This paper examines how Greek American film constructs ethnic identity through sound, attending to the musical materials that make “Greekness” immediately audible. Focusing on the 2002 film My Big Fat Greek Wedding and situating it within a broader diasporic media environment that includes festival promotion, reality television segments, and independent diaspora productions, this paper traces how a small repertoire of sonic elements including bouzouki timbres, syrtaki/hasapiko dance rhythms, and modal melodic figures, circulates across genres and platforms functioning not simply as background detail but as central narrative tools framing characters, shaping emotions, and guiding viewers’ understandings of cultural belonging.

I argue that these sounds operate as ambivalent sonic stereotypes stabilizing legibility for mainstream audiences while opening a “third space” of negotiation (Bhabha) for diasporic listeners. Drawing on Martin Stokes’s work on music, place, and social boundaries, I demonstrate how sound cues perform boundary work—indexing spatial and familiar imaginaries through which Greek American identity is recognized. Building on scholarship in film music and affect (Kassabian), I demonstrate how the same materials that risk flattening difference can also secure powerful diasporic identifications. Methodologically, the paper combines close listening, cue cataloging, and paratextual analysis with attention to production practices that blend “Greek‑coded” sonorities and Hollywood scoring conventions. The result is a theorization of diasporic audibility where stereotype and affective resonance are not opposites but co‑produced sonic signs of “Greekness” that codify and continually remake the terms of diasporic belonging.