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

  New Jersey-Born Nadia Chamoun: A Vocal Legacy on Voix De L'Orient and Alkawakeb Records Nadia Chamoun. Caravan 27 October 1960. Courtesy of Newspapers.com   In the past five years, Arab America has bid farewell to several of its women singers from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s – Arab America’s golden age of recorded sound. Marquees and headlines for haflat and mahrajanat featured their names and they, on occasion, sang at christenings, bar mitzvahs, weddings, anniversary celebrations, funerals, and memorials.  The legendary Fadwa Abeid passed on 14 January 2022 in Livonia, Michigan; Leila “Lillian” Mazloom Kouri died on 29 March 2020, near Richmond, Virginia, and Nadia Chamoun took her last breath in Warren, Michigan, on 26 March 2019.     While some sources in the 1950s claim Nadia Chamoun was born in Lebanon, in fact, Nadia was born on 16 March 1921 in Bayonne, New Jersey, to Mike and Julia Chamoun. Nadia’s father, Mike Chamoun, immigrated to the United State...

  Anthony M. Abraham: Alkawakeb Record Corporation’s Elusive Owner and Story 78 RPM Alkawakeb record with recording by Hanan. Contains a  registered in the USA mark. Courtesy of Richard M. Breaux collection. Sometimes life drops an answer to your question in your lap and other times it is written in the stars (and the planets). Those are both true in the case of the Arab American record label Alkawakeb. For years now, the story of Alkawakeb Records, like  Maloof Phonograph Co. , A.J. Macksoud , Alamphon Records , and Arabphon Records , has eluded ethnographers and historians of Arab American cultural history and ethnomusicology. Here at Midwest Mahjar, we too, struggled to piece together the few documents that tell us about Alkawakeb Records and its owner. An internet search yielded one entry on Discogs  which notes that Alkawakeb “seems to be a US-based Lebanese record company and label releasing Lebanese and Middle Eastern music for the Arab expats in the US.” Othe...

Kahraman and Naif Agby  Olga "Kahraman" Agby, 17 April 1958, Caravan. Naif Agby, El Debke; author's collection. The 78-RPM era overlapped with the first two waves of Arab immigrants to the United States. The first was roughly 1880 to 1944 and the second spanned approximately from 1944 to 1966. While we can situate a few of the musicians on Arab and Arab American 78 rpm records to the first wave, most first wave musicians enjoyed careers that encompassed both eras. Still others, like Sana and Amer Khadaj , Odette Kaddo , Hanaan , and Naif Agby and Kahraman, who recorded on Alamphon, Orient Records, Sun Records, and Alkawakeb, clearly make up the second wave. It is remarkable, although not surprising, that most of these musicians not only knew each other, but performed together live and on record.   Nayeh Ejbeh or Naif Agby was born in Ehden, Greater Syria (now Lebanon) to Wadah Yamin and Joseph Ejbeh on either 22 June or 27 December 1920. He bega...