Memory formation is a dynamic process. In the exhibition Lift My Soul, presented by the Hellenic Parliament Foundation, memories swirl between the music, their traces are transferred from the background to the foreground, they transform, they constantly return in a different form and dimension, in a different color and in a different one. sound.

The key axes of the exhibition are life before 1922 in Smyrna, Ionia, Cappadocia, Ponte, Constantinople, Propontis, Eastern and Northern Thrace (Eastern Romilia); Exodus, loss and trauma of a refugee); life and musical creativity in the new homeland); but also recruitment by younger generations. Visitors can listen to obituaries, traditional songs, Asian Minor rebetika, as well as excerpts from the latest works of Greek music in each section of the exhibition, which the professor of ethnomusicology Lambros Liavas formulated into texts:

• “Nightingales of the East and birds of the West!”. Music in the seven homelands.

• “My poor East, your nightingales are gone”…” Memories of the Holocaust in the songs of refugees.

• “Where I’ve come, they learn to love, they learn to hide grief, they learn to celebrate.” Songs as symbols of identity and vitality.

• “These songs are a gift from Smyrna!”. Asia Minor Rebetikos School.

• “My father Batis came from Smyrna in 22”. Memories of refugees in contemporary Greek music.

Portraits of refugees look at a real guest from the already distant past. Many well-known and little-known photographs, documents, personalities and other items from personal boxes, warehouses and archives come to light and reshape our collective memory, adding new traces, new knowledge, new images.

“I’ll break mugs for your words…”. Between the first recording of this traditional Ionian song in 1908 and the last one in 2018, performances and variations pave the sonic path from the past to the present. Fading photographs of the once-era grand boulevards of Istanbul and Trebizond, the busy (and rather noisy) streets of Izmir, families relaxing or entertaining in the land of Cappadocia are complemented by colorful pictures of stately homes and well-decorated notes. But this atmosphere is overturned by photographs of exhausted people on endless paths, in boats, in buses, on sidewalks, outside churches, in squares and tragic photographs of the first days, the first months, the first years: waiting for sissitio, searching for water in a new land, looking for a job.

On the other hand, cool basilicas in whitewashed jars activate our senses, adding to memory traces of a pre-cut courtyard, while affirming their living relationship with them, and logs placed on bricks remind us of the first improvised shacks, chatter on rough seats in the streets. each new region.

“What’s next for you, where am I from?” The lyrics focus on trauma, suffering, injustice, but also perseverance in life.

“What’s next for you, where am I from?” The lyrics concentrate on trauma, unhappiness, injustice, but also perseverance in life, hope and optimism. However, at the same time, they also express the creation of these people, our ancestors, who survived the greatest disaster in Greek history, but came to a free homeland, helped it develop and find its way forward.

“Lift my soul.” And, finally, the perception of the Holocaust by our generations is also captured in the songs, since these generations of ours today are the heirs of a great event.

Songs from the heart go to the gramophone, then on the radio, they become a memory, because we listen to them, sing and talk about them to this day. Images and testimonies of life before the Holocaust, as well as of the first uprooted generation, are again being turned into melodies and lyrics, into films and works of art, theatrical and literary, as well as into exhibitions like this year’s retrospective of the year, including and ours.

The invisible memories of those who worked on the exhibition, those who provided the material, those who visited it, are revealed in our stories and conversations and thus added to the exhibition and proclaim their meaning for our very life: the manads that were sung by their children , the mothers who wrote a book about their refugee status, Zoica, whose book was drawn by her son Alexis Kiritsopoulos, the art curator of our exhibition, Eliso’s grandmother who lived in Nea Karvali, Ioanna’s great-grandmother who brought the mandolin from the Dardanelles, and you. will be seen at our exhibition, political uncles and aunts “who also mixed Turkish words in their conversation”, as Dionysios Savvopoulos writes in the guidebook that accompanies the exhibition, my grandfather Yannis, who was from Trebizond and studied with Robertio, as I always proudly declare , and his younger brother Nikos, whose photographs are also in the exhibition, among the portraits that I let them look at each other.

Exhibition “Raise my soul!…” – Images and music of refugees 22 years old.

• Exhibition space of the Parliament Foundation, Sekeris and Vassilisis Sofias, Athens. Duration: until December 2023.

• Atrium of the Archaeological Museum of Drama, Patriarch Dionisiou 2, Dramatic. Duration: 09.10 – 16.10.2022.

* Ms. Anna Enepikidu – Director of the Parliamentary Foundation Service, curator of the exhibition.