The eight last traditional fiddlers of Cyprus, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots performed at an event at the Home for Cooperation entitled Songs of my Neighbours and The Cypriot Fiddler, two separate projects connected by their shared interest in the traditional music of Cyprus.
During the event, Dr Nicoletta Demetriou – research fellow in Ethnomusicology and Life Writing at Wolfson College, University of Oxford – gave a presentation of her project The Cypriot Fiddler, dedicated to the traditional fiddlers of Cyprus. The project aims to collect the life stories of some of the last surviving musicians of this professional group, both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, and present them in a documentary. To complete the documentary and record these stories for future generations, The Cypriot Fiddler seeks the public’s support through a crowd-sourcing campaign launched on Kickstarter.
During the event, there was a screening of Songs of my Neighbours documentary, which traces the inception and development of the project in the three countries it involved: Cyprus, Italy, and Poland. The documentary highlighted how the project encouraged dialogue and understanding through the use of arts in communities that shared conflict in the past.
The event closed with a music performance by the six Cypriot fiddlers and a zurna–davul duo, eight musicians who were the evening’s guests of honour.