Expectations, Experiences, and Re-Sounding the Homeland: Music and Future Temporalities in the Armenian Diaspora of Milan

In diasporic contexts, such as the Armenian community in Milan, music serves as a vital tool for negotiating temporal politics through an ever-shifting notion of futurity, enabling the envisioning and reimagining of the homeland within a framework of displacement. My presentation examines an Armenian musical project in Milan to demonstrate how music-based accounts reflect evolving narrative conceptions of a future Armenia, shaped by the community’s experiences and aspirations. Politics of expectation inform the scores by classical composer Ludwig Bazil for the avant-garde project Ararat, staged with painter Herman Vahramian at the Milanese church of San Maurizio in 1977. Despite its intrinsic notions of futurity, which relied on a reinterpretation of Armenia’s artistic heritage, the performance’s reception at the time focused less on the projective power of music and intermedia and more on portraying an underrepresented culture to Italian audiences. According to Vahramian, utopian prospects of Bazil’s music gained full significance only after Armenian independence from the USSR in 1991, when diaspora Armenians’ expectancies transformed into political autonomy. My paper explores the relationship between music and the politics of futurity within the Milanese Armenian community, underscoring how recasting the future stands as a key premise for musical historiography that addresses the diachronic nature of diaspora. By tracing a nexus between historical and ethnographic research, I investigate the role of musical performance in shaping an ongoing definition of the Armenian homeland.