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

  Only Traces of Evidence Remain Highlighting the Illusive Career and Life of Philip Catzeflis Philip Catzeflis "Nasheed No. 1". #7005 A. Courtesy of Richard M. Breaux collection. Collectors of 78 rpm phonograph records, and more specifically, Arabic-language records produced and released for Arabic-speaking audiences in the United States are without a doubt familiar with Richard K. Spottswood’s seven volume Ethnic Music on Record . A monumental feat of discipline-altering proportions, Ethnic Music on Record documents the cylinder and phonographic records made in the United States from the 1890s until mid-1942 by various so-called ethnic and linguistic minorities. Spottswood’s work remains foundational to study of non-English language phonograph records in the US before World War II, and those interested in Arabic-music during this period would be remiss to ignore it. It is Spottswood’s Volume 5, that many collectors first encounter the names of Victor, Columbia, Maloof, and ...

  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...