ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses upon the acoustemology of techniques of listening to post-Second World War and post-Greek Civil War rebetiko love song recordings mediating an affective archive of social pain, deprivation and exile defining the dystopic modernity of that era. Acoustemology thus acknowledges the mutuality and situatedness of sound, and privileges the understanding of listening as a dialogical and interactive practice that is an open-ended, cumulative process, constantly evading finalisation. Listening to old rebetiko songs is seen as a process of heterochronic positioning within past musical worlds constantly gaining a fascinating and shifting present-ness. Song re-stages the wounded bodies of the mid-twentieth century, the counter-heroes of the love-trauma manifesting their precarious humanness. The performative presence of the dead agencies through song transforms what appears to be a solitary way of listening to the affective togetherness formed between the listeners and the intimated dead voices.
