Welcome Back to the Twenties!

VARTAN MARGOSIAN

Well, a hundred years have gone by (though it seems sometimes like it should be eighty...) and we are once again in a decade called the Twenties. Whether these Twenties will be "roaring" or not remains to be seen. Frankly I'm a little surprised that we haven't seen more "Great Gatsby" themed parties. Maybe it's because since the beginning of the year, social media has been consumed with speculating whether World War 3 is going to start, and when they aren't doing that, speculating whether the President of the United States has really been impeached or not, and when they aren't doing that, talking about the upcoming election. 

Well, dear readers, I am not going to talk about any of those things, but rather take you on a little trip back to the Nineteen Twenties. Cousin Harry - you say with a groan - I already know about the 1920s! I read the Great Gatsby in school! (ok, I read the Cliff's Notes.) And I know all about the jazz age. I watched that Ken Burns documentary. Ok, I watched one episode and fell asleep but WHAT IS YOUR POINT? 

My point is, I am going to introduce you to the Armenian-American 1920s. Which sounds a lot more like my style, now doesn't it?

So let's start at the begining. And just as the American 1960s didn't really begin until the JFK assasination, the Armenian-American 1920s didn't really begin until the Armistice of Mudanya. What is the Armistice of Mudanya?

Here we go down the rabbit hole. 

So what most Americans know about World War I is that the Allies won, Germany lost, Turkey was an ally of Germany, and during the war Turkey committed the Armenian Genocide. But wait a second. Turkey LOST. How did they then get away with Genocide?

The answer is, that I would argue Turkey never really lost WWI. The government surrendered to the Allies with the Armistice of Mudros (October 1918). Britain and France occupied Constantinople, the Committee and Union and Progess or Ittihad Party was kicked out, and the Itilaf Party was brought to power and initiated war crimes trials, the Allies carved up Turkey...But at the same time a young army officer named Mustafa Kemal got the army to rebel against the Allied victory..... and fought the Allies until they ... sort of surrended in a second armistice - the Armistice of Mudanya (1922). The British gave the Kemalists all of Anatolia and Constantinople, and the Allies got trade routes and the oil fields of Mosul. Armenian issues were swept uder the rug.

Essentially, the government lost the war, but the army didn't give up.

Over the course of the winter, spring, and summer of 1923 the Treaty of Laussanne worked out these details. All Greeks still living in Turkey were sent to Greece. All Muslims in Greece were sent to Turkey. The last Armenians left in orphanages were deported from the country; the large orphanage in Kharpert was evacuated to Lebanon. The last hope of Armenians having any kind of independence on these lands were crushed. A small remnant was left in the interior, but for most, there was no going back. 

After the treaty of Lausanne was signed in July 1923, Armenians in America went into preservation mode. That September in NYC, singer and violinist Vartan Margosian released 12 recordings of his native Kharpert folk songs in Armenian and Turkish. Longing for the homeland, he sounds like he's crying on some tracks.

Armenian recordings hadn't been made in America since the war ended 5 years earlier, and back then it was the big record labels looking to capitalize on immigrants. But Margosian set in motion a independent recording movement that became a whole industry. Before the year was up businessman Sarkis Sarafian started the Sohag record label in NY in order to record and promote Armenian show tunes and classical pieces.

And the records just kept coming - record labels such as M.G. Parsekian, Oriental, Pharos, Stamboul, Shamlian, and even privately pressed recordings by the biggest star in the Armenian world, Armenag Shah-Mouradian. All of this culminated in Armenians being picked up by the major labels, Victor and Columbia. Oud, violin, dumbeg, clarinet, kanun, blul, tar, mandolin, and piano players along with singers vocalizing in Armenian, Turkish, Kurdish, and even French were all featured. Armenian-owned record labels were putting out material by Anatolian Greeks and Sephardic and Romaniote Jews. In fact, as far as I can understand from my research, during the 1920s New York / New Jersey was the world capital of the Armenian recording industry.

It wasn't just music. Literature took a turn toward preservation mode as well. Coming out of Boston, in the summer of 1924 the writer Hamasdegh (Hampartzoum Gelenian) published "Kiughe" (The Village), his book of short stories about growing up in the village of Parchanj outside of Kharpert. At the same time, Kharpert-Hussenig native Peniamin Noorigian headed up a committee to seek out and publish all surviving works of their teacher at Kharpert's Central High School, the famed writer Tlgadintsi (Hovhannes Haroutiunian), father of provincial Armenian literature, known to his students simply as Hovhannes Effendi. Tlgadintsi was murdered in the Genocide, but his complete works (as many as could be found) were published in Boston in 1927. With all physical connection to the Old Country lost, Armenian-Americans wanted to make sure that the lands and the life they left behind was not forgotten in their new home, the United States.

SETRAK SOURABIAN

And they built churches, and newspapers, and compatriotic societies, and other organizations. The 1920s were the era of the "picture brides" - orphaned Armenian girls who came to America to marry men they had never met, but who were from their home village, had left a few years back to make money in America, and who were lonely themselves. Usually these men were vouched for by some common relative or family friend among the survivors. These newlywed couples began to start families and new lives. And to the sprightly, optimistic tune of Setrak Sourabian's immortal song "Akh Im Anoush Yar," (which was, however, tinged with loss in the actual lyrics), a new Armenian community was born, thrived, and made it in America.

New book on Armenia Diaspora Music

For possibly the first time in history, a full length book in English, and a scholarly one at that, has been published which includes an in depth look at kef music.

Sylvia Alajaji, Ph.D., has written the book "Music And The Armenian Diaspora: Searching For Home In Exile."

Dr. Alajaji is an Associate Professor of Music at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Her research through the discipline of ethnomusicology has led her to compose this book which is the first of its kind, though several articles, theses or dissertations (including by the author herself) have been done on the topic. Interviews with leading authorities on different styles of Armenian music including kef music legend Richard Hagopian have contributed to the making of the book. I myself have ordered the book and I promise a review of it at some point in the near future to appear here on "Kef Time USA."

As far as I can tell, the book is an analysis of the differing developments or conceptualizations of Armenian music in different diaspora communities after the Genocide. Armenians in Lebanon performed semi-classical Armenian folk music with a nationalist direction, following in the footsteps of Gomidas, and later developed Armenian pop music (estradayin). Armenians in the US played the music they had played in the Ottoman Empire, in Armenian and Turkish languages, in a Near Eastern style (kef music). Finally the Lebanese Armenian and American Armenian music cultures came into confict when the Lebanese Armenians immigrated in large numbers to especially Southern California after the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975.

The author's starting point is the question "what is Armenian music?" and she seems to be highlighting how the musical differences in the different diaspora communities reflected different conceptualizations of Armenianness, politics, etc.

The chapters of the book are:
1. Ottoman Empire, 1890-1915
2. New York, 1932-1958
3. Beirut, 1932-1958
4. Beirut 1958-1980
5. California

...representing as far as I can tell, 1. Gomidas, 2. immigrant kef musicians in NYC Greektown, 3. Semi Classical Armenian folk music in Lebanon 4. Armenian pop music in Lebanon 5. Armenian pop music meets kef music in California

The book is certain to be interesting. I found a teaser youtube video of Prof. Alajaji explaining her book somewhat to another academic at Duke University:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFKHzdLFDU8

Unfortunately for our purposes, she didn't say much about kef music in the interview but it was interesting nonetheless and I'm looking forward to reading the book! To be continued.....

"Your Homeland And The Phonograph" (old advertisement)

The following advertisement was found on the back cover of the Pharos Records songbook of 1928. Pharos Records was an Armenian-owned record company in New York City in the 1920s. Their catalogue contained numerous Armenian and Turkish songs by mostly Armenian artists, with Greek and a few other ethnicities represented. The songbook is a valuable document with lyrics to the songs that are on many of their records, whether in Armenian or Turkish, printed in Armenian letters.

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.