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

  “King of the Violin”: Sami al Shawwa Visits the United States Sami Shawwa on WWRL New York Studio in 1953. Courtesy of Raymond Rashid. Violinist Sami al Shawwa (Sami Shawa or Sami Chawa) is a stranger to few who consider themselves students of early twentieth century Arabic music. An unparalleled musician extraordinaire whose reputation preceded him from mashriq to mahjar, east and west Africa to North and South America, Shawwa’s legendary status was only rivaled by the apocryphal stories concerning his violin’s origins and the wood out of which it was said to have been constructed. What follows is, at best, our feeble attempt to retell the story of this prince of the Arab violin. We present the story of Sami al Shawwa at Midwest Mahjar not because we believe we can relay the story any more accurately or thoroughly than anyone else before but because as a blog dedicated to Arab American music and musicians, Sami, although he never immigrated to the United States, visited on at l...

  John Nazarian: From the Hafla Stage to the Halls of Academia John Nazarian, 1968. Courtesy of the Rhode Island College Review , vol. 17, Fall 1968. p. 12. Only a few musicians we’ve featured on Midwest Mahjar were still alive at the time we embarked on writing their profile. Several of these have died in the last two years, Lila Mazloom , Fadwa Abeid , Laurice Peters , have all passed on during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, others, to our knowledge, such as Emil Kassis and Lila Stephan , remain with us. Among the living middle-period musicians from the latter 78 rpm era, was oudist John Nazarian. Zakie Nazarian and Amenia (Nahas) Nazarian had John Nazarian 6 September 1932 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. John was one of his father’s eleven children. Zakie Nazarian, a half Arab and half Armenian emigrant from Aleppo, immigrated to the United States from Ottoman-controlled Greater Syria in 1912. He married Selma Nahabit on 3 May 1916 in Manhattan, New York. Zakie and Selma move...