Intersections of Cultural Trauma, Collective Memory, and Resilience in Assyrian Popular Music

Intersections of Cultural Trauma, Collective Memory, and Resilience in Assyrian Popular Music

In this presentation, I consider how cultural trauma, collective memory, and resilience intersect in diasporic Assyrian popular music expressions and experience. The goal of my study is to discern the nuances of how the Assyrian community maintains integrity and produces, or reproduces, cultural identity in the wake of destructive forces. Through the analysis of several Assyrian popular songs, related semi-formal interviews, and participant-observation at community events, I aim to demonstrate how migration and resettlement can bring a resolve for Assyrians to survive, celebrating or competing through cultural practices that express emergent Assyrian identities in and across their new lifeworlds.

Nadia Younan is a PhD Candidate in Ethnomusicology at the University of Toronto. Her doctoral research—funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada—investigates intersections of collective memory, trauma, and resilience in Assyrian popular music and dance expressions. In 2019, her first article entitled “Stateless Rhythms, Transnational Steps: Embodying the Assyrian Nation through Sheikhani Song and Dance” was published in the European Review of International Migration. Nadia has presented her work on Assyrian expressive culture at international conferences for organizations such as the Middle East Studies Association, the Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, and the American Anthropological Association.