M.S. Hawie: An Arab American Poet and Orator Makes a Prohibition Record in 1920
M.S. Hawie: An Arab American Poet and Orator Makes a Prohibition Record in 1920 M.S. Hawie in the 1920s. Courtesy of Elizabeth M. (Hawie's niece). By 1920, over a half dozen immigrants from Greater Syria had recorded for Columbia Phonograph Company, and slightly under a dozen total had recorded for Victor or Columbia together. Whether Arabic music sold well for either of the big phonograph record giants remains unclear, however, by the 1920s, these companies began to record fewer and fewer Arab American and Arab immigrant musicians and independently-owned Arab American record labels like Maloof and Macksoud emerged in their place. M.S. Hawie stands out in Dick Spottswood’s Ethnic Music on Records and in UCSB’s Discography of American Historical Recordings database as one of a dozen early Arab Americans to record not a song, but recitation of a speech called “Goodbye Whiskey” on Columbia in 1920. The recitation, of course, was an ode, of sorts, to Congres