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

  Elias Abourjaily: Poet, Composer, & Singer Elias N. Aboujaily,  1957. Brazilian Immigration document. Courtesy of Ancestry.com It's the New Year!!! I can't believe it's 2025 and we've been collecting Arabic records for nearly ten years. Efforts to uncover details of some musicians' lives can be extremely difficult and influenced by several factors -surviving family members, what country, or city a musician called home, and the availability of sources. Locating sources can be especially difficult for someone who lived between several countries and cities. We acquired the LPs of Elias Abourjaily in 2023.  At the time, we knew nothing about him but we set out on a quest to find information about this little-known musician. Born in San Nicholas, Honduras or Mazraat El Nahr, Lebanon, on 11 June 1921 to Naimtallah and Badir Abourjaily, we know very little about the early years of Elias N. Abourjailly’s life. He had at least half-one sister, and possibly one brother...

  The HW Syrian Record Label: Hanna Wackeen, Dave Bonnesar, and the Connections Between Arabic Music in La Crosse and Los Angeles "Hanna John George Wackeen (oud), Dave M. Bonnesar (riqq), Andrew Mekanna (derbke), pose with Tillie Hakim and Mary Simon." Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, Library Special Collections,  Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA. On April 24, 2022, we purchased a 78-rpm record on a label we had never seen before. A metallic-gold label, with black font printed in both Arabic and English puzzled us as to whether this “HW Syrian Record” was a disc released with an intended Mahjari or Mashriqi audience in mind. We were equally bewildered by the idea that we purchased this disc from a mobile DJ and record collector who lives in the most northern reaches of the State of Wisconsin – all the way up in Door County. After making the purchase, we inquired as to how such as rare gem had found its way to Door County? Dave replied, “I used to live in Los ...

  Mustafa D. Siam: Arab Tunes Records, Political Activism, and the Struggle for Palestinian Recognition Mustafa Siam, 1962. Lincoln Heights Bulletin, Newspapers.com A few months ago, we can across several 45 rpm and 33 rpm records that sparked our curiosity. The “Arab Tunes” label with its logo of a man wearing a keffiyeh and an agal, is one we’d never seen before, but included a Los Angeles, California distribution address printed on the record and the record’s sleeve. The current note in Discogs.com for the Arab Tunes record label reads “was an American Arab label.” The sparsely vague description of the label and non-existent information about its owner, artists, and history are representative of the gaps in information about Arab American recorded music and music of the Greater Syrian diaspora in the United States that led us to establish Midwest Mahjar back in 2018. A relatively small amount of digging reveals that Arab Tunes emerged in the 45 rpm and 33 1/3 rpm era. The compa...