A BITTERSWEET FAREWELL: AZNAVOUR IN TORONTO
Richard Ouzounian
Toronto Star, Canada
Sept 4 2006
`Before Aznavour, despair was unpopular,’ said poet Jean Cocteau of
the legendary singer, now on is farewell tour
MARSEILLE, FRANCE-Charles Aznavour stands behind the large bar in
his studio and pours himself a pre-lunch glass of port. He pauses as
a memory lights up his eyes.
“Edith Piaf. When she was trying not to drink, she would always order
Melon au Porto. She asked them to leave the bottle on the table and
kept pouring more and more of it over the fruit. When she finished,
she’d smile and say `I love to eat melon; it always makes me feel
so good.'”
The earthy laugh that rings out belongs to a much younger man than
the 82-year-old singer, who’s getting ready to begin the farewell
tour that brings him to Toronto’s Hummingbird Centre on Sept. 15.
“I am saying goodbye to all the parts of the world where I sing
in different languages,” he says. “I have already done the German
countries. The English-speaking ones are next, then the Spanish,
then the Japanese.”
But he leaves the door open to performing in his native country, in
his native tongue. “In France, I will sing until it’s time to stop
and that’s when the voice gets shaky.” He raises his glass of port.
“It hasn’t happened yet.”
When reminded that he embarked on a tour several years ago that was
supposed to be his last, he quips: “Singers are like politicians.
They say something today and they say something else tomorrow. We
are all liars.”
Then he puts his glass down to make a point. “Except in my songs. I
never lie in my songs.”
Those songs – hundreds of them – have formed the backbone of his
career. English audiences know him best for numbers like the achingly
nostalgic “Yesterday When I was Young” and the romantic “She,” but
his work contains more colours than Joseph’s biblical coat.
Politics, religion, ecology, war, ethnic cleansing, divorce,
homosexuality, alcoholism, despair – there’s hardly a topic he hasn’t
explored in the past eight decades.
He has several homes around the world – Marrakesh, Geneva, Paris –
but every summer he returns here to his retreat near the Mediterranean,
a short drive from Marseille in the south of France.
The house is gated, but when you ring the bell it is Aznavour’s
distinctive growl that answers.
The rambling structure is decorated in the classic Provencal
colours of yellow and blue. There’s a large pool in the distance
where grandchildren splash happily in the bright August sunlight,
but inside his cool, dark studio, it’s work, not play.
Yes, the large zinc bar – it’s from a 1920s bistro – stands ready to
offer refreshment as needed, but the rest of the room is dominated
by a giant piano, holding the unfinished sheet music for a new
Aznavour song.
Posters on the wall point to key moments in his life – his triumphant
return to the Olympia in Paris, the 1960 film Tirez sur le pianiste
he made with Francois Truffaut – and there’s a comfortable chair he
sinks into with his glass of port as he commences the long journey
back to the beginning.
“It all started,” he recalls, “when a little Armenian boy of 3 stepped
through a curtain and recited a poem about a beautiful woman and her
perfumed kisses.
“Maybe,” he smiles, “I haven’t changed that much in all these years.”
He was born Vaghang Chalnough Aznavourian on May 22, 1924 in Paris
to a pair of Armenian expatriates who were waiting for a visa to
the United States. It never came and they settled in France. His
father was a singer and restaurateur who kept going broke because
he insisted on providing free meals to all the Armenians and artists
visiting his restaurant.
“We were always moving,” Aznavour remembers, “always going to a new
apartment and a new job that was going to be the one that lasted. It
was good training for a life in show business.”
>>From an early age, he wanted to be an actor and a singer. His father
would take him to endless talent competitions, where he would always
wind up second to “a tall, blue-eyed handsome guy. I was short, I was
dark, I had a hooked nose. Who would listen to me sing `I love you’?”
Those insecurities would plague Aznavour for many years. Even today,
the 5-foot-3 singer says, “My stature was not the stature of a star.
I hate that word anyway. Look up to the heavens. Many stars die there
every day.”
World War II and the German occupation of Paris put showbiz dreams on
hold while young Aznavour worked as a black marketeer. He shrugs. “I
was young and when you’re young, everything is an adventure.”
He teamed up with another singer, Pierre Roche, and they began to
acquire a certain popularity in the heady climate of post-war Paris,
even drifting into the inner circle of his idol, Edith Piaf.
“What was she like? She loved good food. She loved to drink with
other people, not alone. Sometimes, of course, she would call you
up at 3 a.m. and tell you to come over so that she’d have someone to
drink with.”
His face grows severe. “But not drugs. Never drugs. They say she
did heroin, cocaine. I never saw that. She might have taken some
prescription drugs she grew too fond of, but not the hard stuff,
not Piaf.”
When asked what he learned from her, he generously says, “I have
learned something from everyone. Maurice Chevalier taught me panache,
Charles Trenet lyricism, Al Jolson energy and Piaf, of course,
passion.”
************** `I have grown older and wiser, and my public have
grown older and wiser with me’
Charles Aznavour, 82 **************
He took that passion across the Atlantic, where Piaf promised him and
Roche she would find them work. They wound up in Montreal in 1948,
spending several years at clubs like Cafe Society and Le Faisan d’Or.
“It was starting to be a very swinging place,” he recalls. “A richness
of two different cultures that lived side by side but never crossed
over. A tension, maybe, but an excitement too.”
By now, Aznavour had broken up with Roche and begun writing songs,
darkly personal documents that weren’t like anything anyone else
was singing.
The first, “J’ai bu,” told of a man who boasted drinking himself
senseless to forget the pain of life and a later number “Je haïs
les dimanches” attacked the whole bourgeois culture on which France
was based.
“They called me the first existential songwriter,” he boasts proudly.
“I always said `Je’ not `vous’ and everyone thought my songs were
autobiographical, even when they weren’t.”
He sips deeply from the port. “And then a funny thing happened. The
songs grabbed hold of me. They may not have been my life when I wrote
them, but they soon turned out that way.”
As Aznavour became increasingly successful, his life grew equally
complicated. He married and divorced twice and nearly lost his life in
a 1957 car crash. And he continued to be dogged by doubts about his
personal inadequacy even while he was filling the Olympia Theatre in
Paris three times a night, starring in successful films and touring
around the world.
Some of his best songs of the period tap into this despair. His 1964
“Hier Encore” (later translated into “Yesterday When I Was Young”)
paints a picture of man with no lovers and no friends who concludes
“j’ai gâche ma vie” (“I wasted my life”).
“Yes, that was me back then,” he admits. “Not a pretty picture. Mon
ami, don’t let them tell you fame is everything. I have been there.
When it’s all you have, fame is nothing.”
Aznavour credits two things with changing his life. He married his
third wife, Ulla Thorsell, in 1968 (they are still together) and he
shifted the focus of his songwriting to include more social issues.
“When I looked outside myself, I found that the world was in much
worse shape than I was,” he says sardonically.
He began addressing issues of urban violence, homosexuality and racial
inequality in his songs and found that it liberated him.
“If a man is curious about the world he lives in, he must learn. If
he learns, he must see, and if he sees, he must write. That is how
I feel.”
One of the areas this led him into was a deeper exploration of his
Armenian roots and the Turkish genocide that destroyed so many of
his ancestors. “When I was young,” he reveals, “my parents never
told us much about the Armenian holocaust. It was years later when
I discovered how horrible it had been.”
In 1975, he was asked to write a song for a movie called Armenia. The
film was never made, but the song “Ils sont tombes” with its moving
tribute to “the children of Armenia,” began a new chapter in his life.
“Our dead people have the right to have a grave,” he says, “even if
it is only in our hearts.”
Over the past 30 years, he has participated in numerous concerts
for his homeland, started a foundation to aid the victims of the
1988 earthquake that killed 50,000 and, in 2002, starred in Ararat,
Atom Egoyan’s film that explored the legacy of the Armenian holocaust.
“Let me make it clear,” he insists, “I do not hate the Turkish
people. My dream is to go to Turkey and sing there, but they tell me
it is not safe for me; one crazy man with a gun is all it would take.
“Look, one crazy man with a gun is all it takes anywhere.”
Aznavour finds himself deeply troubled by the religious wars that
beset the globe these days. “I respect every religion. The husband
of one of my daughters is Jewish; the husband of another daughter is
Muslim. We all live in peace with this. Why can’t the world?”
He puts down his empty glass.
“I’m anxious to meet my audiences one last time. When I was a young
man, I sang foolish songs, but I have grown older and wiser and my
public have grown older and wiser with me.”
With such a long and full existence, is there anything he would do
over again?
“I regret nothing. Not even my young anger. I have done more than I
ever expected …
“I would not change anything in my life. Even the bad moments have
been constructive. Love disappears? Well then, you say goodbye.”
Charles Aznavour will make his farewell Toronto appearance on Friday,
Sept. 15 at 8 p.m. at the Hummingbird Centre. Tickets are available
through hummingbirdcentre.com or by calling 416-872-2262.
–Boundary_(ID_0EdGS63e+BZHMzXsE44z 8Q)–

YOUTH TEAN OF ARMENIA WINS TEAM OF NORWAY WITH SCORE OF 1:0
Noyan Tapan
Sept 04 2006
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 4, NOYAN TAPAN. The team of Armenia played with
the team of Norway at the 2nd meeting of the group tournament of the
2nd electoral stage of the 2007 Europe Youth Football Championship
taken place on September 1 in the Yerevan sports ground after Vazgen
Sargsian. The team of Armenia was to win with advantage of at least
2 balls to continue the struggle. In the first part of the meeting,
Tigran Gharabaghtsian among the field owners opened the score. The
play finished just with that ball: the Armenian football players won
with a score of 1:0. The issue of the Armenian youth team’s entering
the next stage will become clear after the Norway-Bosnia meeting,
scheduled for September 6.

“AJAX” HEADS NOT PERMIT EDGAR MANUCHARIAN TO ARRIVE IN YEREVAN AND PERFORM IN TEAM OF ARMENIA
Noyan Tapan
Sept 04 2006
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 4, NOYAN TAPAN. Football youth team of
Armenia received on September 2 the team of Norway, by the group
tournament program of the second electoral stage of the 2007 Europe
championship. Armenian team coach Samvel Petrosian made public the
team staff, in which Edgar Manucharian was not involved as the “Ajax”
club of Holland refused to let him come, and Zhora Hovhannisan, who
is in Greece, was not involved as he did not respond the invitation
to participate in the game. The most part of members of the team of
Armenia is from “Pyunik,” 3 are from the “Banants” club, 1 is from
“Ulis,” another is from the Austrian “Pasching” team. Football players
of the team of Norway mainly perform in the highest division teams
of that country.

PROSECUTORS DEMAND TOUGH JAIL TERM FOR ARRESTED EDITOR
By Ruzanna Stepanian
Radio Liberty, Czech Republic
Sept 4 2006
A state prosecutor demanded on Monday four and a half years’
imprisonment for the arrested editor-in-chief of an independent
Armenian newspaper who is standing trial for dodging compulsory
military service.
Zhanna Kotikian, the trial prosecutor, stood by the accusations that
Arman Babajanian of “Zhamanak Yerevan” stole and forged in 2002 legal
documents belonging to the family of a former friend living in the
United States to avoid being drafted to the Armenian Armed Forces.
She described this as a grave crime, citing Armenia’s unresolved
conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Our country is in such a state that even having an extra soldier is
essential for it,” Kotikian said in her concluding remarks made at
a district court in Yerevan.
The speech drew sarcastic applause and jeers from a group of “Zhamanak
Yerevan” staff present in the courtroom.
The demanded punishment is quite strict by Armenian standards. Local
draft evaders, most of them members of Christian sects opposed to
military service, are usually sentenced to between two and three
years in prison.
Babajanian’s defense attorney, Robert Grigorian, condemned the
prosecutor’s demand as an “outburst of anger that has nothing to do
with justice.” Grigorian said his client should only be convicted of
draft evasion and handed a suspended jail term.
While admitting that he illegally evaded the two-year service,
Babajanian insisted during the two-week trial that he did not steal and
forge the marriage certificate of the Los Angeles-based Vahe Abovian
and his wife Armine as well as the birth certificates of their two
children for that purpose. He said he got hold of the papers through
a middleman who was never questioned by law-enforcement authorities.
Under Armenian law, young men who have at least two children do not
have to serve in the army. Babajanian, 30, studied at an Armenian
religious seminary and had his service deferred until 2001 before
moving to California in 1998. He set up and began publishing his
paper in the Los Angeles area, home to a sizable Armenian community,
in 2003. He launched its publication in Armenia just weeks before
being arrested by law-enforcement officers in his office more than
two months ago.
In a June statement released from his prison cell, Babajanian claimed
that the case against him is aimed at muzzling an “independent and
incorruptible media outlet supporting the removal of the illegal
regime and the establishment of a legitimate government in Armenia.”
The prosecutors, however, have denied any political motives.
The young editor was due to deliver his final speech on Monday but
asked the judge for more time to prepare it. The trial will resume
and most probably end on Friday.

2 FROM 4 FREE STYLE WRESTLERS OF ARMENIA ARE OUT OF STRUGGLE FOR MEDAL
Noyan Tapan
Sept 04 2006
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 4, NOYAN TAPAN. Two representatives of Armenia,
Artur Arakelian (60 kg, Yerevan) and Khachik Amroyan (74 kg, Martuni)
performed on September 3 at the World Youth Championship of free-style
wrestling in Guatemala. They had one victory and one loss each and
lost the right to struggle for the medal. Representatives of Yerevan
Suren Adyan (66 kg) and Edgar Yenokian (86 kg) perform on September 4.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NEW CHIEF POLICE OFFICER APPOINTED IN AKHALKALAK
Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
Sept 04 2006
AKHALKALAK, SEPTEMBER 4, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. By the decree
of the Minister of Internal Affairs of Georgia, Aram Poghosov, the
Chief of the Akhalkalak Regional Police Department was discharged
the post. By another decree of the Minister, Samvel Petrosian was
appointed the Chief of the Akhalkalak Police Department. According
to the “A-Info” agency, Samvel Petrosian was the Akhalkalak Regional
Prefect in 1991-1992. He has worked in the system of the Georgian
Internal Affairs for many years. He has been the Deputy Chief of
the Samtskhe-Javakhk Traffic Police. During the last few months,
S.Petrosian was the Georgian President’s Representative’s Advisor on
internal affairs and national security issues in Samtskhe-Javakhk.

ARMENIA REJECTS UN ROLE IN KARABAKH TALKS
By Karine Kalantarian
Radio Liberty, Czech Republic
Sept 4 2006
Armenia will refuse to hold further peace talks with Azerbaijan if the
latter persists in trying to get the United Nations to deal with the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian indicated
on Monday.
Oskanian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov are
tentatively scheduled to meet in Paris or London next week to discuss
ways of kickstarting the Karabakh peace process. Officials in Baku
and Yerevan have said the meeting could pave the way for another
crucial Armenian-Azerbaijani summit before the end of this year.
“We have not yet confirmed the September 12 meeting,” Oskanian told
reporters. “I don’t know whether it will take place. It will depend
on developments unfolding at other bodies.”
He was clearly referring to a joint appeal to the UN which was made
last week by Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The four
ex-Soviet states aligned in the pro-Western GUAM grouping reportedly
asked the UN General Assembly to discuss the unresolved ethnic
conflicts in the South Caucasus and Moldova at its upcoming session.
They argued that international efforts to settle those conflicts have
yielded no results.
Armenia has always been opposed to UN involvement in Karabakh peace
talks, insisting that the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe remain the main international body brokering
a solution to the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute. It apparently fears
that Azerbaijan would enlist the backing of other Muslim nations to
push pro-Azerbaijani resolutions through the General Assembly. Speaking
to RFE/RL last month, the Armenian ambassador at the UN, Armen
Martirosian, warned that Yerevan will pull out of the negotiating
process if the Karabakh issue is included on the assembly agenda.
Oskanian did not deny this, saying that the additional “obstacles”
created by Azerbaijan would render further negotiations meaningless.
Speaking to Armenian state television at the weekend, he accused Baku
of toughening its position on the issue and being reluctant to accept
the Minsk Group’s most recent peace plan.
The plan, which was disclosed by the group’s American, French and
Russian co-chairs in June, calls for a gradual settlement of the
conflict that would culminate in a referendum on Karabakh’s status.
The authorities in Yerevan have largely accepted the proposed
deal, saying that it upholds the Karabakh Armenians’ right to
self-determination.
“Today there is no other document on the table,” Oskanian said on
Monday. “I think [further talks] will center on it.”
The Azerbaijani reaction to the proposed settlement has been more
ambiguous, with President Ilham Aliev repeatedly stating in recent
months that he will never agree to any deal that could legitimize
Karabakh’s secession from Azerbaijan. Aliev’s top foreign policy aide,
Novruz Mammadov, accused the mediators last month of “ignoring” his
country’s territorial integrity and warned that Baku might turn to
the UN.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

REPRESENTATIVES OF A NUMBER OF POLITICAL FORCES DRAW ATTENTION OF ARMENIAN AUTHORITIES TO POSSIBLE RE-DRAWING OF NEAR EAST MAP
Noyan Tapan
Sept 04 2006
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 4, NOYAN TAPAN. The realization of the
English-American plan on creating a new Near East started during
the last Arab-Israeli conflict. Armen Avetisian, Chairman of the
Armenian Aryan Union Party, said this at the September 2 press
conference. He and another participants of the conference, including
heads of the Ukht Ararati and For the Sake of Homeland organizations
Tigran Pashabezian and Nerses Nersisian, as well as Chairman of the
Tsekhakron organization Gevorg Hovsepian, expressed bewilderment in
connection with the fact that the Armenian authorities in no way
reacted to the plan and map already known in the world, which was
published in all regional countries with the exception of Armenia. In
their words, one of the main directions of the plan is education,
including on the lands of the Western Armenia, the new state of
Kurdistan. Nagorno Karabakh is not mentioned at all on the map of
the new Near East. Instead, currently Turkish but formerly Armenian
cities of Ardahan, Kars, Igdir, as well as mount Ararat are returned
to Armenia. In A.Avetisian’s words, an attempt to form another state
is again made on historical Armenian lands. As the new state will
be created at the expense of the territories of another states as
well, including Syria and Iran, as he estimated, Armenia should
create a united front of struggle together with these friendly
countries. In the opinion of the press conference participants,
Armenia is vulnerable and is not ready for such challenges. They
called on the Armenian authorities to attend to this issue and to
take all necessary measures for strengthening the national security
system. In the respect of Armenia’s active involvement into regional
processes Armen Avetisian spoke for leaving of an Armenian military
contingent for the Lebanese-Israeli border. “Yes, we were against
sending our servicemen to Kosovo and Iraq, but with regard to leaving
for Lebanon, we consider this necessary,” Avetisian declared.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

THREE MORE WITNESSES TO TESTIFY IN AZERBAIJANI ARMY OFFICER RAMIL SAFAROV’S TRAIL IN HUNGARY
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Sept 4 2006
Tomorrow, Hungarian court will hold next court hearing on jailer’s
claim against Ramil Safarov, Azerbaijani Army officer, who was
sentenced to life in prison for murdering Armenian lieutenant Gurgen
Markarian in Hungary.
Azerbaijani Embassy in Hungary told the APA three more witnesses will
testify in the trial. Clara Fisher, new Hungarian lawyer for Ramil
defends him on this case.
While being held in Hungarian prison in 2004, jailers wanted telephone
card from Ramil. But Ramil could not understand Hungarian which led
an incident between them. Eight police officers tied his hands and
used force. Though lawyers for the Azerbaijani lieutenant appealed to
court related to this matter, the court dismissed the appeal saying
there was no evidence. Then the opposite side claimed that Ramil
resisted officials.
Clara Fisher, new Hungarian lawyer for Ramil defends him on this case.
Another Hungarian lawyer Koch Machar will defend Ramil in the trial
in the Court of Appeal.

OVER 20,000 APPEALS SUBMITTED TO UN ON VIOLATION OF AZERBAIJANIS’ PROPERTY RIGHTS IN ARMENIA
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Sept 4 2006
Documents were submitted to the European Court of Human Rights for
restoration of property rights of Azerbaijanis, who have been deported
from Armenia.
Azerbaijan National Academy of Science Human Rights Institute told
the APA.
The documents submitted to the European Court state that the
properties belonging to Azerbaijanis deported from Armenia cost
totally $20 billion.
The UN has received more than 20,000 appeals regarding violation of
property rights of Azerbaijanis.
There are 272 Azerbaijani villages and 89 mixed villages in Armenia.
All Azerbaijani graves in these villages have been destroyed by
Armenians.
From: Baghdasarian