Antoine Hage: Life of a Second Wave Violinist/Oudist Living Between New York and California
Antoine Hage: Life of a Second Wave Violinist/Oudist Living Between New York and California Antoine M. Hage with his violin, The Caravan 2 May 1957. Courtesy of Newspapers.com Closer to the turn of the twentieth century, in Buffalo, New York, some 350 Syrian immigrants and Syrian Americans lived in the city along the shores of Lake Erie and across the border from Canada. Buffalo's Syrian community in 1907 boasted at least two restaurants, approximately seven businesses with storefront properties, and Saint John Maronite Church (1904). Just 25 miles north, another 350 Syrians, seemingly more established, lived in Niagara Falls, New York. Social, cultural, and political ties soon bound the Syrian communities in the cities of Buffalo, Niagara Falls, and Utica (200 miles east with a Syrian population near 300) together. The development of the hafla and mahrajan circuit in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s further accentuated the connections between these cities and local musicians f...