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

  Hana Rached:  After Stellar Career Among the Maghreb and Mashriq, a Jewish Tunisian Singer Joins the Mahjari Mahrajan Circuit Photo of Hana Rached from her El Djamal 45 rpm single record cover. Courtesy of Richard M. Breaux collection. Most of the singers and musicians we've covered at Midwest Mahjar immigrated from or trace their ancestry to the Levant - the portion of the former Ottoman Greater Syria that today makes up Syria, Lebanon, Palestine/Israel, and Jordan. In fact, about ninety percent of the artists that performed on the mahrajan circuit in the United States immigrated from or were the children/grandchildren of Mashriqi countries. The Arabic-language record business in the first five decades of the twentieth century reflected this fact. Most Arab and Arab American musicians in the early part of the twentieth century from the African continent came from, or had connections with, Egypt. To be sure, Mayer and Naseem Murad were Arabic-speaking Jews born in Egypt, bu...