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ALBUM REVIEWS: TO WHAT STRANGE PLACE
Scotsman
http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment/Album-reviews-Charlie-Simpson-.6818653.jp
Aug 15 2011
UK
By Scotsman critics
Our critics take a look at some of this week's new releases....
...
To What Strange Place: The Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora
1916-1929 Thompkins Square, £29.99 *****
THE story of this fascinating triple-CD begins and ends with tears. It
begins with the flight of Turkish-Armenians from Turkey in 1915, when
hundreds of thousands were murdered or driven into exile; it ends when
the 1929 Wall Street crash threw most of America's new immigrants onto
the scrap-heap. In between, a remarkable musical culture flourished
wherever Armenians, Turks, and Greeks were clustered together:
here we encounter the unmistakeable sounds of all three cultures,
fundamentally one and the same.
Almost everything here was recorded in Manhattan. These musicians moved
among the cafes of New York's Little Armenia and its Sephardic quarter,
playing with and listening to each other, surrounded by men wearing
fezes and smoking water-pipes. Many were also peddlers, or engravers,
or waiters, or fruit-sellers; they played to recover their sense of
identity, and to accompany their traditional dances.
"Ah, I wish I had never gone, /Ah, I wish I had never seen/ Darling
you, America," sings Achilleas Poulos from Anatolia in 1926: this was
a very strong love-hate relationship. One of these CDs consists of
American releases for Ottoman emigres of music by their compatriots
back home: record companies made a killing this way, trading on the
nostalgia market. The other two are of the genuine thing - emigre
stars performing for their communities.
Some of the recordings are very rough in quality, others surprisingly
good, but two tracks stand out. The first is by the Greek singer Marika
Papagika (1890-1943), one of the most popular immigrant singers in
America. The other is by Armenag Chah-Mouradian, a blacksmith's son
whose sweet rendition of a Komitas song literally tugs the heart.
MICHAEL CHURCH
From: Baghdasarian
Scotsman
http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment/Album-reviews-Charlie-Simpson-.6818653.jp
Aug 15 2011
UK
By Scotsman critics
Our critics take a look at some of this week's new releases....
...
To What Strange Place: The Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora
1916-1929 Thompkins Square, £29.99 *****
THE story of this fascinating triple-CD begins and ends with tears. It
begins with the flight of Turkish-Armenians from Turkey in 1915, when
hundreds of thousands were murdered or driven into exile; it ends when
the 1929 Wall Street crash threw most of America's new immigrants onto
the scrap-heap. In between, a remarkable musical culture flourished
wherever Armenians, Turks, and Greeks were clustered together:
here we encounter the unmistakeable sounds of all three cultures,
fundamentally one and the same.
Almost everything here was recorded in Manhattan. These musicians moved
among the cafes of New York's Little Armenia and its Sephardic quarter,
playing with and listening to each other, surrounded by men wearing
fezes and smoking water-pipes. Many were also peddlers, or engravers,
or waiters, or fruit-sellers; they played to recover their sense of
identity, and to accompany their traditional dances.
"Ah, I wish I had never gone, /Ah, I wish I had never seen/ Darling
you, America," sings Achilleas Poulos from Anatolia in 1926: this was
a very strong love-hate relationship. One of these CDs consists of
American releases for Ottoman emigres of music by their compatriots
back home: record companies made a killing this way, trading on the
nostalgia market. The other two are of the genuine thing - emigre
stars performing for their communities.
Some of the recordings are very rough in quality, others surprisingly
good, but two tracks stand out. The first is by the Greek singer Marika
Papagika (1890-1943), one of the most popular immigrant singers in
America. The other is by Armenag Chah-Mouradian, a blacksmith's son
whose sweet rendition of a Komitas song literally tugs the heart.
MICHAEL CHURCH
From: Baghdasarian