The Birth of Philly's Middle Eastern Music Scene: Ed Tayoun and His Arabian Orchestra
The Birth of Philly's Middle Eastern Music Scene: Ed Tayoun and His Arabian Orchestra James and Edmond Tayoun, 1946. Courtesy of Ancestry.com Despite its relative proximity to Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s Little Syria, Philadelphia’s Syrian and Lebanese communities were much smaller and its music scene less recognized and less celebrated. Nevertheless, approximately 16,300 Syirans lived in Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1907. More specifically, 700 Syrians lived in Philadelphia, 600 settled in Wilkes Barre, and 2300 resided in Pittsburgh at the same time. Its population notwithstanding, Philadelphia had one of the oldest Syrian communities in the United States. Historians Linda K. Jacobs and Sarah M.A. Gualtieri have documented the presence of merchants, entertainers, and lecturers who travelled to the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and remained in the city after the fair. Immigrants from Greater Syria founded Saint Maron Church by 1892, if not a few years earlie...