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

  Garam Chiba: A True Mahjari Musician Garam Chiba, 2 December 1954. Courtesy of El Mundo Arabe .  I have written previously about how stage names and pseudonyms can cause a biographer enormous headaches when attempting to locate subjects. Musicians of Arab descent who lived portions of their lives in the Levant, Egypt, Brazil, Argentina, the United States and other countries remain particularly difficult to track down and locate. For several years now this was the case with our locating oudist and vocalist Garam Chiba. Ever persistent, I did not throw in the towel and with a deeper dive, I found a bit more than just the three articles - one in Arabic, one in Spanish, and one in Portuguese - I had uncovered previously. Garam Chiba was born Andre Joubran Chaibe to Maubaraque Khairallah and Joubran Chaibe on 22 October 1919 in the Sour municipality of Tyre, Greater Syria (today Lebanon). Tyre sits 50 miles south of Beirut and emerged as a Lebanese cultural hub where the first ...

Elie Younes:  An Oudist Settles in One of Dixie's Oldest Syrian/Lebanese Communities Elie Younes, 1947. Brazilian Travel document. Courtesy of Ancestry.com In the last four years, we have seen hundreds of Arab and Arab American 78s from throughout the diaspora. Because certain types of music, like the well-known and improvisational taqsim, traditionally don’t last for the typical 3 to 5 minutes consistent with 78 rpm technology, dozens, if not scores of artists, recorded single songs on double-sided discs. Some artists may have even gone as far as to record a single song on two double-sided discs. Nonetheless, before now, we had never come across an Arab or Arab American 78 rpm album set by a single popular artist (there are a few 78rpm album sets by priests and church choirs).  This particular set contains five (it may have contained six given the number of sleeves in the album booklet) 78 rpm records recorded by Elie Younes. The self-pr...