Epic Roman Series

This Epic Roman Music series’ goal is to reshape public perceptions of how Ancient Rome is imagined sonically, towards a more accurate impression of it. Deeply embedded in the modern collective imagination is Rome’ association with grand orchestral fanfares, cinematic brass, and large-scale soundtrack aesthetics. The Epic Roman Series instead seeks to introduce audiences to a more culturally and historically grounded soundscape: harsh reed timbres, aulos-like sonorities, bagpipes, percussion, and scales that can sound strikingly alien to modern ears.

While Faraji also maintains a separate series dedicated to historically informed approximations of Roman music, The Epic Roman Series approaches the question through ethnomusicological methodology. In terms of timbre, rhythm, instrumental texture, and melodic logic, several living traditions of the modern Balkans preserve sound worlds closer to what we can plausibly imagine for ancient Roman music than the cinematic conventions of film soundtracks.

Through this approach, the unavoidable gaps in our limited knowledge of Roman music are explored through living musical practices preserved in the Balkans. This allows the attested sounds of their instruments and modal languages to be heard in a culturally realistic way, whilst remaining distinct from modern cinematic soundscapes.