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Dj Bei Ru Mines The Neglected Grooves Of His Heritage For Beats Gold

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  • Dj Bei Ru Mines The Neglected Grooves Of His Heritage For Beats Gold

    DJ BEI RU MINES THE NEGLECTED GROOVES OF HIS HERITAGE FOR BEATS GOLD
    By Liz Ohanesian

    LA Weekly
    http://www.laweekly.com/2011-01-27/music/dj-bei-ru-mines-he-neglected-grooves-of-his-heritage-for-beats-gold/
    Jan 27 2011
    CA

    L.A. means little Armenia

    Little Armenia is more than a neighborhood on the eastern side of
    Hollywood. And it's more than the title of hip-hop producer Bei Ru's
    latest album. It's a state of mind.

    "We grew up in L.A., but it was amongst family, friends, it was kind
    of like they brought their version of Little Armenia here," Bei Ru
    says when we meet for tea on Ventura Boulevard. "So, we grew up in
    our own Little Armenia."

    Born Baruir Panossian in Los Angeles, Bei Ru is the son of ethnic
    Armenian immigrants from Lebanon, who introduced him to the sound
    of famed Armenian pop singers such as Harout Pamboukjian and Adiss
    Harmandian. He grew up primarily in the San Fernando Valley, where he
    attended an Armenian day school for a time, and occasionally traveled
    with his family to Lebanon and Armenia. All this has informed Little
    Armenia (L.A.), an album created almost entirely from samples of
    Armenian music.

    Little Armenia (L.A.) is the sound of a diaspora that settled in Los
    Angeles, Armenian music filtered through the influence of albums like
    Dr. Dre's The Chronic and the seminal underground hip-hop compilation
    Beneath the Surface. For his album, Bei Ru borrows from cultural
    staples - like "Der Voghormia" ("Lord Have Mercy") from Komitas'
    Divine Liturgy and Aram Khachaturian's Gayane - as well as obscure
    funk, soul and jazz artists from the '60s and '70s, occasionally
    layering the samples with live bass, drums, guitars and even some
    horns. Linking together the tracks at times are snippets of dialogue
    from 1970s English-language movies about Armenians coming to America.

    "It was a cool '70s cheesy funkiness that I felt complemented the
    music," he says of the footage.

    Bei Ru arranged the album carefully, always making sure not to take
    away from the soulfulness of the source material.

    "So many people aren't aware that there was that element in Armenian
    songs," he explains. "A lot of contemporary Armenian music is the
    same songs played the same way for the past few hundred years, all
    acoustic. It was a short era in the '60s and '70s that has this cool
    funkiness to it that's kind of forgotten. I wanted to focus on that
    era for that reason."

    It's the obscurities that seem to give Bei Ru a sense of purpose with
    his music. "There were other artists that got popular, but there are so
    many obscure albums and artists from that era that no one remembers,"
    he says [see sidebar]. "I felt like it was a mission to expose people
    to that. And, of course, I love the music. It has a special place
    for me in my heart - there's just something about it."

    Bei Ru has dug through crates in record shops from L.A. to Lebanon
    to Armenia in search of forgotten gems, no easy task in a culture
    that long ago abandoned vinyl in favor of compact discs.

    "Unfortunately, a lot of people I spoke to had these old records and
    they just threw them away," he says of his experience in Armenia.

    "They said, 'We don't listen to them anymore, there's no use for
    them.' So it was difficult to find them. It's perseverance and luck. I
    came up with some good stuff over the years."

    Bei Ru recalls trying to score vinyl at Vernissage, a large outdoor
    market in Yerevan. "They have old metal parts from the Soviet era,
    everything you can think of, but I couldn't find records," he says.

    "So I was asking around and one guy gave me another guy's number
    and he told me, he referred me to someone else, so I had to call him
    and meet him in the coffee shop. It was this really long process of
    meeting him, and at the end of the day I got a couple of records that
    I had no idea what they were. It was all in Russian writing." He took
    a chance on the purchase and ended up using one of the songs on the
    intro to Little Armenia.

    Bei Ru's album plays like a love letter to his heritage. Though
    he plans to continue working with Armenian music, either on a more
    "experimental" release or with live bands, Bei Ru says he does not
    foresee a "sequel" to Little Armenia.

    "I feel like I said everything I had to say on this project, so I
    think it would be silly to try to re-create it."

    The quest for Armenian vinyl, though, will continue.

    "It's like archaeology to me. They're kind of like artifacts, a lot of
    these records, they were never repressed or anything. You can't find
    them anywhere. Finding them is like finding a piece of history. It's
    so awesome to me."




    From: A. Papazian
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