Chaderjian: Sing Armenians, Sing: Music Awards Draw 7,000 to Downtown
Los Angeles
By Paul Chaderjian
20/chaderjian-sing-armenians-sing-music-awards-dra w-7000-to-downtown-los-angeles/
December 20, 2009
Once there was and there was not …
… one moment in our collective history when we came together despite
our differences to celebrate our diversified popular culture.
Charles Aznavour speaks to journalists on the red carpet. (Photo by
Lory Kendirjian)
On Sun., Dec. 13, our hyphenated people came from the north and south
of the Equator and the left and right of the Meridian to the
entertainment capital of the world, to honor the Armenian stars, the
modern makers of Armenian culture, the ones who shone bright
center-stage at the Nokia Theatre.
At 777 Chick Hearn Court in the heart of Los Angeles were the sons and
daughters of Hayk singing their hearts out and celebrating their
vibrant, ancient, yet modern culture. Their ancestors had witnessed
the formation of a new people and a new culture 2,000 years before
Christ. Their people had ruled kingdoms and celebrated their golden
age of literature just a mere 1,500 years before the printing press.
These descendants of Noah and the Arc had mastered music when the
indigenous Native Americans, the Gabrielenos and Chumash, were
painting art on cave walls. While Hollywood was yet unimagined and
uninvented, Armenian minstrels were roaming through Silk Road kingdoms
to share their intricate tetra-chords and unique polyphonic styles
with people as far away as those living in the land of the Phoenicians
and the French.
The Armenians were early adapters, embracing Christianity and writing
the first sacred and poly-modal chants in the world. Their brilliance
and humanity would also subject them to great sufferings, including
catastrophic losses during the genocide. Yet, they would rise once
again out of the ashes of injustice, and they would sing their songs
as they had for thousands of years. They would embrace modernity and
use it as a tool for cultural survival.
Serj Tankian being interviewed on the red carpet. (photo by Lory Kendirjian)
This small tribe would not only survive but also thrive and come
together in the global capital of the world, the City of Los Angeles.
The tribe would congregate on a special night in the 21st century to
share with each member a year’s worth of pop culture. They would sing
the sacred, the ancient, and their modern canon of songs. They would
hear the compositions and lyrics of their rappers, rockers,
nostalgists, and jazzists. They would also honor the ingenuity of
Armenians genres yet unheard, like the goth and rock interpretations
of songs transcribed by Komitas a century ago.
As Komitas Vartaped had challenged his genius to chronicle an ancient
people’s cache of more than 3,000 folk songs, his musical progeny
would challenge economic and geographic limitations to gather in
style, to celebrate, to sing, and to also bring to life the spirits
and souls of the great troubadours. Perhaps it was Sayat Nova who
defined the role of Armenian singers in the centuries to come when he
wandered the land collecting, learning, performing, reinterpreting,
and sharing our cultural capital with Armenians and non-Armenians.
This was a night when the modern and post-modern Armenian men and
women of song that toured the world creating and making Armenian music
in the 20th century were honored. In the shadows were the spirits and
memories of musical greats like Aram Khatchadourian, Arno Babadjanyan,
and Allen Hovannes. Those honoring the modern pop stars were a new
generation of Armenian musicians and fans of Armenian music. And in
the 21st century, the collective gathered at the Nokia showed the
Armenian public-at-large its commitment to continue creating songs,
lyrics, music, and thus culture.
Not only that, but as their ancestors had done, our musicians showed
their confidence in holding on to their rich past, performing
authentic Armenian music, but also showing off how well they embrace
other cultures and how they mastered the classics while mastering the
street music of a globalized world.
A scene from the awards ceremony (photo: The Armenian Weekly)
The lush red carpet was unrolled, the black and white limousines
stretched back-to-back around an entire block, and there was even a
helicopter reporter up above recording the images of the spectacle.
Flash bulbs popped, applause and whistles were continuous, TV camera
crews grabbed sound bites, and paparazzi played their parts. On that
night, we were all paparazzi and our culture makers were our kings,
queens, princes, and princesses. Our kingdoms were alive, and they
were back in the full regalia of the fashion makers in glossy fashion
magazines.
Inside the Nokia were the beautiful people, the most glamorous people
in the world – on that night. Donning their gowns and suits, the
celebrants of Armenian pop culture smiled, exchanged air kisses,
danced in the isles, snapped photos, and expressed their gratitude to
each other and to God, the creator, who had given them their musical
ears, their golden voices, and the charisma to hold strangers’
attention, even if it was for a mere three-and-a-half minutes at a
time.
Gathered in one place for one night on Sunday were the offspring of
those who had survived the deserts of Syria and had gone on to survive
the foreign lands where they had sought shelter. Applauding and
smiling together were a people who had held on to their culture at any
cost and were once again free to sing their songs with pride. They had
persevered, taking a culture that was kept alive by word of mouth
until the invention of recording devices, and they had brought this
culture to the internet age, which ensures Armenian culture will never
die.
Chaderjian: "Who are we but not proud that such a night was
possible…" (photo by Chris Agazaryan)
Together were musicians and artists who had survived the Reds and had
been unstoppable in the Soviet Era, taking the ethereal Armenia’s
music to her enigmatic diaspora, when the post-genocide diaspora was
trying to find its cultural voice on the foreign shores of Arabia,
America, and Europe. Rubik Matevosyan and Konstantin Orbelian were
among those honored at the Nokia for their roles in our cultural
journey. They and Raysa Mugerdichian were, after all, the second
Republic of Armenia’s first ambassadors of song.
Performing on the 29-foot television screens inside the Nokia were
those who found enough soul to sing their songs in the bitter cold
days of post-independence Armenia.
When the third Republic of Armenia was born and there was no gas and
no food, no heating, and no hope, a new generation of our performers
found a warm heart and hearth in Arthur Grigoryan’s Pop and Jazz
College. And from there, they sang our songs, grew as artists, and
found their voices, taking modern Armenian pop and modern Armenian
hope to the four corners of the world.
>From the dark days of Armenia came Nune Yesayan, Shushan Petrosyan,
Alla Levonian, Aramo & Emma, Arthur Ispirian, and many others who
continue to sing and write the themes on the soundtrack of our
Armenian movie. These were the first post-Soviet stars that Armenia
gifted us and who the world noticed. Their music was the first to sing
from the newly invented CD and DVD players and from the first internet
radio stations. Their music was what we watched on Armenian television
hours, when the first Armenian television shows came to our homes via
the airwaves, then cable, then satellite.
Armenchik and "In Dance We Trust" (Photo by Chris Agazaryan)
We congregated to hear these post-independence singers at the Kodak in
Hollywood, at the Lincoln Center in New York City, at the Saroyan in
Fresno and the Herbst in San Francisco. We watched Shushan ask us to
donate to the homeland when the homeland needed roads and schools. We
watched Alla bid farewell to the heroes who had liberated Artsakh. We
read about Nune in the New York Times, we listened to Jivan
Gasparyan’s duduk on the silver screen, and watched Armen Movsisyan
during world tours with the legendary mainstream musicians of our
time.
A decade after Grigoryan’s proteges had opened the doors to the
biggest venues around the world, Armenia, an independent republic,
entered the global music scene with its entry to the Eurovision song
contest in 2006.
>From 33 countries and millions of popular votes from around Europe, it
was Armenia’s representative, Andre, who the world discovered and
awarded the eighth spot in the competition. Andre thus paved the way
for Hayko, Sirusho, and Inga and Anush, and Armenia’s composers,
lyricists, and producers had yet another place to share their
4,000-year-old culture.
In the diaspora when people did not know Armenians, it was our one and
only Charles Aznavour who put a face on a marginalized race. It was
Mike Connors who put the first Armenian face on American network
television. And the two were there at the Nokia last Sunday, next to
the new generation of diasporans writing and singing in their mother
tongue and other tongues.
Sunday, in front of 7,100, people was one son of the diaspora, Serj
Tankian, who had traveled the world, singing his songs and sharing his
literature with hundreds of thousands of fans. Tankian and System of a
Down had sold nearly 25 million records and become the instigators to
young Armenian activists. Sharing the spotlight at the Nokia was
Tankian, the son, who was not only writing his first symphony for an
orchestra, but giving the gift of music back to the man who had given
the gift of life – his father Khatchadour.
Among the celebrated were the singers of the revolutionary songs that
kept the diaspora alive when there was no hint of Armenians ever
witnessing an independent homeland. Karnig Sarkissian’s soulful
performances made the revolution and revolutionaries part of our
drive-through lives in the Americas and the long walks on the
corniches along the Mediterranean. Karnig and his predecessors like
Adiss Harmandian and Levon Katerjian had kept the music alive in the
vast diaspora. Via reel-to-reel tapes, vinyl records, cassettes, and
eight-track carts, they delivered Armenian culture when the first
can-do generation of Armenians was opening its eyes in foreign lands.
On the West Coast of the Americas, in the new multicultural arena of
Armenian reality were more young, charismatic Armenian men and women
from Los Angeles with their bands – Element and Visa. There, at the
Nokia, huddled together were Eileen Khatchadourian and Miran Gurunian
from Beirut, Los Armenios from Buenos Aires, and Reincarnation from
back home. These confident, young musicians were unafraid to explore
other genres while being true to their identity.
Modern Armenian performers like Armenchik and Harout Balyan amazed the
audience, easily using foreign languages to share their own culture.
They stood and stand self-assured about their Armenian identity and
are unafraid of melting in the pot. They play and sing with fun and
vigor, sharing the flavor, the tricks and melodies, rhythms and rhymes
of things Armenian while engaging the musical world-at-large.
Among the artists was Sylva Hakopian, who beat other talented young
people around the world to earn the global British Broadcasting
Corporation’s highest honor for new talent. Backstage was the dudukist
from Yerevan, Kamo Seyranian, who was discussing music with the
American folk singer Melineh Kurdian from Wichita; one channels
ancient Armenia and plays the ancient reed to every one’s heart’s
content, while the other asks profound questions through her
English-language lyrics about post-modern man and sings her popular
folks songs with a guitar and on MTV.
Who are we but not proud that such a night was possible, and that we
gathered to honor on this special night those who are willing to
express their God-given talents, to write the lyrics, to open their
mouths and sing the notes, to perform elaborate choreography on their
keyboards, and to pull on listeners’ heart’s strings by picking at
their guitars. These children of Hayk allow us to reflect, to
celebrate, to mourn and meditate, and to be Armenians with new
Armenian music.
An evening at the Nokia, for our vibrant culture, was a moment when we
collectively took a long breath together. We took a moment to look
back and see where we had been and what our traditions are. We took a
moment to honor those who had made beautiful music. We tipped our hats
to those making engaging and popular music now. We also set the bar at
a higher place for next year and the years to come and challenged the
generation of artists destined to sing Armenian songs in the future.
And 7,102 apples fell from heaven: one for the storyteller, one for
each Armenian and non-Armenian who attended the music awards, and one
for you, the reader.