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

  The St. Louis Songstress: Mary Norleen Mizerany 1957 Saint Joseph Academy Yearbook. Courtesy of Ancestry.com Most of the Arab and Arab American musicians we’ve featured on Midwest Mahjar sang, performed, and recorded in Arabic, but several including Virginia Atter , Eddie Kochak , Russell & Louise Carlyle , and Johnny Barakat , performed exclusively in English. Although hafla and mahrajan have always been synonymous with Arabic singing and music, as Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian immigrants settled in the US and had American-born children the number of English-language musicians of Arab descent on the festival circuit served as a critical cultural gateway for the younger generations. This month’s musician not only sang exclusively in English but was born, raised, and resided in the American midwest her entire life. With career beginnings on small private and specialty labels like “Big M,” “Vassar,” and “VIR,” Mary Norleen Mizerany emerged as a popular singer in the late 1950s...

  Louis Shelby: A 78 Record, Two Nightclubs, and the Shelby Legacy in Los Angeles Louis Shelby,  c.1964. At Midwest Mahjar we’ve written about both the Boston and Los Angeles Arab American music scene. We’ve explored the 78 RPM Arabic music merchant Gabriel S. Maloof , Anton Abdelahad , Ramza Abdelahad , Tony Tawa , Ronnie Kirby , and a host of other Arab Americans in Beantown’s late nineteenth and early twentieth century history. Two thousand nine hundred eighty-two miles across the United States pioneering Arab American musicians like Constantine Souss , Andrew Mekanna ,  Hanna Wakeen , Joseph Moshay , Johnny Barakat , Elias Abourjaily , and Saadoun Al-Bayati recorded on a host of west coast record labels and travelled the West Coast mahrajan circuit.  Syrians in Massachusetts held one of the earliest mahrajans in the United States in 1932. Within three years, the Brockton, Massachusetts mahrajan drew 6000 attendees to a weekend dance, music, socializing, match-mak...