From Background to Foreground in Boston's Arabic Music Scene: Ramza Abdelahad, Yvonne Maalouf Rahwan, and Matilda Dada Stephens
From Background to Foreground in Boston's Arabic Music Scene: Ramza Abdelahad, Yvonne Maalouf Rahwan, and Matilda Dada Stephens
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| Ramza Abdelahad, Yvonne Maalouf Rahwan, and Matilda Dada Stephens are credited as the chorus/background singers on on Anton Abdelahad's Middle East Fantasy LP. Courtesy of Richard Breaux collection. |
Often, through no fault of their own, women who clearly have contributed to and made history of their own are excluded from conversations about music making and larger historical narratives. This is a case where literally the identities of the women in a picture only appear in the original source, but vanished from every single secondary source that has reproduced the photograph. In almost all references we’ve seen about Boston-born, Arab American musician Anton “Tony” Abdelahad, we inevitably come across a photograph taken, at some time in the late 1950s or early 1960s, of ten people (seven men, three women) posing inside a recording studio. The photo appeared on the back of Abdelahad’s LP Middle East Fantasy: Arabic Music. Perhaps most notable is Abdelahad himself and, as noted in Anne Rasmussen’s The Music of Arab America, others in the photo included musicians Naim Karacand, Philip Solomon, George Hamway, Mike Hamway, Freddie Elias, and Ronnie Kirby. All emerged as well-known musicians in Arab American music circles, however, missing from all but the liner notes of the album itself are the names of the three women chorus or background singers who appeared on the recording and in the photo. Who were they? What are their names? What were their stories? Whatever happened to them? According to the original liner notes, their names were Ramza Abdelahad, Matilda Stephens, and Yvonne Rahwan.
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| Ramza Abdelahad, Yvonne Maalouf Rahwan, and Matilda Dada Stephens Ronnie Kirby, George Hamway, Mike Hamway, Nain Karacand, Anton Abdelahad, Philip Solomon, and Freddie Elias on Anton Abdelahad's Middle East Fantasy LP. Courtesy of Richard Breaux collection. |
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| Front Cover of Middle East Fantasy:Arabic Music by Tony Abdelahad. Ramza Abdelahad, Yvonne Rahwan, and Matilda Stephens appeared on most of the album's songs with vocals including the three sampled below. Courtesy of Richard M. Breaux Collection. |
Even before we read the chorus singers’ names on the LP back cover, we suspected the older woman furthest to the left of the three back-up singers was Ramza Abdelahad. As fate has it, we were correct. Previously when we researched the life of Tony Abdelahad, we found that his parents were Elias and Ramza Abdelahad. Clearly, Tony Abdelahad enlisted the help of his mother to sing in the chorus of his debut LP. Ramza Abdelahad was born Ramza Bargout on 6 April 1886 in Damascus, Syria. As a youngster, she attended school and learned Arabic, Russian, and English. She immigrated to the United States in September 1904 and married Assad Abdelahad on 25 November 1905. Ramza’s father had been a weaver. The young couple resided with Ramza’s mother and sister on Shechem Street in Boston, and within a few years she and Assad had three children Evelyn (1908), Anthony (1915), and Charles (1918). Assad worked as a machine operator and Ramza cared for the children. According to Anne Rasmussen, young Anton took special interest in playing the oud, especially because he was responsible for winding up his uncle’s phonograph to listen to Arabic records. The family likely purchased their 78-rpm discs from G.S. Maloof.
We are unclear about what happened exactly but in 1927, Assad died leaving Ramza to care for the children at their 82 Hudson Street home. As a result, Ramza did what she had to with two minor children and young adult daughter. She not only cared for her children as a single parent, but went to work as a stitcher in a shoe factory. When Evelyn could help monetarily contribute to the family’s expenses, she worked to polish shoes at the same place her mother stitched. Whether Ramza became one of the women who turned to the Syrian Ladies Aid Society of Boston remains unclear, but she and Evelyn certainly toiled as two of thousands of Arab and Arab American women proletarian wage earners at the bottom of the textile hierarchy working with leather. As historian Stacy D. Fahrenthold's most recent article, "Ladies Aid As Labor History," reminds us, "leatherworkers performed the most dangerous work; they were paid the least and were most vulnerable to summary employment interruptions." Because the Syrian Ladies Aid Society of Boston recalibrated their efforts to assist their working-class brothers and sisters in the States, the Abdelahads could have easily been one of the pseudonymized recipients of this group's efforts. In June 1939, Ramza submitted her application to become a naturalized citizen of the United States; she and Evelyn took on different jobs as dressmakers.
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| Ramza Abdelahad's petition for Naturalize US Citizenship. She gained citizenship a few years later in 1943. Courtesy of Ancestry.com |
With the US entry to WWII looming on the horizon, Anton and Charles Abdelahad registered for the draft, meanwhile Ramza became a naturalized citizen 25 January 1943. Outside of home and work, Ramza attended Saint John Damascus Orthodox Church in Boston and actively worked with the SOYO and held membership in the church’s Virgin Mary Society, a group whose origins go back to 1914. In October 1955, Ramza worked as one of over a dozen women on the Syrian-Lebanese Committee to re-elect John B. Hynes Mayor of Boston campaign. Nearly seven months later, on May 24, 1956, Ramza planned a Sahra with Esma Bunai, Sadie Melad, Tony, Louis Morad, and Ronnie Kirby. It is most fitting that in the November 20, 1958, issue of George S. Debs’ The Caravan newspaper a reprinted letter from Ramza Abdelahad read, “Enclosed is my subscription for The Caravan. I would like to add that I and my family enjoy it very much. God bless you and every member of your staff. Keep up the good work. Ramza Abdelahad (Anton’s mother)” right above an advertisement proclaiming “Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, Son, and Daughter…Every member of the family reads The Caravan.”
Ramza remained an active member of Boston’s Arab American community for the next two decades planning youth and church events related to women’s activism, visual and performing arts, and cultural preservation. When parishioners at Saint John Damascus sponsored an Arabic play on 22 May 1960, Mrs. Rose Haddad, Mrs. Julia Tahmoush, and Mrs. Ramza Abdelahad worked as lead sponsors and organizers of the event. In August 1965, seventy-nine-year-old, Ramza Abdelahad sat down with forty-five-year-old historian Alixa Naff for an interview related to the experiences people of Arab descent in the United States. The deeply rich oral history includes recollections of life, career, family, immigration, culture, and even A-cappella singing by Abdelahad. The recording became one of over 450 recorded by Naff donated to the Smithsonian Institutes National Museum of American History and it is available online via the Arab American National Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate. Ramza Abdelahad died 2 December 1975. At the time she left behind three of her four children, seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Matilda Dada Stephens and Yvonne Maalouf Rahwan proved much more elusive and much more difficult to find, yet we were able to locate biographical information about these two singers as well. Both were more contemporaries of Anton Abdelahad rather than Ramza. Here’s what we managed to cobble together.
Yvonne Maalouf Rahwan was born 10 November 1918 in Damascus, Syria, to Dib and Mary Maalouf, however she did not immigrate to the United States until 18 June 1950 at the age of 32. We know the least biographically about Yvonne Maalouf who, after marrying Albert Rahwan in 1951, settled in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston and then West Roxbury, Massachusetts. With five years of her arrival in the US and four years of her marriage, Yvonne became a naturalized citizen on 18 April 1955. Albert, her husband, was a natural-born citizen, born in Boston, and grew up in Boston’s Little Syria knowing Anton Abdelahad. The Abdelahad’s lived at 82 Hudson Street in the early 1930s and the Rahwan’s resided at 106 Hudson Street.
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| Yvonne Rahwan's US Naturalization Card. Courtesy of Ancestry.com |
Although she had not been in the United States for a very long time, Yvonne established a reputation for herself as a capable singer and although not a paid professional singer, emerged as someone who lent her voice to worthy causes including Saint John of Damascus Building Fund sahra in 12 September 1956. The Rahwans vacationed in Miami, Florida and on occasion travelled to Paris, France.
Moreover, Yvonne and Albert sat among Boston’s Arab American movers, shakers, and philanthropists at the Sheraton Park Hotel dinner honoring Saudi King Saud Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in 1962. Yvonne did not perform at the event sponsored by the Syrian and Lebanese community of Greater Boston, but there were over 500 recorded guests at the January 21st banquet.
For much of their married life, Yvonne and Albert lived at their split-level home at 74 Maplewood Street in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Albert worked as a parcel delivery and salesman for much of the same time. Sadly, Albert died suddenly and unexpectedly on Valentine’s Day 1983. It seems he and Yvonne had no children. Yvonne continued on another nineteen years living in West Roxbury and died 26 February 2002.
Finally,
On March 1, 1912, Matilda Dada Stephens was born one of five children (14 April 2011) in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to Basil and Margaret Dada. Basil and Malake “Margaret” Dada came to the United States via New York on 8 May 1903 but eventually settled in Pawtucket where he found work in a textile mill. By the time Matilda turned 18, she too, worked in a Thread mill as a spinner. Margaret Dada had recently died in March 1930. How and when Matilda met Elias Stephens remains unclear but by 8 July 1934, Elias Stephens and Matilda Dada wed in Dorchester, Massachusetts.
Matilda moved in with Elias Stephen’s parents and within six years the couple had two daughters Delores (4) and Priscilla (3). Tillie, as she was more informally called, and Elias had three additional children over the fifty-seven years of their marriage. In 1940, Elias, his mother, and sister worked an operator, examiner, and cutter, respectively, in a dressmaking shop. Matilda no longer worked for wages as a spinner or outside the home. The family settled in at 30 Freeman Avenue and this came to be known as the family home. The Stephens family attended Saint John of Damascus and there she met Ramza Abdelahad and Ramza’s son Anton. Matilda acted in local theater productions, sang in the church choir, and loved singing all types of music – Arabic popular, classical, and folk songs and popular American music. It was at Saint John’s that Matilda met Anton Abdelahad. It did not take long for Tony Abdelahad to recognize Matilda’s talents and asked her to join his recording sessions for the Middle East Fantasy LP.
Matilda’s work at Saint John of Damascus Church continued over the course of her life. As her children married and her husband died in 1991 her service work in the Syrian and Lebanese communities in and around Boston. By March, 2008, Matilda, then 96, moved into the Maristhill Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Waltham, Massachusetts. She was the last of the women background singers from the Middle East Fantasy LP to pass on.
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| Matilda "Tillie" Dada Stephens later in life. Courtesy of Boston Globe Obituaries. |
Special thanks to the Arab American National Museum and Dr. Stacy D. Fahrenthold
Richard M. Breaux
© Midwest Mahjar
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