RENA DE: SYRIAN ARMENIAN SINGER RUNS A PUB IN YEREVAN
Features | 21.11.14 | 13:38
NAZIK ARMENAKYAN
ArmeniaNow
By Gayane Lazarian
ArmeniaNow reporter
The waves of the sounds of jazz overwhelm the Melrose pub. Then jazz
turns into blues, sole, funk… and then a thunder of applause. Rena
De’s voice spreads across the pub and fills the hearts of the visitors.
“Those who come here should relax, for that right music is very
important, and of course, one other thing – the aura of the pub is
very important,” the Syrian-Armenian singer says. It has been five
months that she is running the Melrose pub in the heart of Yerevan.
g Born in Aleppo, she grew up in Australia and then moved back
to Syria.
Rena says that the last harbor was surely supposed to be her historical
homeland where she settled and decided to open a pub.
“I came here at the end of 2013, before that I lived a year and a half
in Lebanon. I had a chance to go to Australia again, because I already
have citizenship there, my two children also have it, but we are here.
My husband is still there working, but he will soon join us here
in Armenia,” Rena, 42, said. “In 1998 I came to Armenia first, and
other three times as well, from the very beginning I wanted to stay,
but the conditions were not that good, and we had settled in Aleppo
already – our work, house, but when it turned like that, it was not
a decision anymore – we knew we were coming here.”
Rena was born into the family of famous singer Karo Daghdevirenian.
Her father sang at the famous Montana club in Aleppo.
“My father sang at the oldest places in Aleppo, and his generation
would remember him well, many of them are not alive anymore… he sang
American and European songs in Italian, French, but most of his songs
were in English,” Rena, whose ancestors were from Ayntap and Musaler
in modern-day Turkey, says. “I inherited the skills of singing,
I was performing with Aleppo’s Big Band when I was eight. Singing
was never a choice for me, but a natural status – love.”
The Daghdevirenian family moved from Australia to Syria when Rena was
22 years old. The singer, who is a trained business market specialist,
taught English and simultaneously sang in Aleppo for almost nine years.
“I already had a band in Aleppo and I worked. I sang with different
bands in Lebanon. When I came here I decided that I was going to do
this. Here I founded the Shiver band,” Rena said.
The singer says people in Armenia are more demanding when it comes
to music.
“This is the very reason they are different from the Aleppo audience,
and there is another thing as well, here art is in another form and
contents, which I cannot compare with Lebanon, Aleppo or Baghdad.
There are a few styles that I started signing here, I did not in Syria,
for instance, rock; I became more deeply interested in classic rock,
I was more in jazz there,” Rena said.
At Melrose people go to listen to the Shiver band almost five days a
week, from 9:30pm till midnight. The playlist varies. Shiver is more
known as a blues band.
“Blues is performed much, our fans like it much. There are many songs
we turned into blues. We perform 60s-70s songs in different variations,
and people like it a lot,” says the singer, in whose band two members
are also Syrian-Armenians.
She says she deals with the pub’s management and says that correctly
chosen strategy is vitally important in that work. There are quite a
few pubs in Yerevan and to survive the competition it is important to
have a purposeful management, and here Rena’s profession comes handy.
“I am in charge of management and PR. This is not an easy job, no
job is easy. The success of the job here depends on good sounding
music, appropriate way of notifications, the way we treat people is
important. And finally what is a pub? It is going to a nice place,
drinking a pint of beer or whisky, listening to wild music and feeling
the good aura.”
Melrose hosts around 100 customers during one evening, 70 of which
around tables. It is the second week they have introduced an entrance
fee on the days when Shiver is on stage.
“We only recently introduced an entrance fee, because it is only now
we’ve gained the crowd that wants to be here always. I mean we got
established and have our customers. Four days a week we have a full
concert situation here – live music, there are also days a DJ plays,
people dance. Most of the customers are not Syrian Armenians. It is
a good mixture of Syrian Armenians and locals here,” Rena says.
The Melrose pub was established as part of the program being
implemented by the Small and Medium Entrepreneurship Development
National Center of Armenia (SMEDNCA) and the UNHCR Armenia office.
During this program Syrian-Armenians, participating in business
trainings, submit their business plans that, if approved by the
commission, get funding for implementation.
The Melrose pub’s business plan was submitted by Syrian-Armenian
George Akar. It was granted funding after being approved within
the framework of the program implemented by SMENDCA and UNHCR. The
beneficiary presenting the business plan also makes financial
investment depending on the size of the funding he or she applied for.
Funding of up to 5 million AMD ($12,500) is provided at an annual
interest rate of 4 percent.
Rena believes that Syrian-Armenians have “imported” a new culture
in Armenia.
“We are more sensitive. When I walk in the street and everyone speaks
Armenian, it is a completely different sensation for me. Maybe a local
does not get to think like that, but I lived in Syria, Australia,
Lebanon, and after all that I can feel it. We are more sensitive
about our motherland,” she says.
She gets upset when from locals’ mouths she hears the expression
“This country is not a [good] country”.
“It is a country for us, a motherland, we were deprived of that
motherland, being here, and seeing this situation, it is a pain for me
to hear that people who were born and lived their lives here say that.
It is equally difficult for us, also as newcomers, new settlers. I
am trying to start a job here, to stand up, to provide a family,
but I could not for once say “this country is not a [good] country,”
Rena says, smiling.