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 Arc...

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...

Archbishop Anton Aneed: Audio Recordings for Former  Milwaukee Melkite Priest Found Almost One Hundred Years Later Source: https://san-luigi.org/2012/09/29/members-of-the-san-luigi-orders-patriarc-anthony-aneed/ In the phonograph recordings that belonged to Siad Addis, and later his daughter Elaine Addis, were two records by Anton Aneed. Archbishop Anthony Joseph Aneed (Anton Aneed) was born on February 27, 1879 in Beirut, Greater Syria (now Lebanon). With little education and working-class roots, he found odd jobs until he was hired to work at a train station.  In the early summer of 1909, Archbishop Sawoya ordained Aneed. The next year, Reverend Aneed was elevated to the position of Exarch of the Archdiocese of Beirut. He remained in Beirut for another year, but soon followed the emigration out of Ottoman-controlled Greater Syria to the Americas. Between 1860 and 1914, forty-five percent of Mount Lebanon residents emigrated as a result of overcr...

Rt. Rev. Agapios Golam   Rt. Rev. Agapios Golam, c. 1915 Archimandrite Agapios Golam (1882-1946) was born 23 October 1881 or 1882 and immigrated to the US from Greater Syria in 1912 via passage on the S.S. Martha Washington . He first lived in New York’s Little Syria neighborhood and later moved to Brooklyn with hundreds of other Syrian-Lebanese and Syrian Americans. Golam spoke Arabic, Greek, and English. In August 1916, he accompanied Archbishop Germanos Shehadi on his travels around the United States. Among their stops were a few days spent in the Syrian-Lebanese Community in Williston, North Dakota. A significant number of emigrants from the Ottoman Diaspora settled in North Dakota in the early 1900s and took advantage of Homesteading policies.  The majority of people from Greater Syria who settled in North Dakota were from rural towns near Mount Lebanon, and this, in part, explains why they were attracted to farming in the equally rural Great Plains ...