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

Chasing Little Syria's A.J. Macksoud and his Phonograph Record Company A.J. Macksoud Phonograph Company Trade Mark.   You’ve seen his most common label before – a male lion rests on the ground, head up, looking off into the distance. A magnificently brilliant, rising sun with one eye visible, peeks from behind this king of beasts. The symbol of the lion and the sun are as old as ancient Egypt itself, but in this case the adapted iconography represents the Christian Saint Mark, the evangelist and apostle, believed to have established the Orthodox Coptic Church at Alexandria. Color variations of the label include: a black, pink, gold, white combination; a red, white, gold, pink; a pink, grey, white, and a red and gold.  Some label variations include the same lion and sun (much smaller in size) set inside a symmetric, mosaic archway supported by four pillars (two) on each side. Most are printed with the address 77 Washington Street, New York, but a much rarer var...

Semi Sheheen   Semi Sheheen c 1954. From the  Caravan  2 December 1954. Courtesy of Newspapers.com (Violin) Semi Sheheen, Samuel A. Sheheen, Sam Shaheen or Sammy Shaheen  (1918-2000) represent the various spellings of Arab American violinist and musician Semi Sheheen's name. Anthony Sheheen immigrated to the United States around 1914 and Anthony's wife, Rose Joseph Sheheen, came to the United States the year after. In the year of Rose's arrival US Courts, once and for all, deemed Syrians (which all emigrants from Greater Syria were called) racially white, clearing the path for them to be eligible for naturalized citizenship. Semi was the second of nine children; he was born 12 April 1918. Semi enrolled in school and attended Utica Free Academy, but never graduated and instead went to work in the family store by the age of 21. Anthony worked as a knitter in a cotton mill, a clerk, and then managed the family grocery store. Semi developed an interest ...

Prince Mohiuddin (Serif Mohiuddin Targan) (1892-1967)  This photograph of Mohiuddin appeared in the 24 August 1924, New York Times .  Courtesy of https://www.dunyabizim.com/images/haberler/haber/2015/09/16/?MD Alexander Maloof and his record label represented the pinnacle of what Arab American music came to be in the 1920s. Louis Wardiny , Salim Doumani , Fadwa Kurban emerged as the most recognizable and popularly heard musicians of Arab descent, especially in New York and Boston where they performed on radio and attracted a listener base well beyond what they recorded on Macksoud and/or Maloof Records. Maloof Records, followed by Columbia, managed to record a young Arab Turkish cellist and oud player who went by the stage name Prince Mohiuddin. Although Mohiuddin became well-known in the 1920s and 1930s US, his notoriety in the Middle East, and especially Turkey and Iraq, by the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s far exceeded anything he could have ev...

“Little Sami”- Sami M. Jourdak  1928-2018 Little Sami, The Caravan , 3 February 1955. Courtesy of Newspaper.com   (Oud, Deberkee) You’ve seen his name several times before. Mostly on some of the Arabic-language 78 rpm records on the Orient Records label .  Orient Records famously printed red, orange, yellow, green, white, or light-blue labels with a swan swimming on the water in a black circle at the top center of its label. We still don’t know much about Orient Records, but it should not be confused with the label created by well-known Arab American composer and former Maloof Records owner Alexander Maloof . For years, some presumed that this stage name “Little Sami” signified a relationship with Lebanese violin virtuoso Sami al Shawa, but the only connections we know of for sure are that Egyptian-born Fadel Antoun Shawa (b. 1904) who traveled between the Middle East, Brazil, and the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. Of course, Lit...

Salim Doumani  (1897-1955)   Salim Doumani or Samuel Simon, c. 1942. Photo courtesy of Roy Simon. Next to Louis Wardini , few Arab American musicians in the 1920s managed to record on both Alexander Maloof’s label and A.J. Macksoud’slabel – except Selim Doumani or Salim Doumani. Although not the first Arab or Arab American to record vocally in the US for an Arab American market (Wardini first recorded in 1916 and Doumni recorded by 1922), Doumani was certainly among the first handful to record. Richard K. Spottswood’s Ethnic Music on Record: Mid-East, Far East, Scandinavian, English Language, American Indian, International, Volume 5 notes that Doumani recorded some thirty discs for Maloof Records between 1920 and February 1924. Many of these were longer songs that needed to be recorded on two sides. Doumani’s is the voice we hear recorded on one of Maloof’s most popular songs “America Ya Hilwa.” Salim Doumani singing "America Ya Hilwa" on Maloo...