Canary Records – none
In the second half of the 19th century, troupes of Moroccans, Egyptians,
and Syrians performed in the United States at tent shows, circuses,
minstrel shows, vaudeville houses, and theaters as ethnographic/ exotic
spectacles for American audiences. Several members of the first Syrian
family to emigrate to the U.S., headed by a medical doctor named Yusuf
Arbeely (b. 1828, five miles outside of Damascus) who arrived with his
wife, niece, and five sons in August 1878, toured during the 1880s
offering paying customers (25 cents for adults; 15 cents for kids) a
chance to see people from the Holy Land in native costume. The 1893
Columbia World Exposition in Chicago offered many more Americans the
chance to witness aspects of Arab and Turkish culture at its pavilions.
(Three wax cylinders now at the Library of Congress, recorded in Chicago
by Benjamin Ives Gilman on the morning of September 25, 1893 by four
musicians from Beirut, totaling less than five minutes of sound, are,
strictly speaking, the first sound recordings of Arabs made in the
United States.)
Through the end of the 19th and beginning of the early 20th centuries
Syrian immigrants to the U.S. developed enclaves in about a dozen cities
and towns in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan, and
New York. By 1920, over 150,000 Arabic-speaking immigrants from Greater
Syria (the Ottoman districts of Aleppo, Damascus, Beirut, Mount Lebanon,
and Jerusalem) established themselves in a variety of retail, service,
financial, and manufacturing trades, especially the garment business.
40,000 more immigrants from the Syrian diaspora had settled in Canada
and Mexico, 300,000 in Brazil and Argentina, and 40,000 more elsewhere
in South America and the Caribbean. In the wake of the catastrophe of
WWI, in which over 18% of the Syrian population died (including the
famine that killed half of the population of Mount Lebanon in 1915-18),
and the policies under French occupation in the 20s, most remained in
the Americas rather than return home, as many immigrants had originally
intended.
The first Syrian-American to have recorded in the U.S. was a composer
and pianist named Alexander Maloof (b. ca. 1884-85) who arrived with his
parents from Zahle (present-day Lebanon) in 1894. They applied for
citizenship the following year. He was already publishing sheet music of
his compositions as a teenager, had established himself as a music
teacher in Brooklyn by 1905, and was performing in public in his 20s.
His music often purposefully synthesized American and Syrian elements.
In 1912, he copyrighted “America Ya Hilwa” (which he called “For Thee,
America” in English) and campaigned for years to have it become the U.S.
national anthem. In September and October, 1913, he recorded his
ragtimesque piano arrangement of the traditional Ottoman tune
“Aljazayer” and an original composition called “A Trip to Syria” (a trip
that he himself never made). It is unclear whether the resulting disc
was marketed to English or Arabic speaking audiences. In April 1916 a
group credited only as “Syrian Band” recorded four sides for Columbia
records in New York and were issued as part of their E (ethnic) series
for the immigrant community; the hybridized style of those performances
are similar to material Maloof's Oriental Orchestra recorded and
self-released in the 20s. It seems reasonable to speculate that they
were made under his direction. On his own label, his issued a wide
variety of material by his own band as well as other immigrant
performers. After folding the label, he recorded several more sessions
for other labels in the 20s and 30s including Victor and Gennett Records
in Richmond, Indiana. (Among them were a series of organ solos marketed
to funeral parlors and roller rinks.) He produced piano rolls,
performed on radio, toured widely, and continued teaching into the
1950s. Richard M. Breaux’s excellent biographical article on Maloof
points out that when he died on leap day 1956 in New Jersey, his local
obituary pointed out his efforts to transcribe and preserve Levantine
folk music.
Arabic-language discs on various overseas labels were imported
physically from Beirut and Cairo during throughout the 1910s by
entrepreneurs including A.J. Macksoud who ran a series of music shops on
and around Manhattan’s Washington Street in what was then Little Syria,
while at the same time Victor Records issued foreign recordings
domestically in the U.S. for the immigrant market. It was not until the
Maronite priest Rev. George Aziz (b. 1872) recorded a single disc on May
15, 1914 in New York with violin accompaniment that the Arabic language
was recorded commercially in the U.S. (Again we refer those interested
in a recent biographical article on Aziz by Richard Breaux.) March 18
and 19 of 1915, the first Syrian recording star Nahum Simon began making
discs for Columbia.
Simon appears to have been a professional shoemaker, born January 25,
1890. He seems to have tried to emigrate through Ellis Island initially
in June 1904 at the age of 15, but after being detained for four days
for medical reasons, was deported. He successfully entered the U.S. in
1912, settling on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn with his wife Rahill and
their two American-born children Evaleen (b. ca. 1915) and Joseph (b.
ca. 1917). Between March and September 1915, he recorded 12 discs, and
then in 1916-17 another 21, all for Columbia. Their popularity catalyzed
a wave of recordings of Arabic-speaking immigrants that took place over
the second half of the 1910s. He did not however record again until the
1920s when he made 8 more discs for Victor Records (including two 12”
discs) and 3 12” discs for Columbia. After a few appearances of WBBC’s
Syrian Hour radio show in early 1933, we are unclear what happened to
him.
The only other singers to have recorded nearly as prolifically as Simon
during the 1910s and 20s were Selim Domani, who made at least 30 discs
for Maloof’s label; Louis Wardini, who made 6 discs for Victor on May
16, 1917 and another 25 discs for independent labels in the 20s
(including Maloof’s); and Constantine Sooss (or Souse), who released 17
discs on Victor and Columbia during the period October 1917 to February
1920. (Again, Richard Breaux has written biographical studies of all
three of them.) One factor ties together the recordings of Simon,
Domani, Sooss, Wardini, and (potentially) Aziz. They all include the
violin accompaniment of Naim Karacand. My own 2500-word biographical
article on Karacand was published at Breaux’s Midwest Majar blog, but
here is a brief summary:
Karacand was born on September 2, 1890 in Aleppo, Syria, where he was
raised Catholic. He arrived at Ellis Island October 10, 1909 and settled
in Brooklyn, followed by his younger brother Hicmat and parents
Abdullah and Susie. He was first married in 1912, and he had his wife
Najeema had three children (1913-17) - the period during which he
recorded scores of discs with Nahum Simon, William Kamel, Moses Cohen,
and several others as well as about 10 discs under his own name or
anonymously. His band at the time included Shehade Ashear (or Shehadi
Ashkar, kanun) and Abraham Halaby (oud), both of whom were Halabi
(Aleppan) Jews, or in some cases, oudist Toufic Gabriel Moubaid (born
ca. 1887-88 in Tripoli, Lebanon). During 1921-22, he was involved in a
protracted, bitter, and very public divorce that tore his family apart.
He recorded prolifically through the 20s for Maloof and Macksoud labels.
His Declaration of Intent to naturalize as the citizen of the United
States on July 10, 1923 was witnessed by his regular collaborator Toufic
Moubaid and the dancer Anna Athena Arcus, a native of Mersin, Turkey
five years his senior whom he later married. In 1930-32 Karacand worked
as a music consultant on films in Hollywood, notably including Mata Hari
starring Greta Garbo. In 1936-37, he traveled to Brazil for the wedding
of his brother Chukri and performed there before returning to Brooklyn
just after a retrospective concert of his work had been produced at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music. He spent the 1930s and 40s playing WHOM’s
Friday evening Arabian Nights radio program and performing constantly at
gatherings of the Syrian-Lebanese community. He continued to record
prolifically for independent labels through the 1940s and 50s in New
York. Among his last recordings were in 1958 at jazz-Arabic hybrid
sessions for Riverside Records under the direction of Ahmed Abdul-Malik,
who was then bassist for Thelonious Monk. Following the deaths of his
second wife and all three of his children, he died in Astoria, Queens in
1973 and is buried in Green Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
A composer and performer who was held in high regard in his community,
Karacand’s repertoire and skill allowed him to play with a wide variety
of performers from many backgrounds. Even among his earliest recordings
on this collection, he plays a classical peshrev (“bishro”) by the
Ottoman-Armenian Tatyos Effendi (tracks 17-18), urban Beirut/Cairo-style
classical tarab (tracks 5-6 and 9-10), and Syrian rural folk deke
dances (tracks 21-22 which were originally issued uncredited). His
collaborators included Jews (including Moses Cohen, who we suspect was
born in Aleppo ca. 1894) as often as Christians. In 1953-54 he hosted
the Orthodox native Aleppan violinist Sami el-Shawwa, who'd had a
parallel career to Karacand's in Cairo and Baghdad, having become the
single most celebrated violinist of the Arab world in the first half of
the 20th century. The two of them palled around for several months,
jamming at weddings.
Between May 1914 and February 1920, Columbia Records issued a total of
70 discs recorded by Arabic-speaking immigrants before ceasing to record
them altogether. Victor issued a total of 32 discs between September
1913 and July 1921 and persisted only sporadically through the 1920s. By
and large the market gap for Syrian-American performers on record
during the 20s was filled by the Maloof and Macksoud labels. This
collection represents about 5% of the total output for the time-period
it covers. Although lacking certain key performers (Souss in
particular), sourced from acoustically recorded discs in very mixed
condition from over a century ago, and lacking in biographical details
for two of its performers (William Kamel and Moses Cohen), I hope it
serves as window into in the musical world of a remarkable American
immigrant community deserving of more attention.
credits
released June 29, 2020
All tracks recorded at Columbia Grafophone's Woolworth Building studio
on Broadway except for 1 & 2 recorded at Victor Records' New York
City studio.
Instrumentalists on tracks 3-22 are likely Naim Karacand (violin),
Shehade Ashear (or Shehadi Ashkar, kanun) and either Abraham Halaby or
Toufic Moubaid (oud).
Recordings dates via Richard K. Spottswood Ethnic Music on Records
(University of Illinois Press) and Columbia Records E Series, 1908-23
(Mainspring Press):
1 July 24, 1913
2 September 18 1913
3-6 April 1916
7-10 May 1916
11-18 June 1916
19-20 January 1917
21-22 May 1919
Transfers, restoration, and notes by Ian Nagoski, 2017-2020
Thanks to Richard M. Breaux whose ongoing research into early 20th
century Arabic-speaking immigrants can be found at
syrianlebanesediasporasound.blogspot.com
Thanks also to Steve Shapiro, Nancy Karacand, and Jorge Khlat.
Further reading:
Elmaz Abinader. Children of the Roojme: A Family’s Journey from Lebanon. University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
Donna Carlton: Looking for Little Egypt. IDD Books, 2011
Stacy D. Fahrenthold. Between the Ottomans and the Etente: The First
World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, 1908-1925. Oxford
University Press, 2019.
Sarah M. Gaultieri. Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the
Early Syrian American Diaspora. University of Caltifornia Press, 2009
Princess [sic] Rahme Haidar. Under Syrian Stars. Fleming H. Revell, 1929.
Linda K. Jacobs. Strangers in the West: The Syrian Colony of New York City, 1880-1900. Kaliyah Press, 2015.
Salom Rizk. Syrian Yankee. Doubleday, 1943.
Najiba E. Saliba. Emigration from Syria and the Syrian-Lebanese Community in Worcester, MA. Antakya Press, 1992.
Lee S. Tesdell et al. The Way We Were: Arab-Americans in Central Iowa, an Oral History. Iowa Humanities Board, 1993.
