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...

  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...

  Rev. Paul Hage (Boulous El Hage Boutrous): Continuing the Legacy of Recorded Maronite Hymnody at 78 RPM   Rev. Paul Hage, c. 1955 From Church Hymns album. Courtesy of Richard M. Breaux collection. Coming off our most recent post featuring Sami el Shawwa we are returning to our topical origins. When we encountered our first set of 78-rpm Arabic records, we knew virtually nothing about most of the musicians and singers who performed on shellac during the 78-rpm era. Extending from 1912 to approximately 1961, Arab American musicians launched their recording careers on Victor and Columbia before changing course down a self-created path of Arab American music labels including Maloof , A.J. Macksoud , Alamphon , Arabphon , Al-Chark , Morad , Cleopatra, Wardatone , and a plethora productively independent local, regional, national, and international labels. Most of the singers, composers, musicians, record sellers, and record labels featured on Midwest Mahjar enjoyed popularity in ...