Pharos was not a producer of phonograph equipment and the advertisement below was not selling any particular brand of phonograph. But of course, Pharos wanted you to have a phonograph, so that you could buy their records to play on it. The ad is interesting and touching because it probably gives some of the real reasons that early Armenian immigrants did buy phonographs, and what listening to Armenian and Turkish songs meant to them, especially considering the events of 1915.
Your Homeland And The Phonograph
The phonograph
is that instrument of music, through the grace of which it has become possible
to make alive the songs of the homeland and the sweet memories of them. The
picture of your ancestral country, the faces of its folk singers, and each syllable
of all those songs which lullabied your childhood to sleep and enflamed your
youth, will always remain burning and alive in your memory through the grace of
the phonograph.
Let the
phonograph be an indispensable object in your house, a beautiful ornament in
your parlor, and enjoy it a bit, in order to draw inspiration from the
pleasures of an unmatched branch of the fine arts, Music.
The
phonograph is the live communicator of music, through the grace of which you
can at all times, in your home, have near you all the singers, not only those
who are your compatriots, but also those belonging to other nations and who
have fame and talent. Through the grace of the phonograph, even the dead
artists will speak with you in the sweet-sounding language of their songs.
