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

  Fred Elias: The Earliest Recordings of a Legendary Violinist at Home in the Granite State Fred Elias, 1961. NRE New Box 38, MZ. Star News and Pictorial.   Courtesy of the Immigration History Research Center, Anderson Library, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. If you are of a certain age or generation and you grew up near or in Worcester, Massachusetts, the Boston Metropolitan area, or Manchester, New Hampshire, you’ve likely heard the name Freddy Elias, Freddie Elias, Fred Elias, or Frederick Elias. Patrons of El Morocco, Club Zahra, or the Averof will recall various iterations of Elias’s musical ensemble playing at one of these memorable social venues for mixed Arab American, Armenian American, or American Greek crowds. The career of Fred Elias encompasses the period from roughly World War II to the 2010s, but the story of this Arab American violin virtuoso begins back in the 1920s. The career of Fred Elias is one of the most documented by scholars of so-call...

  Ronnie Kirby: Boston Metro’s Go to Derbake Player Ronnie Kirby. From the back cover of  Anton Abdelahad's  Middle East Fantasy  LP. Courtesy of Richard Breaux collection.   At Midwest Mahjar we have been blogging about Arab American music for almost five years and we have featured very few percussionists, especially, derbake, doumbek, or drum players. The most well-known drummers to come to mind were Mike Hamway and Eddie Kochak . Anne K. Rassmussen’s work reveals that mahrajan and hafla organizers paid drummers or derbake players least of all. Yet the rhythmic, pulsating, thump of the derbake became a mainstay in the post-acoustic, electrical recording era Arab American music. During the early years of the mahrajan and hafla circuit, members of a traveling singer’s ensemble might come from a local community; however, over the years singers like Hanan and Tony Abdelahad demanded their own ensembles and accompanists travel along with them on the mahrajan cir...