Sunday Feature: Songs of Trebizond

Tom de Waal traces some of what has been lost to the Soumela Monastery in northeast Turkey where every August 15, people of Pontic descent from across the globe come to remember the feast of the Virgin. Here, there is a collision of Russian, Turkish and Greek interests, which provides a lesson in modern regional politics. But connecting all of these disparate people is music - the Greek lyre and the Turkish kemence, a small violin played like a cello. They play the same, they dance the same, yet are politically divided