TY - JOUR

T1 - A (trans)national emotional community? Greek political songs and the politicisation of Greek migrants in West Germany in the 1960s and early 1970s

AU - Papadogiannis, Nikolaos

N1 - Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0960777314000332

PY - 2014/11

Y1 - 2014/11

N2 - This article examines the emotional standards and experiences connected with the entehno laiko music composed by Mikis Theodorakis that was immensely popular among left-wing Greek migrants, workers and students, living in West Germany in the 1960s and the early 1970s. Expanding on a body of literature that explores the transnational dimensions of protest movements in the 1960s and the 1970s, the article demonstrates that these transnational dimensions were not mutually exclusive with the fact that at least some of those protestors felt that they belonged to a particular nation. Drawing on the conceptual framework put forth by Barbara Rosenwein, it argues that the performance of these songs was conducive to the making of a (trans)national emotional community. On the one hand, for Greek left-wingers residing in West Germany and, after 1967, for Greek centrists too, the collective singing of music composed by Theodorakis initially served as a means of ?overcoming fear? and of forging committed militants who struggled for the social and political transformation of their country of origin. On the other, from the late 1960s onwards those migrants increasingly enacted this emotional community with local activists from West Germany as well.

AB - This article examines the emotional standards and experiences connected with the entehno laiko music composed by Mikis Theodorakis that was immensely popular among left-wing Greek migrants, workers and students, living in West Germany in the 1960s and the early 1970s. Expanding on a body of literature that explores the transnational dimensions of protest movements in the 1960s and the 1970s, the article demonstrates that these transnational dimensions were not mutually exclusive with the fact that at least some of those protestors felt that they belonged to a particular nation. Drawing on the conceptual framework put forth by Barbara Rosenwein, it argues that the performance of these songs was conducive to the making of a (trans)national emotional community. On the one hand, for Greek left-wingers residing in West Germany and, after 1967, for Greek centrists too, the collective singing of music composed by Theodorakis initially served as a means of ?overcoming fear? and of forging committed militants who struggled for the social and political transformation of their country of origin. On the other, from the late 1960s onwards those migrants increasingly enacted this emotional community with local activists from West Germany as well.

KW - Migration

KW - Music

KW - Emotions

KW - Emotional communities

U2 - 10.1017/S0960777314000332

DO - 10.1017/S0960777314000332

M3 - Article

VL - 23

SP - 589

EP - 614

JO - Contemporary European History

JF - Contemporary European History

SN - 0960-7773

IS - 4

ER -