Today we look at one of the oldest and scarcest commercial recordings of Armenian music in the Museum’s collection. The record was made in Moscow in 1909 and features a largely unknown Armenian singer and tar player named Nikol Baveyan. The recording takes its place among some of the earliest Armenian music recordings, made in the first decade of the 20th century and produced by the London-based Gramophone Company. This record's presence in the collection of the Museum is a product of the ad hoc record import and distribution industry which flourished in the United States in the first decades of the 1900s. Thanks to the presence of this industry and the distribution of what are now exceedingly rare artifacts of the first years of recorded Armenian music, we are privileged to have a glimpse into the musical culture of the ashugh tradition of the Caucuses.

Venture with us back to 1949 New York City. On April 24, 1949, the Armenian National Chorus, directed by Mihran Toumadjan, produced a remarkable concert at the Town Hall venue. Toumadjan was a conductor, song and lore collector, and student of Gomidas Vartabed.

It was on a typical spring day in New York City when Helen Paul entered the Columbia Records recording studios in the Woolworth Building, located at 233 Broadway in Lower Manhattan. Helen Paul would only record two songs during her April 1918 session, but the songs were of great importance — for a mere few weeks after her recording sessions, on May 28, 1918, the independent Republic of Armenia was established. As a soprano accompanied by a violin she recorded Mer Hairenik (the Armenian National anthem) and also produced the first known recording of the ode to the Armenian revolutionaries from Erzerum, titled Tzain ma Hunchetz (“A sound bellowed”).

The recording we focus on here is a simple and beautiful slice of life, put down on record 81 years ago to the month by Genocide survivor and Chicago resident Karnig Kuludjian. Unlike many of our other posts, what is remarkable about Karnig is not his impact on recorded history or the development of Armenian music; rather, it is the profound yet modest and intimate sense of purpose expressed in his gesture of marking on a home record the event of American troops returning home from Europe at the end of the war. 

Many of the artists featured in this series serve as vital musical links between generations, transmitting deep knowledge of their traditional repertoire through recordings and personal relationships. Like our recent feature on the renowned Armenian oud player Udi Hrant, Garbis Bakirgian, known as Kanouni Garbis, was a master of his instrument, with a distinguished career in the early 20th century across Turkey and the Middle East. After settling in the United States in the 1920s, his recordings and collaborations with other master musicians had a lasting impact on the music heard in Armenian homes and community events through the 1940s and 1950s. In his later years, Garbis further ensured his legacy by mentoring a young Richard Hagopian, who would go on to shape Armenian music in America, in a spirit closely aligned with Garbis’s own work.

Over the years, the Sound Archive has attempted to detail the interconnectedness of the Armenian-American musical community. This installment highlights a significant contributor to the history of Armenians in America: Hagop H. Asadourian and his collaboration with Alan Hovhaness on record and in concert.