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

  Our Eleven-Year Search for Maloof Phonograph Records Singer Lateefy Abdou Photo of Lateefy Abdou. Courtesy of Samuel J. Hazo & Sam R. Hazo Here at Midwest Mahjar, I have more 78 rpm records on the Maloof Phonograph Company label by Lateefy Abdou than by almost any other Maloof recording artist, except Louis Wardiny and Salim Doumani . Yet, for over eleven years, I came no closer to uncovering any biographical information about the woman who released thirty-eight sides on one of Little Syria’s most popular and recognizable labels. Who was Lateefy Abdou? Where was Lateefy Abdou? Why had no one ever celebrated her story? Why could we only find traces of her in Maloof Records advertisements and nowhere else? I searched and searched, returning to the same sources over and over, but I only came up with women who shared a similar name—women who were married with children by 1924, and none whose birth name or maiden name was Lateefy Abdou. Furthermore, the traces of evidence we had...