3: Sounding the Alarm: The Role of Music in Shaping Public Discourse on Femicides in Greece Available to Purchase

This chapter examines the role of music in shaping public discourse on femicide in contemporary Greece. Centring on the murders of Eleni Topaloudi (2018) and Caroline Crouch (2021), it argues that, in the absence of robust legal recognition of femicide, popular music has become a vital medium through which grief, anger and solidarity are expressed and politicised. Drawing on case studies such as ‘Όλες απαντάμε αν αγγίξεις μία” [‘We All Respond if You Touch One’] by Vivir Quitana and the Open Orchestra, Foivos Delivorias’s ‘Ελένη Τοπαλούδη’ [‘Eleni Topaloudi’], ‘Καμία Μόνη’ [‘No One Alone’] by Spyros Grammenos and Nefeli Fasouli, ‘Χιονάτη’ [‘Snow White’] by Thanos Papageorgiou and Kostis Amiridis and ‘Τακούνια για Καρφιά’ [‘Heels for Nails’] by Orestis Dandtos, this chapter explores how artists transform mourning into mobilisation and the silence of subaltern voices into sound. Using frameworks from feminist theory, affect studies and sound studies, including the work of Sara Ahmed, Judith Butler, Zizi Papacharissi and Brandon LaBelle, this chapter conceptualises music as a form of acoustic citizenship, that is, a practice through which citizens listen, grieve and act together. Ultimately, this chapter highlights how feminist music in Greece reclaims the cultural field as a site of resistance, rewriting silence into resonance and turning the demand for justice into a collective act of listening.