Louise Yazbeck: An Arab American Composer and Music Teacher Before Her Time
Louise Yazbeck: An Arab American Composer and Music Teacher Before Her Time Miss Louise Yazbeck, The Shreveport Journal , 7 September 1932. Courtesy of Newspapers.com Composers and musicians we’ve highlighted at Midwest Mahjar over the years include Alexander Maloof , Anis Fuleihan , Leon S. Nahmee , and Mohamed el Bakkar . All of these composers recorded their own compositions on phonograph record or had others record renditions of their compositions, Louise Yazbeck emerged as an exception on several fronts. Louise Margaret Yazbeck was born one of four children to Yousef/Joseph and Nejeeba Maroun Yazbeck in Shreveport, Louisiana, on 13 August 1907. Dr. Najib Abdou recorded 6,000 Syrian in Louisiana that year, although we don’t have an estimate for Shreveport. While some sources give Yazbeck’s birth year as 1910, she appears in her parents’ household in 1910 as a three-year-old. Joseph Yazbeck immigrated to the United States from Aamchit, Greater Syria (now Lebanon) in 1901 on bo