talk-and-record-listening session w/ Ian Nagoski (Canary records/Tompkins Square)
Renowned music researcher/publisher and Canary Records founder Ian Nagoski will be in Europe uncovering the forgotten musical masterpieces of early 20th-century immigrants and natives in an engaging storytelling and collective listening event.
“His work is so rare and important that it should almost be treated as a ritual object, a pathway to the past and a voice for ghosts of a forgotten part of American musical history.” – Nate Wooley, SoundAmerican
“...as essential to an understanding of American music as anything else.” – Amanda Petrusich, Pitchfork
Ian Nagoski is an independent music researcher and reissue record producer in Baltimore, Maryland. He has specialized for 20 years in early 20th-century recordings made by immigrants to the U.S., especially musicians from the Ottoman Empire.
He has made anthologies for Dust-to-Digital, Tompkins Square (including To What Strange Place: The Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora in 2011), the Database of Recorded American Music, Mississippi Records, and his Canary imprint, which has released over 195 digital albums to date.
He has toured widely as a speaker, from Thessaloniki to Fresno, including talks at the Library of Congress, Brandeis, Carnegie Mellon, NYU, UCLA, the University of Chicago, the Armenian Museum in Watertown, MA, and the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens. He has presented installations at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, the Wellcome Collection in London, and the Center for PostNatural History in Pittsburgh. A fragment of his work is included on the MoonkArk, the first object to be permanently installed on the moon, in 2020.
https://canary-records.bandcamp.com/
Ian Nagoski’s talk-and-record-listening conference illuminates a world-within-a-world of a musical culture as it developed over two generations, revelling in the specific and presenting little-heard masterpieces. It is an exploration of the details of artistic expressions of immigrants and the social realities of a “nation of immigrants” and its ambivalences concerning who matters and who gets remembered.
Canary Records Album covers.
Bed of Pain. Rebetika, 1930-55,
The Widow’s Joy: Eastern European Immigrant Dances in America, 1925-30,
Zabelle Panosian. I Am Servant of Your Voice, March 1917 – June 1918.
“Nagoski is a Walter Benjamin visionary, using his collection of 78s to hallucinate a history that actually happened but which remains hidden beneath official dogma and nationalisms.” – Marcus Boon, the Wire
“Nagoski’s approach is great, because he’s got a DJ’s ear, and he’s got this historian’s perspective. He’s looking at these songs as somewhere between a poem and an autobiography.” – Jace Clayton, DJ/rupture
Ian Nagoski – To What Strange Place (Short Film)
Ian Nagoski – To What Strange Place (Short Film)Presale/door prices adjusted: our events are set up by volunteers in favour of supporting DIY touring acts, but it is getting ever more risky to plan and book events – please support the community and buy your tickets early!
