
VOICE is a memorized performance piece that recreates for a contemporary audience the ancient art of praise song at the harp. The story I wish to tell is perhaps one of the oldest of all stories as it begins in Sumer in the 3rd millennium B.C., in Ur, later the birthplace of Abraham. It is a story that encompasses myth from the cradle of civilization and sacred verse from the Holy lands. It is a story that gives emphasis to the themes of love and war while highlighting the voices of women, the voices of praise, faith and struggle that have come down to us from the earliest days of recorded history.
This story is a lament in the sense that we are obliged to mourn the loss of human life as a result of the religious intolerance of our day. Otherwise, it is my hope to reacquaint a contemporary audience with the art of praise song and to render this lament for our millennium as something of our shared inheritance as human beings.
TBA Victory Song Lecture & Presentation - at Elagaia
Dianne Tittle de Laet’s lecture presentation is based on her book, VICTORY SONG: Poetry and Image in the Ancient Games. Pindar, the athlete’s poet, wrote victory songs more than 2,000 years ago for the winners in the ancient Greek Games. VICTORY SONG features quotations from ancient poetry in praise of the athlete and short historical sketches that capture the echoes of that distant time in the history of sport. The book was written both to rekindle the ancient connection between art and sport and to celebrate the “arête” of the athlete, then and now. Dianne’s lecture presentation in advance of the historic recreation of The Games of Hera
celebrates the few instances in which women competed in ancient Greek athletics and provides some general background on Ancient Greek Sport as it relates to the ancient art of praise song. Traditional foods and music will be a feature of our gathering.