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

  In Search of the Ensemble Members of Sam Shaheen’s Utica Oriental Orchestra Mary Shaheen, Sam Shaheen, Edward Shkane, Anthony Shaheen, and James Shaheen. 1953. The Arab American music scene in 1950s upstate-New York embodied a spirit of complexity and innovation matching that of Detroit, and to a lesser degree Boston and Brooklyn, yet much of our attention in previous posts has focused on the Shaheen or Sheheen family. Sam Shaheen has been the subject of a previous Midwest Mahjar post but we have written very little about the musicians outside his family that made up his ensemble or takht. He went by Semi Sheheen, Sami Shaheen, Saaleem Shaheen, Sam Shaheen, and other variations of this name. Shaheen drew members of his orchestra from Utica-based Lebanese and Syrian American families old and new resulting in a polished professional outfit that rivaled any ensemble on the east coast. The first members of Shaheen’s Utica Orchestra were his father Anthony (1892-1984) and younger bro...

  Fathalla Abyad:  An Overlooked, Underappreciated, but Seemingly Ever- Present Mahjari Oudist Fathalla H. Abyad in the 1950s.   Photo courtesy of Raymond Rashid. In April 1920, Fathalla Abyad left Aleppo, Syria, to immigrate to the United States. It was only six months before French Troops wrestled control over the former Ottoman territory under the newly implemented League of Nations mandate system. Onboard the ship Rochembeau, Wadia and Fathalla Abyad, a couple who had wed approximately ten years before, and their daughter, Antoinette, arrived at Ellis Island. Word was that in addition to lower Manhattan’s Little Syria and Brooklyn’s Little Syria, Arabic-speaking people had been building a community across the river in Paterson, New Jersey. In fact, the Abyads listed Paterson as their final destination.  Fathalla's cousin, Bashir, had already settled in Paterson and some sources suggest Fathahlla may have come to the United States earlier, lived in Hudson, New Jer...