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“Have You Not News from Our Country?”: Music and Migration in the Armenian Diaspora
Aram Bajakian
PhD student in Ethnomusicology at the UBC School of Music
Monday February 13, 12-1 PM
C. K. Choi Building – Room 231
Speaker bio
The music of guitarist and composer Aram Bajakian music has been called “a masterpiece” (fRoots), “shape-shifting” (FreeJazzCollective), and “sometimes delicate, sometimes punishing” (Chicago Reader). As a guitarist, “the virtuosic jack of all trades” (Village Voice) has toured extensively with Lou Reed, Madeleine Peyroux, John Zorn and Diana Krall. From 2018-2021, Bajakian served as the New Music Curator at Western Front in Vancouver, one of Canada’s leading artist-run centers for contemporary art and new music. Bajakian received his Bachelor of Music degree (Summa Cum Laude) from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he studied with Dr. Yusef Lateef. He holds a Master of Arts Degree in Music Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and Master of Music degree in Music Composition from the University of British Columbia. He is currently a PhD student at the University of British Columbia, where his advisor is Dr. Nathan Hesselink. His research focuses on contemporary and historic Armenian communities.
Abstract
After World War I, Armenian genocide survivors dispersed to enclaves around the world, congregating in cities and countries that each had their own cultural and political climates. As a result, the ways in which Armenians used music to express their identity differed in location-specific ways. While survivors came to North America from many Ottoman regions, each with their own language dialects, dances and distinct musical forms, Armenian-Americans coalesced around a lute-like instrument called the oud as their preferred instrument of musical expression. In the decades following WWI, the instrument became a potent symbol of identity, providing a way to push back against fears of “loss of culture or ‘becoming White’” through assimilation (Der Sarkissian 2021). This talk will give an overview of music in the Armenian diaspora, focusing on music in North American communities. The presentation will show how the oud and Kef music gave space for Armenians to express memories of their Ottoman past through songs and dances, cultural artifacts from times before the genocide. In the decades before terms like “genocide” and “PTSD” came into the being, instead of rejecting the oud as a “Turkish instrument,” Armenian Americans embraced it, turning the instrument into a symbol of remembrance, and an affront to genocide-denialists. Through an examination of the work Armenian oud player Udi Hrant Kenkulian (who frequently traveled from Istanbul to North America to give concerts and teach), as well as 2nd and 3rd generation Armenian American oudists (Richard Hagopian, Ara Dinkjian) this talk will show how through music, Armenian-Americans were able to collectively acknowledge their shared traumas and histories.
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