Lost world
The Music of Time: Ottomans in New York RADIO BBC World Service Scheduled for Saturday 25 November
In the early years of the 20th century, the long-ailing Ottoman empire broke up in a series of wars and forced migrations. But, as Maria Margaronis outlines in a one-off documentary that explores memory, identity and loss, the culture of the Ottoman empire didn’t just cease to be. In the New York of the 1920s, musicians from nations once part of the empire – including Greeks, Kurds, Jews, Armenians and many others – recreated its music as émigrés.