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

Metropolitan Samuel David Courtesy of Richard M. Breaux collection. Metropolitan Samuel David  (Daoud) was, the youngest of six children, born on August 26, 1893, to John Daoud Husson and Gazaly Haddad in Aita, Greater Syria (now Lebanon). In the tradition of people like cantor Mitri el Murr and Metropolitan Germanos Shehadi, he studied in school near Tripoli, Lebanon to become a part of the Antiochian Orthodox patriarchate and believed music could be an essential component of the ministry. He graduated from the Balamand Seminary in 1914 having studied with Mitri el Murr and became an ordained deacon in 1916. As an ordained deacon, Samuel David mastered Byzantine chanting and in 1920, he was elevated to Archimandrite and one year later, in 1921, he immigrated to the United States (some source suggest 17 June 1920). After World War I, he was appointed as pastor of St. George Orthodox Cathedral in Toledo, Ohio. The combination of the Bolshevik Revolution and the death of Arch...

Saint Elias Syrian Orthodox Choral Society We know very little about those who recorded on the set, but the Saint Elias Syrian Orthodox Choral Society was a part of the Saint Elias Syrian Orthodox Church in Toledo, Ohio.   It was established in around 1938, after the congregation of Saint George Orthodox Church split over the question of who the next Archbishop of the North American Archdiocese would be. The Syrian and Lebanese American founders of Saint Elias Syrian Orthodox Church favored Rev. Antony Bashir over Reverends Samuel David and Agapios Golam as North American Archbishop. After their break from Saint George, their new church building caught fire and they were forced to construct a new building. Hostility between to two congregations ran deeply. Families who were neighbors, once worshiped together, and whose children played together, stopped speaking and avoided one another when walking the neighborhood. The animosity continued for decades...