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...