Ancient Mesopotamian Music, the Politics of Reconstruction, and Extreme Early Music

Abstract: This essay explores the power and connections between performed and material reconstructions of “extreme” early music. Drawing on recent scholarship in archaeological preservation and conservation as well as performance studies, Dorf contextualizes and analyzes the music of singer/songwriter Stef Conner’s setting of the Gilgamesh narrative. The multiple reconstructions of Eastern Mediterranean culture discussed here not only provide a setting to test the limits of musical reconstructions, refabrications and reinventions, but also demonstrate ways musical reconstructions function as a form of history for general audiences. Such public performances sidestep scholarly questions of authenticity and allow us to see how, when, and to whom scholarship becomes “real.”

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