Midwest Mahjar: The Recorded Sounds of the Arabic-Speaking Diaspora in the United States at 78 RPM

George Marge: The Lebanese American Woodwind Musician You Didn’t Know You Knew George Marge, Albany High School yearbook (1952) p. 30. Courtesy of Ancestry.com Few Arab American musicians featured on Midwest Mahjar have more recorded music credits to their name than George Marge.  No single blog-post could ever do George Marge's life or career justice. Here, however, is a snippet. That I know, George Marge never released any wholly solo projects or albums. He backed and accompanied several musicians featured on our blog including Eddie “The Sheik” Kochack and Lila Stephan , and recorded with a who’s who of popular, jazz, and R&B musicians in his relatively short fifty-two years. With over two hundred recording credits to his name, let’s relay some of what we learned about oboist, flutist, saxophone and clarinet player George Marge. George Marge was born to Charles and Victoria (Arwady) Marge on 19 June 1933 in Albany, New York. Charles immigrated to the United States from Beir...

  The St. Louis Songstress: Mary Norleen Mizerany 1957 Saint Joseph Academy Yearbook. Courtesy of Ancestry.com Most of the Arab and Arab American musicians we’ve featured on Midwest Mahjar sang, performed, and recorded in Arabic, but several including Virginia Atter , Eddie Kochak , Russell & Louise Carlyle , and Johnny Barakat , performed exclusively in English. Although hafla and mahrajan have always been synonymous with Arabic singing and music, as Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian immigrants settled in the US and had American-born children the number of English-language musicians of Arab descent on the festival circuit served as a critical cultural gateway for the younger generations. This month’s musician not only sang exclusively in English but was born, raised, and resided in the American midwest her entire life. With career beginnings on small private and specialty labels like “Big M,” “Vassar,” and “VIR,” Mary Norleen Mizerany emerged as a popular singer in the late 1950s...