Early Sound Recordings of the Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond
In Memory of Hugo Strötbaum
Orient-Institut Istanbul
October 9-10, 2026
Diskografentag is the annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Historische Tonträger (GHT – The Society for Historical Sound Recordings), and this year the conference will be held in Istanbul at the Orient-Institut Istanbul. This year’s conference will be held in memory of Hugo Strötbaum, one of the ground-breaking pioneers in early sound recording discography and research who passed away on January 1st, 2026. Because of Hugo’s deep love of Turkish and Greek music, it is appropriate that this year’s Diskografentag is being held in his memory and will take place in Istanbul.
The conference program is as follows:
Friday, 9 October: Day 1
Welcome and Registration
9:30–10:00 Registration 10:00–10:10 Welcome speech: Christoph K. Neumann (OII)
10:10–10:20 Welcome speech: Ersin Mıhcı (OII)
10:20–10:30 Opening words: Christiane Hofer (GHT)
10:30 – 12:00: Session 1 Gender and Diaspora in Ottoman Recorded Cultures
Chair: Inja Stanović (GHT, ERA)
10:30–11:15 Nazan Maksudyan (Freie Universität Berlin) and Martin Greve (OI Beirut, OI Istanbul) Women with a Phonograph, Women on the Phonograph: Gendered Margins of Early Sonic Ethnography in Late Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Eastern Mediterrane
11:15–12:00 Mustafa Avcı (Koç University) Turkish Musicians, Belly Dancers, and the Ottoman Diaspora Scene in America, 1920s–1980s: A Discographic Inquiry
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00–15:00 Visit to the Darülelhan archive with Will Sumits (OII)
15:00–17:00: Session 2 Language and the Gramophone: From Malayalam Drama to Wartime Propaganda
Chair: Ersin Mıhcı (OII)
15:00–15:30 Rainer E. Lotz (GHT) Nazi Propaganda on War-Time Gramophone Records in Dutch, English, French, German, Japanese, and Portuguese (Brazilian). An update.
15:30–16:00 Sunny Mathew Kunnelpurayidom (GHT) Abridged Musical Drama in Malayalam language on Gramophone Records
16:00–16:30 Nikos Ordoulidis (AltSol) This Song is Everybody’s: Semantic Graph Modelling of “Üsküdar”
16:30–17:00 Christiane Hofer (GHT) Is it the Original? Recording, Collecting, and Archiving
Saturday, 10 October: Day 2
10:30 – 12:00 Session 3: Talking Machines to Archives
Chair: Christiane Hofer (GHT)
10:30–11:00 Tim Fabrizio (GHT) The Muse Goes West: European Influences Manifested in American Talking Machines.
11:00– 11:30 Alevtina Parland (University of the Arts Helsinki) and Cenker Sarıkaya (Oxford University) Isa Kremer – a Yiddish Diva in occupied Istanbul
11:30–12:00 Gökçen B. Dinç (Utrecht University) Mediating Islam in Turkish: Mevlidhans, Recording Practices, and the Global Circulation of Mevlid in the Early Turkish Republic
12:00–13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 14:30 Session 4 Archiving and Documenting Recorded Music Heritage
Chair: Will Sumits (OII)
13:00 – 13:30 Mustafa Said (Qatar Foundation) Archiving Classical Arabic Music Memory: From Wax Cylinders to 78 RPM
13:30 – 14:00 Will Prentice (EMI Global Gramophone) The Global Gramophone: Digitising the Gramophone Company’s so-called “Orient” catalogue
14:00–14:30 Ibrahimov Turan Mammad oglu (Independent Scholar) Rediscovering Lost Voices: Systematizing Early Azerbaijani Recordings and Identifying Unknown Khanandas
14:30 – 15:00 Coffee Break
15:00–16:00 Roundtable 1: Darülelhân and the Sound of Late-Ottoman Anatolia
Chair: Will Sumits (OII)
Ulaş Özdemir (Istanbul University State Conservatory), Will Sumits (OII), Mehtap Demir (Istanbul University), Ruhi Ayangıl (Ayangıl Turkish Music Orchestra and Chorus)
16:00–16:30 Coffee Break
16:30–17:45 Roundtable 2: Stories We Carry: Remembering Hugo, a Colleague, a Researcher
Frederik Paerels, Martin Schwartz, Serdar Uçar, Cemal Ünlü, Paula Jansen, and others.
17:45–17:55 Farewell: Christiane Hofer (GHT)
18:00–19:00 Closing concert Eastward Piano: Dora Spetsioti (voice) and Nikos Ordoulidis (piano)
Registration