The challenge of sounds: a commitment to Greekness.

 I was taken to the orthodox church of Aghia Sophia, Los Angeles, on Monday, as we celebrated the Holy Spirit day. The congregation was small: some thirty people were present. The huge church overloaded with decoration looked almost empty. Yet, this very day was the ideal one for me in which to re-examine my perception of this place, from its sonic angle.

My first “acquaintance” with this place was shortly before Christmas 2012. I was completely struck by a number of paraphernalia which looked strange and unusual to me, an Argostolian-Greek recently settled in Los Angeles.

I can now recall some satirists who, in delineating Cefalonians and their features, talked about nagging islanders. On the other hand, my favourite anthropologist, M. Herzfeld, writes that when complaining one just recycles things, he does not help improve them. Aware of my status as a newcomer and  consequently the suspension of any possibility  of forwarding my perceptions of the place to anyone who is a regular to this place, I limited myself to expressing to my friend the differences that I had singled out and concerned orthodox churches in Greece and this one in Los Angeles.

 I admitted that  church objects and their place inside the church have to serve peoples’ needs so I could finally accept the Catholic type seats(see photographs) and the fact that congregation can be large-as I witnessed it on Palm Sunday 2013. Yet, I refused –and still do so- to accept the sonic aspects of this cluster of Greekness and orthodoxy. I am here concerned with the process through which sounds acquire additional meanings and can turn to symbols of belonging (or not).

Paul Stoller was writing in 1984[1] that “a deeper appreciation of sound could force us to overturn our static, spatialized world and make us consider in a new light the dynamic nature of sound, an open door to the comprehension of cultural sentiment”. He was an urbanite studying people in the forest and he was forced to discover the value of sound. I ,too, am an urbanite but I have been carrying the value of sound along with me  for many years. I just had to realize it and practice its importance during my research at home. What happened to me while settling in Los Angeles was the fact that I had to imagine-better relive sounds inside me- sounds and tones and assign them the role of a cornerstone. It was on this cornerstone that I judged other sounds and could confirm my belonging to “home”. I could see the performance of specific sounds as lying on the edge of separating Greeks in Greece from migrant Greeks living in Los Angeles. I thus see  church performed sounds not as a means to penetrating cultural sentiment but as a means to judging the similarity of sounds produced in specific institutions (eg the church) even though they might be far away from each other.  The extent to which similarity( or dissimilarity) is spotted  can talk about versions of cultural sentiment.

       Here is my story then:

Having seated myself on one of the church  seats on Sunday, December 16^th 2012, I started looking around and opened my ears up to what I was listening. My eyes searched for the psalts-the singers. As I was far away from the places they were supposed to occupy I found it difficult to see them. Still, there was not only one man singing; I soon looked up and backwards and located the source of sound: there was a choir singing. My reactions were spontaneous and emotional, but their basis was to be found in my background. So, I first felt as if I had been struck by a thunderbolt. Here things were different and I started listing these differences to myself: A mixed choir is unusual- to my own experiences- in an orthodox church, let alone a church organ! To add to this, their tempo was completely out of my own sonic experiences and expectations. I had listened to choirs in church but they were in tune and pleasant.  I could spot female voices superseding male voices and tones were not the ones I was used to listening while in church. For a moment I thought I was attending a catholic mass. My Greekness was hiding behind all comparisons. It was  there, up and protesting against this “sonic violation”-if I may call it as such- to which I was subject. I felt unable to follow the tempo, I felt displaced and, as some fellow Cefalonians would definitely say, “my ears were not pleased”. My static, spatialized world, as Stoller called it, was providing me the par excellence sense of  church sounds in Greece and paved the way for my reactions.

This past Monday, however, the choir was not there-people were out to work-and the organ stood silent. My ears however were very pleased in this silence, as there were two male psalts and the tempo was the most familiar one.

Being a Cefalonian means having an excellent relation with sounds and being strictly critical to any performer who does not please the ear and detours from peoples’ expectations. Living in Los Angeles, I can now say that I have found this virtue in me and used my Cefalonianess to determine the extent to which I am Cefalonian and behave like my fellow islanders. Most of all,  I can take a distance from my background and use it as a cornerstone on which to judge the role of sounds in affirming  aspects of Greekness.

Here are two more  photographs from the church.

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[1] Stoller, P. (1984) “ Sound in Songhay cultural experience”,  American Ethnologist  11(3), pp 559-570.