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

  Returning to Our Beginnings: The Sounds of Cleveland’s Saint Elias Melkite Church Choir At Midwest Mahjar, we have featured a host of Antiochian Orthodox, Maronite, and Melkite priests and choirs who recorded on shellac and vinyl. There have been orthodox priests Rev. Agapios Golam , Metropolitans Germanos Shahadi , Illyas T. Kurban , and Samuel David , the pioneering Maronite priests George Aziz , Fr. Pedro Kahwagi , and Rev. Paul Hage . In the Melkite tradition, our second post ever, we focused on the life and recordings of Rev. Anton Aneed . Audio recordings of church choirs, especially in the 78 rpm era, have been few and far between. Toledo’s Saint Elias Syrian Orthodox Choral Society represents the sole church choir to release an early three-disc set of recorded hymns. Ironically, this historic album also features a Lebanese-Syrian choir from Ohio. This time, it’s the Saint Elias Melkite Church Choir in Cleveland, Ohio, however the medium is 33 1/3 vinyl.  As we noted...

  From Mahjar to Mahrajan to Mainstream:  Nick Anthony's Journey from Lead Singer to Solo Artist Nick Anthony c. 1962. Ever since we came across his image and name in an advertisement for a Gala Hafla in a 1957 Caravan newspaper, we’ve been intrigued by the story of Nick Anthony . In the era of hair grease, pompadour hairstyles, and the popularization of rock music, Nick Anthony or Nick Anthony and the Starfires started their career as the "American entertainment" at Arab American haflat and mahrajanat.  An important feature of the hafla and mahrajan emerged in the 1950s as the U.S.-born children and grandchildren of Arabic-speaking immigrants attended cultural celebrations and events with their elders but spoke and understood less and less Arabic. Organizers of hafla and mahrajan began dividing the entertainment between acts who sang in Arabic and those that performed in English. These single-day and weekend-long festivals signaled a way to hold onto certain cultural tr...