Only Traces of Evidence Remain Highlighting the Illusive Career and Life of Philip Catzeflis

Philip Catzeflis "Nasheed No. 1". #7005 A. Courtesy of Richard M. Breaux collection.

Collectors of 78 rpm phonograph records, and more specifically, Arabic-language records produced and released for Arabic-speaking audiences in the United States are without a doubt familiar with Richard K. Spottswood’s seven volume Ethnic Music on Record. A monumental feat of discipline-altering proportions, Ethnic Music on Record documents the cylinder and phonographic records made in the United States from the 1890s until mid-1942 by various so-called ethnic and linguistic minorities. Spottswood’s work remains foundational to study of non-English language phonograph records in the US before World War II, and those interested in Arabic-music during this period would be remiss to ignore it. It is Spottswood’s Volume 5, that many collectors first encounter the names of Victor, Columbia, Maloof, and Macksoud recording artists Alexander Maloof, Rev. George Aziz, Constantine Sous, Naim Karacand, Nahim Simon, Louis Wardiny, Zakia Agob, Salim Doumani, Mohammed Zaineldeen, Anthony Shaptini,  Samy Attaya, and others.

The historical relationship between Greece and the land constituting modern day Lebanon goes back centuries and is well beyond the scope of this blog. Suffice to say however that much of Greece remained a part of the Ottoman Empire from 1460 to 1821.  Greek Muslims settled in Tripoli and El Mina. Today, Tripoli is populated by mostly Sunni Muslims, followed by minuscule numbers of Lebanese Shia Muslims, Maronites, and Armenian Christians. This is important to understanding the ideas, beliefs, and culture important to Maloof Records singer Philip Catzeflis. Philip C. Catzeflis was born 12 November 1889 in Tripoli, Greater Syria (now Lebanon). Being born and raised in Tripoli, Catzeflis believed, gave him greater insight into understanding Eastern Orthodoxy, Eastern versus Western Catholicism, and Islam. Tripoli is the second largest city in Lebanon, sits fifty miles north of Beirut, and has long had a combination of Arab, Armenian, and Greek inhabitants. In 1909, Philip Catezflis, his sibling, and sister-in-law, William and Helene, sailed to Cherbourg, France, and then New York City. They arrived in the United States on the 9th June 1909 onboard the S. S. Adriatic.  Philip was the youngest at 20 years old; William was approximately 10 years older. They left one brother, Henri, in Tripoli.

By 1910, Philip first settled in Brooklyn, at 330 Bergen Street, where he lived with another brother William, and William’s wife Helene, who now had an infant, Caesar. Additionally, another of William and Philip’s brothers, Kalim, resided in the apartment. Philip labored in a kimono factory, an industry large owned by middle-class Syrian men and filled with immigrant workers from Greater Syria in the early twentieth century. Phonograph record seller A.J. Macksoud’s family amassed a small fortune manufacturing kimonos in New York City.  Nonetheless, A.J. Macksoud operated his phonograph and record store at 80 Greenwich Street in Lower Manhattan’s Little Syria.

Within one year, Philip fashioned himself as a student in Washington, DC and made the newspaper by predicting a “bitter war” between Italy and the Ottoman Empire over Libya. Two days after Italy declared war on the Ottomans, Catzeflis wrote an op-ed of sorts. In it, he blamed the Italian-Ottoman War on fanatical Muslims determined to crush Christianity rather than on the Italian desire for competitive colonialist territorial expansion in North Africa, Italy’s dreams of a Roman Empire-inspired reclamation, or Italy’s proposed conversion of Libya into an outpost to address a failing Italian economy and unemployment, by way of a resettlement scheme. Lasting from 1911 to 1912, Italy used the combination of its naval power and newly developed aerial assault tactics via airplane to annex Ottoman-controlled Tripolitania, Fezzan, Cyrenaica, and the Dodecanese Islands. In Catzeflis’s opinion, the road to peace in the Mediterranean basin meant conversion of Muslims to Christianity with the aid of Christian allied forces. The Turco-Italian War was a precursor to the Balkan War and World War I.

Article by Philip Catzeflis, 16 July 1916, The Morning Union. Courtesy of Newspapers.com

Beyond his political musings, Philip Catzeflis developed an outlet for cultural expression, primarily in music and musical theater. He starred as the lead in the play “The Iron Master” adapted in 1912 from La Maitre de Forges, a novel written by Georges Ohnet in 1882. Instead of an English or French performance, members of Brooklyn’s Melkite community performed in  Arabic and staged the play as a fundraiser to purchase a church building. News reports emphasized what it deemed the unusual presence of Syrian American women in various roles, it also noted, however, that composer Alexander Maloof, accompanied by a special orchestra, conducted the music and that Philip Catzeflis “wrote the music for his song in the first act.”  Mrs. Fahda Jabaly, a women’s clothing store owner and member of the Melkite Church of the Virgin Mary in Brooklyn, starred opposite Catzeflis. This likely marked the first time Catzeflis and Alexander Maloof collaborated. Reportedly, thousands of Syrian Americans and immigrants packed into the Brooklyn Academy of Music to watch the play.

Philip Catzeflis, and his older brother William, socialized in fairly elite Syrian American circles. To be sure, in 1912, when Prince Mohammed Ali Pasha of Egypt visited the United States, the United Syrian Society honored him. William Catzeflis attended the event as a past president of the group and Philip Catzeflis performed an Egyptian ballad as a part of the evenings’ entertainment. Other Society members at the dinner included Najib Diab, editor of Meraat-Ul-Gharb newspaper, Nasib Arida, and Abdul al-Massih Haddad, founder of As-Sayeh magazine. In the same year, William Catzeflis wrote The Crown's Misery, or, Her Majesty's Guard  With an introduction and four chapters. It’s publication marked Catzeflis as one of the leading Arab immigrant writers of his time. In 1915, William Catzeflis served as one of the highest ranking non-sectarian officials on the program for Archbishop Raphael Hawaweeny’s funeral. Of course, services were held at Saint Nicholas Syrian Orthodox Cathedral, then on Pacific Street in Brooklyn. Philip Catzeflis sat among the approximately 1200 mourners at the service. Friends, relatives, and business associates celebrated William Catzeflis at a banquet in July 1921, the press noted “the gathering last night was made up of many leading business and literary men of the Syrian Colony in the borough.” During this same period, Philip moved back and forth between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Brooklyn, New York.

When World War I broke out in Europe, former Ottoman subjects watched and politically maneuvered with great anticipation as to what would become of the Ottoman Empire. Using the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, Philip Catzeflis wrote a 1917 article in The Forum, a reputable American journal, about “The Partition of Islam,” rooted the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In it, he attributed the Young Turk Revolution to German influence, explored the Germanization of Anatolia, and highlight the fractures in Turkish and Arab Islam located in the complex ethnic and religious diversity of the former Ottoman territory. Ultimately, he predicted a decline on Islam’s influence in Egypt and India with movement toward secularization, but failed to anticipate the creation of the modern Republic of Turkey  and Germany’s post-World War I rebuilding, rearmament, and rise of extreme political movements. Famine in the fallen Ottoman Empire, Catzeflis discussed without attribution to the British and ally blockade. 

First page of Philip Catzeflis's Forum article. 1917. 

Philip Catzeflis’s brother William emerged as an occasional contributor to Nasib Arida’s al-Funoon literary journal and became an early member of al-Rabitah al Qalamiyah. Catzeflis contributed articles to the August and September issues of al-Funoon and its April 1917 issue. When Kahlil Gibran revived the Pen League in 1920, William Catzeflis was a member and , for a time, the group’s treasurer. Members published their writings and visual arts in Al-Hoda, the Syrian World, and other Mahjari outlets. Some with musical interest published sheet music like Alexander Maloof, Khalil Sayegh, Leon S. Nahmee, and Louise Yazbeck. Others with similar interest like Assad Dakroub, Anthony Shaptini, Salim Doumani, Naim Karacand, Mosa Kalooky, recorded on A.J. Macksoud’s Phonograph label or Maloof’s Phonograph label. In fact, Philip Catzeflis recorded #7005 “Nasheed No. 1 & 2” for Maloof Records in 1923. This is supported not only in the record presented here but in Maloof Records' advertisements published in Al-Hoda between September 1923 and December 1924. 

Maloof Phonograph ad, includes the record below by Philip Catzeflis. Al-Hoda 28 September 1923. Courtesy of the Moise A. Kharallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies. North Carolina State University.

Philip Catzeflis, "Nasheed No. 1 & 2" Courtesy of Richard M. Breaux collection. 
https://youtu.be/u0w5vV3wqlg

Ironically, the Pen League reached its zenith during the same time the United States government launched a nativist assault on Syrians and other immigrant populations. Immigration quotas aimed at limiting the number of people who could enter the United States and Mexico dominated this era of literary, visual, and cultural production. Ameen Rihani published at least six books and dozens of articles in Arabic and English between 1924 and 1932. Rihani, Khalil Gibran, Mikail Naimy, and others offered regular commentary on political, philosophical, and cultural movements of the day. Meanwhile, through the immigration acts of 1921, 1924, and 1927 made immigration from southern Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia, more restrictive, to the extent that was even possible. Whether this, or the five day jail sentence for a second speeding violation in Manhattan in 1920, prompted Philip Catzeflis’s decision to leave the United States for Brazil, Greece, or Lebanon remains unclear, but in 1925, after a stint in Palm Beach, Florida, Philip Catzeflis disappeared.  William Catzeflis, on the other hand, became a naturalized U.S. citizen, lived in Queens, and worked as a linen and lace importer, banker, and bookkeeper, before moving his family to Miami Beach, Florida, in 1938. The deaths of Khalil Gibran in 1931, Ameen Rihani in 1940, and Rashid Ayyoub in 1941, marked the Pen League’s end. Most of the members died by 1950 and William Catzeflis passed in 1951. 

Unlike his brother William who remained in the United States, Philip Catzeflis returned home to Lebanon. A strong advocate for Lebanese independence and with deep knowledge to Near East politics, Philip resurfaced in 1934 in Beirut. Lebanon pushed towards independence,  helped establish the Arab League, and became a founding member of the United Nations by 1946. As his brother moved toward the end of his life back in the States, Philip Catzeflis took a job in the Lebanese government. From at least 1959 to 1964, and perhaps longer, Catzeflis served as Secretary of the Press Union which transitioned into the Lebanese Ministry of Information. 

We are unsure exactly when Philip Catzeflis died because information and press reports mentioning him appear to be scarce. Although his siblings’ deaths garnered mention in the Lebanese newspapers like L’Orient and L’ Orient L’Jour, we could not unearth similar information for Catzeflis himself. A telephone conversation with Philip Catzeflis’ grand niece and William Catzeflis’ granddaughter yielded no additional information about Philip.  The trail of accessible and documentable eventually runs out with no announcements of his passing. Perhaps we will never know.

Are you connected to a friend, colleague, relative, or associate of Philip Catzeflis or his spouse? If so, drop us a line or reach out to Midwest Mahjar and tell us what you know. We’d love to hear from you.

Richard M. Breaux

© Midwest Mahjar