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

  Louis Kawam: Jamming with Arab American Musicians Old & Young Some of the best musicians ever, never front their own band. They are not among the orchestra or ensemble leaders, and if we’re fortunate enough, they have left behind a piece of their creative genius in a credited or uncredited recording. Perhaps their names escaped mention in the liner notes, or their surname shows up on a label suggesting they composed, wrote, or performed a piece, if for nothing else than pure posterity. Most of this is true for oudist Louis Kawam. Born 18 or 20 July 1913 in New York City, Elias Bashir Kawam entered the world one of three, and the only male child of his parents Bashir Abdallah Kawam and Assna Kawam. Immigrants from Aleppo and Damascus, Greater Syria in 1905, the couple crossed the ocean departing from Marseilles on board a shipped named the Roma and settled on the main west-east corridor of New York’s Little Syria two – Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. There at   178 Atlantic ...

    Marguerite (Margaret) Kazen: A Garment Worker By Day, A Long-Forgotten Voice on Arabphon Records By Night Photograph of Marguerite Kazen. Courtesy of Carl Kazen.   The story of Arabic-speaking women musicians in the United States during 78 RPM era is one that can be divided roughly between those who recorded before 1935 and those who recorded between 1936 and 1961. On the front end stood the trailblazers – Zakia Agob , Lateefy Abdo, Margaret Daoud, Edma Marrache, and Fadwa Fedora Kurban . The second, or so-called middle period, brought audiences and listeners names that are much more recognizable today – Hanan , Kahraman , Fadwa Abeid , Odette Kaddo , Sana Kadaj , Lila Stephan , Laurice Peters , and Leila Mazloom . Without question, those singers easiest to identify released one or two songs on 78 rpm records. The latter group recorded singles on shellac and sometimes LP 33 1/3 vinyl albums with an occasional hit or popular single accompanied by a B-side track. This m...

  Sam Fackre: An Underrated Riqq Player and Percussionists   Rare1966 Photo of Sam Fackre. Courtesy of Skye Fackre Gibson. Sometimes the difficulty with locating biographical information about Arab immigrants and Arab American musicians depends on the various ways their names transliterate from Arabic to English. The Arab American English-language press, in the form of The Syrian World magazine or Caravan newspaper, used multiple spellings for a host of early and middle-period musicians. One article in the Caravan highlighted this fact noting Khouri, Khoury, Cory, Corey, Kori, Koury, Khourey, and other variants on the spelling constituted the same surname. These differences in transliteration and spelling extend beyond those we can attribute to vowel variance or double consonants – Hemway/Hamway, Bedway/Budway, Hanan/Hannan/Hanaan, and Khaddaj/Kadaj/Kaddaj. The Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System can’t always help one determine how a particular family decided to...