A film role is a production of IHurt Radio.

The History of American Music in 12 seconds.

Things that related directly to what we created as Americans that led up to our greatest musical contributions to the world.

Old jazz, old blues, old gospel, old country.

That's kind of America.

That's one narrative.

But the full story, like America itself, is much more complicated.

And Ian Nagoski has something he'd like to add.

My name is Ian Nagoski.

I'm a music researcher and record producer near Baltimore, Maryland.

A little bit more than a decade now, I've been doing reissue records of old stuff and languages that I don't speak.

Through his label, Canary Records, Ian has reissued all kinds of forgotten treasures.

Early American gospel, untraceable East Asian pop songs, recordings of wild birds, works that

were almost forgotten. Some stuff he's literally pulled out of garbage cans.

But of all of his projects, one is the preeminent focus, songs of near and Middle Eastern

immigrants in the United States.

What I've been calling Ottoman diaspora music.

Ottoman as in the Ottoman Empire, which, like the Soviet Union, is an entity that no longer

exists, but exerted a powerful force on the tides of history.

Disclaimer.

Well, I have to say that I'm not an Ottomanist historian, an academic, or anything like that.

There's a lot that you could get wrong.

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