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

 Constantine Elias Souss (singer, oudist) Constantine Elias Souss (also Souse, Sooss) was born 16 June 1887 or 1891 in Jerusalem, Palestine. He first traveled via Haifa to the United States in 1903 and sought residency in 1910.  Whether he had any formal music training remains unclear. He lived in  Charleston, West Virginia, Detroit, Michigan, Brooklyn, New York, Fall River, Massachusetts, and later in Los Angeles, California. Nearly every city he lived in was or became home to fairly sizable Greater Syrian populations. Remarkably, West Virginia had 3,200 residents of Syrian descent and 300 of these resided in Charleston. Documents don't reveal whether Constantine moved directly to Charleston or if he lived somewhere else in the United States before he settled here. Souss appears in the 1913 Charleston Directory living at 204 Truslow. Just that January, his Jerusalem-born wife named Betty gave birth to their son, Louis, in Charleston. The automobi...

SAMY ATTAYA  In the world of 78 RPM record collecting, especially in the case of musicians from the late-Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Empire who fled to the United States, the records of some artists are more common than others. One is more likely to encounter a record by Louis Wardiny or Salim Doumani on the Maloof label or Macksoud label than recordings by, say, Prince Mohiuddin or “Fadwa” Fedora Kurban. Samy Attaya fits squarely in the latter category. They are difficult to come by. In fact, I have never seen an actual Samy Attaya 78 RPM face to shellac or even in photograph form. Yet, according to Richard K. Spottswood’s essential reference text Ethnic Music on Record, Samy Attaya recorded some ten songs on Alexander Maloof’s record label and some of these were duets with an otherwise ambiguously-named Mrs. McCormick. As is typical with immigrants from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine (then called Bilad al-Sham) or Greater Syria, the...