A Mediterranean Melody, Living Heritage and the Practice of Participation

A melody once led me to bring artists from Egypt, Turkey and Greece together for a concert in Alexandria. On another occasion, I took a singer from Alexandria to Delphi, Greece, to perform the songs of Sayed Darwish with Greek musicians.

The melody I remembered was “يا عذولي لا تلمني” (Ya Athouli La Taloumni). In exploring its connections, I encountered the Turkish “Kâtibim,” also known as “Üsküdar’a Gider İken,” and the Greek “Από ξένο τόπο” (Apo Xeno Topo). The melody also appears in Arabic as “يا بنات إسكندرية” (Ya Banat Iskandaria).[1][2]

I was fascinated by the familiarity of something I thought of as ours, heard in another language and belonging just as closely to someone else’s memories. It made me want to understand the connections between these places and explore them through music.

The melody’s precise origin and route are contested. Its many versions have inspired research and even a documentary, Adela Peeva’s Whose Is This Song?, which explores how different communities claim the same melody as their own.[3] What interested me as a programmer was the opportunity to bring these relationships into a shared musical experience.

That curiosity became part of my programming. I brought artists together in Alexandria and took artists to other Mediterranean countries, including Greece and Cyprus, to create opportunities for exchange. A familiar song became a starting point for collaboration, allowing musicians and audiences to discover something about one another through what they already knew.

I found myself thinking about how a melody could feel so rooted in one place while carrying meaning somewhere else. Each version had its own words and associations. People had made it part of their lives, and through their voices, it had continued.

Today, on the International Day of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, I return to these experiences because they help me think about a question that extends across my practice: what do we keep alive through cultural participation, and how do we pass it forward?[4]

The songs we still feel

In Part VIII of this series, From Sorrow to Strength: Creative Resilience through the Arts, 1967–1973, I reflected on the songs and voices that helped people endure war, express sorrow and find hope.[5] Music gave people a way to respond emotionally to what was happening around them. Through listening and singing, they could share something that was difficult to carry alone.

After all these years, we still relate emotionally to those voices. For someone who lived through that period, a song may bring back a person, a place or the feeling of a particular day. For those of us who came afterwards, the relationship has developed through the stories we heard, the people we listened with and the occasions on which those songs returned.

We may not have experienced the same events, yet we feel something when we hear the music. We have inherited a relationship with it.

This is what interests me about living memory. A song continues through the feelings and associations people give it. Parents introduce it to their children. A singer performs it for a new audience. Someone hears it years later and understands a line differently because of something that has happened in their own life.

The recording gives us something to return to. Our continued expression gives it a place in the present.

What we inherit through expression

In earlier editions of Cultural Programming with Impact, I wrote about the human need for expression and the early ways people used their voices, bodies and surroundings to communicate experience. Before the cultural institutions and professional structures we know today, people were already finding ways to express what they felt and share what mattered to them.

I see a connection between that need and the inherited forms we practise now. Songs, dances, stories and crafts have continued because people found reasons to use them and opportunities to teach them.

Someone sang, and another person learned the melody. Someone told a story that a child remembered and later told in their own words. A craft practitioner demonstrated a technique, then watched as another pair of hands attempted it. Knowledge travelled through these exchanges, sometimes deliberately and sometimes as part of ordinary life.

Through expression, people have safeguarded what they inherited. They have also adapted it, bringing something of their own experience into what they passed forward.

UNESCO’s 2003 Convention recognises this relationship between continuity and change. It describes intangible cultural heritage as practices, expressions, knowledge and skills recognised by communities as their heritage, and continually recreated in response to their lives and surroundings.[6]

For cultural programmers, this connection matters. When we create opportunities for people to sing, move, tell stories or make things together, we help sustain the relationships through which cultural knowledge travels. Participation allows people to contribute to its continuation, with something of their own to pass forward.

A melody composed today may become part of our great-grandchildren’s intangible cultural heritage. Whether it does will depend on the place people give it in their lives, the meanings they attach to it and their desire to share it with someone else.

Making room to participate

Throughout this series, I have returned to participation because I believe the way we invite people into a cultural experience affects the relationship they develop with it.

A craft demonstration can introduce someone to a practice they have never encountered. Watching the skill involved may be enough to make them curious. Sitting beside the practitioner, handling the materials and trying the technique creates another opportunity. They begin to understand the process through doing it.

For that experience to continue, practical decisions matter. Does the participant have materials to use afterwards? Can they return to ask questions? Has the practitioner been given enough time to teach, and paid fairly for that work?

These questions belong within programme design. If we want people to continue a practice, we need to consider what will make that possible beyond the time they spend with us.

A workshop can begin a relationship. Repeated opportunities allow it to develop.

Who gets to tell the story?

Working in cultural institutions has made me aware of how much influence programming decisions carry. We select the artists, write the descriptions and choose the images through which audiences encounter a practice. These choices can shape what people understand about a community before they have met anyone from it.

I believe the people who carry the knowledge need to help shape that account. They should be able to explain what matters to them, what has changed and what they wish to share. There may be different versions of a practice or different views about its meaning. Making room for those differences gives audiences a fuller understanding.

My feminist participatory research has deepened this commitment. The participants brought knowledge that shaped the activities and my understanding of what took place. Listening to them meant allowing their contributions to influence the work.

The same principle matters when programming heritage. We need to involve practitioners while the idea is still developing, when their decisions can shape its direction. Their relationship with the practice should inform how we present it and what we ask others to understand.

Familiar practices in uncertain times

During difficulty, we sometimes return to things we know through feeling: a song, a meal, a familiar movement or something we learned to make with someone we love. These practices can connect us with people and experiences that help us feel less alone.

The songs I discussed in Part VIII hold that connection for many of us. They carry memories of hardship alongside the hope people expressed through them. Hearing them now can bring those experiences into conversation with our own.

This relationship interests me as I continue developing the everyday-life application of the Creative Resilience Framework. I want to explore how creative participation can help people respond to challenges, sustain supportive relationships and develop capacities they can use in other parts of their lives.

The meaning of an activity will differ from one person to another. A familiar tradition may feel comforting to someone and carry difficult associations for someone else. People need the freedom to choose how they participate and what they wish to express.

I also think we need to be precise about the relationship between heritage and creative practice. Learning a new craft can offer opportunities for expression and confidence without making that activity part of a person’s inherited heritage. Each has value, and understanding its context helps us work with greater care.

Supporting people to continue

We ask a great deal of practitioners when we speak about keeping heritage alive. Continuing a practice takes time and resources. Teaching it requires further work, often alongside other responsibilities.

A younger person may want to learn but struggle to afford materials or attend regularly. A skilled practitioner may want to teach but be unable to give that time without payment. These circumstances affect what can be passed forward.

Cultural programmes can help by paying fairly, providing tools and supporting learning over a longer period. Where practitioners wish to sell their work, we can help them connect with buyers and develop opportunities that respect how they want their practice to grow.

This is part of our responsibility as programmers. The public event may be the most visible outcome, while some of the most consequential work happens in the preparation and follow-up: making sure people have what they need to continue.

What remains afterwards

When a programme ends, I want to know what people carry with them.

Did someone become curious enough to return? Did artists find a reason to work together again? Did a participant continue practising at home or share what they learned with someone else?

My development of Basita.live has also made me think about how these relationships can continue across distance. Digital access can allow people to revisit material, remain in contact and participate when they cannot be physically present. Its usefulness depends on how it is designed, including the language, technology and support available to participants.

Some knowledge can be shared through a screen. Other learning depends on being beside someone, hearing closely, observing a movement or working with the same materials. Understanding these needs helps us create more meaningful opportunities for participation.

I still return to the melody that connected my experience in Alexandria with Turkish and Greek interpretations because it reminds me how a programme can begin. I heard something familiar, became curious about its life elsewhere and wanted to bring people together around it.

The encounter gave that music another occasion to be played, heard and understood. Those involved brought their own knowledge and memories, and something new became possible between them.

Perhaps this is one of the most lasting contributions we can make through cultural programming: giving people opportunities to develop a relationship with what they inherit, express something through it and pass it forward.

Years later, someone may sing the melody again. Someone else may recognise it, ask about it or begin to learn. What we helped bring together continues in their hands and voices.

Notes and listening

[1] Arabic version: Ilham Al Madfai, “Ya Athouli La Taloumni” — listen. For an overview connecting the Arabic titles with the Turkish and Greek versions, see Al-Marefa’s entry on the shared melody. Accounts of its authorship differ.

[2] Greek and Turkish versions: Virtual Museum of the Kounadis Archive, “Apo Xeno Topo”, documenting connections with “Üsküdar’a Gider İken” and other versions. See also “Apo Xeno Topo, Kâtibim, and Üsküdara Giderik’en: The Story Behind the Songs”.

[3] The melody’s contested ownership: Institut Européen des Musiques Juives, Whose Is This Song?, introducing Adela Peeva’s 2003 documentary.

[4] International observance: UNESCO, International Day of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, observed on 17 October.

[5] Previous essay: Reem Kassem, From Sorrow to Strength: Creative Resilience through the Arts, 1967–1973, Cultural Programming with Impact, Part VIII.

[6] Heritage and transmission: UNESCO, Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2003, particularly Article 2.