Monday, September 7, 2009

Hayrik Mouradian told how he taught Ruben Altunyan, son of Tatul Altunyan and director of a 1980s folk/ashoughagan group, the song “Adanayi Voghbu.” Hayrik was disappointed in Altunyan’s arrangement of the song, the version most are now familiar with, saying, “Now if you listen to the song, and don’t know the words or what the song is about, you can’t even tell it’s about something tragic. The original song was the story of the tragedy of Adana, and when you heard it, you knew it was about something sad, something tragic.”

Hasmik sang the original version for our guest from Europe, who couldn’t listen until the end. The song, in its original version, was similar to Avetis Aharonian’s “Nazei Oror,” a lullaby recollecting the horrors of the Armenian Genocide.

Earlier, our guest was in another room, and, hearing a song on television, asked, “Are you listening to Turkish television?” It happened that she heard the pop/rabiz singer Razmik, whose singing style is influenced by his upbringing in Karabagh, where music from Baku ruled (and to some extent still does).

Later, of all things, on a concert on “Armenia” television, pop singer Nune Yesayan, after singing a medley of folk-style songs, sang a few lines in Turkish, leading to some conversation on Armenian news networks the next day. Hearing the Turkish lyrics, our guest commented that it was strange that a people who had a culture like the Armenians would so seriously imitate the music of their neighbors, saying, “many nations have lost their folk music, and are doing their best to revive what they lost, and the Armenians don’t seem to appreciate what they have. When they lose it, they will.”

2 comments:

Ara Stepan Melkonian said...

Andranik,
My impression, after two visits to Yerevan, is that the current thinking is to downplay, ignore, deliberately belittle Armenian culture - all for money...
In the past we western Armenians used to say that it was better to die physically in Turkey than to die spiritually in Russia (eastern Armenia - now the republic).
The 'red genocide' has finished; the 'white genocide' is proceeding like cancer - at great speed. We don't need non-Armenians to kill off our culture; our Armenian 'pop stars' and other devotees of degeneracy are doing a fine job...
Ara

Andranik Michaelian said...

It's true that our pop stars, and their promoters, are killing off our culture, but maybe not on purpose, as in most cases it's just to make a fast buck. More guilty are those who silence real Armenian music, or, more like it, keep it in the background. After Friday night's Shoghaken concert, for example, comments were made like "if you took this group across Armenia and gave concerts, there would be a national awakening..." This is what our leaders don't want. When the Culture Ministry of Armenia, and Karabagh, for that matter, offer to sponsor Shoghaken concerts, they offer the musicians such a small amount that they know what the result will be: no concerts. Yet, when pop stars arrive on the scene, money is somehow discovered...