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

  New Jersey-Born Nadia Chamoun: A Vocal Legacy on Voix De L'Orient and Alkawakeb Records Nadia Chamoun. Caravan 27 October 1960. Courtesy of Newspapers.com   In the past five years, Arab America has bid farewell to several of its women singers from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s – Arab America’s golden age of recorded sound. Marquees and headlines for haflat and mahrajanat featured their names and they, on occasion, sang at christenings, bar mitzvahs, weddings, anniversary celebrations, funerals, and memorials.  The legendary Fadwa Abeid passed on 14 January 2022 in Livonia, Michigan; Leila “Lillian” Mazloom Kouri died on 29 March 2020, near Richmond, Virginia, and Nadia Chamoun took her last breath in Warren, Michigan, on 26 March 2019.     While some sources in the 1950s claim Nadia Chamoun was born in Lebanon, in fact, Nadia was born on 16 March 1921 in Bayonne, New Jersey, to Mike and Julia Chamoun. Nadia’s father, Mike Chamoun, immigrated to the United States around 1909 from G