The Soft Power of Indian Music: The Case of Indian Musical Instruments Museum in Greece

Authors

  • Sathya Kassimi Dimocritus University of Thrace
  • Nadia Macha Bizoumi Assistant Professor, Department of History and Ethnology of the Democritus University of Thrace.

Keywords:

Indian musical instruments, musical instrument museum, cultural diplomacy.

Abstract

Music is a known tool of cultural diplomacy. Museums are also known as powerful agents of cultural diplomacy. A museum of musical instruments should document, preserve and promote every single musical instrument belonging to its collections, creating an incredibly challenging field of transdisciplinary and multispectral work. The results of this demanding task, if properly used, can not only offer a pleasant and educational experience to the museum visitor but also build communication bridges between nations, thus promoting mutual understanding and peace. In this paper, the authors present the case of an Indian Musical Instruments Museum planned to be created in Athens, Greece.

Author Biographies

  • Sathya Kassimi, Dimocritus University of Thrace

    Sathya Kassimi is pursuing research at the Dept of History and Ethnology of the Democritus University of Thrace on the subject 'The soft power of Indian music culture in Greece'. She has Bachelor degree on Greek Culture from the Hellenic Open University and Master on Museology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She has presented numerous papers on Indian music culture. Her research interests focus on folk culture, material culture, oral history, musical instruments and their symbolic value, Indian music culture, Greek music culture, documentation and cataloguing of musical instruments, migration and Diaspora studies.

  • Nadia Macha Bizoumi, Assistant Professor, Department of History and Ethnology of the Democritus University of Thrace.

    Nadia Macha-Bizoumi is Assistant Professor of Folklore with emphasis on Folk Art at the Department of History and Ethnology of the Democritus University of Thrace. She has received postgraduate training in Museology (Hellenic American College of Athens, specialization: Museology - Cultural Management). Her research interests focus on the
    political uses of traditional and contemporary clothing, the management of museum collections and the study of popular culture material with an interdisciplinary approach. On these issues she has published monographs, articles and exhibition catalogues and has participated with papers in international conferences and scientific workshops in Moscow, Poland, Serbia, Sweden, Turkey, Spain, Wien and elsewhere. She has been honoured with an Honourable Mention by the Dean's Office of the Faculty of Classical and Humanities Studies of the Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH, 2014) for her teaching work. She is a founding member of the Hellenic Society of Costume Studies, member of the Hellenic Folklore Society, the Association of Dress Historians, ICOM. Recently (2021) she was appointed National Representative in Greece of the European Museum Academy, and in 2022 member of the Regional Advisory Committee “The Global Council for Anthropological Linguistics”. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Folklife & Ethnological Museum of Macedonia-Thrace and the Basil Papantoniou Foundation.

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Published

2023-09-30

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 3 (2023): Heritage Informatics

Section

Articles

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