Music Based on the Armenian Genocide

The Armenian genocide (1915–1923) reportedly took the lives of over 1.5 million Armenians and is considered by many to be the first genocide of the twentieth century. Despite the Turkish government's general denial of the event, for the Armenians this period in history is an omnipresent source of pain and historical consciousness that finds itself expressed through literature, art, and music. Three overarching areas of Armenian music have been infused by the genocide: (1) Armenian music history and the work of Armenian musicologist Komitas Vardapet; (2) the style and content of some Armenian songs that validate the experience of the Armenian genocide; and (3) religious ritual performances for the preservation of Armenian identity in the diaspora.

Komitas Vardapet and the Armenian Genocide

In terms of Armenian musical history, the genocide profoundly affected musicologist Komitas Vardapet, who is regarded as the father of Armenian national music. Born Sogomon Soghomonian in 1869, Komitas, renaming himself after a seventh-century writer of hymns, studied music in Berlin and transcribed Armenian folk songs during the reign of the Ottoman Empire. As a participant in the International Musical Society Congress in Paris (May–June 1914), he introduced the music of Armenia to the Western world. On orders from the Ottoman government, he and other Armenian scholars were deported to the interior of the country. Komitas suffered a breakdown, and from 1919 until his death he lived in a mental hospital in Paris. As a result, much of his groundbreaking work was lost. Despite this the Arts Institute of the Armenian Academy of Sciences has published six volumes of his musicological works. His Armenian Sacred and Folk Music (1998) includes eight original essays, and has provided much of what is known about Armenian music in general.

Songs as Oral History

Historical validity is often conferred by written texts or other visual means, that is, newspapers and photographs. Oral history can also be an exceedingly important source of historical evidence and allow for truthful descriptions of general conditions. Jan Vansina states in his Oral Tradition As History that "the expression 'oral tradition' applies both to a process and to its product. . . . The process is the transmission of such messages by word of mouth over time until the disappearance of the message" (Vansina, 1985, p. 3). By passing down songs, the Armenian people have, in fact, cemented the Armenian genocide's place in history.

The most significant work linking the genocide directly to music is Verjine Svazlian's The Armenian Genocide in the Memoirs and Turkish Language Songs of Eye-Witness Survivors (1999). In the 1950s Svazlian began transcribing and recording the memoirs and interviews of survivors of witnesses to the Armenian genocide. She characterized these songs as follows:

1. Created under the immediate impression of specific historical events on the western segment of the Armenian people, these songs are saturated with historicity.
2. Similar songs have been simultaneously created, in different variants and modifications.
3. Although the songs have been created in the Turkish language, they are, however, of Armenian origin (Svazlian 1999, p. 10).

For example, the testimonies of Serpoohi Makarian (b. 1903) and Mikael Keshishian from Adana (b. 1904) recall the horror of the events:

Hey, cedars, cedars, variegated cedars,

The resin drips every time the sun strikes,

Alas! Adana River is full of corpses and blood,

Behold! I've come to see you, slaughtered Adana,

Alas! I've seen you, massacred children (Svazlian, 1999, p. 11).

This song depicts the beginning of the genocide, "when young Turks feverishly prepared the total extermination of the Armenian people waiting for a propitious occasion" (Svazlian, 1999, p. 11). Later in the same work Svazlian provides songs characterizing the experiences of those who were pressed to walk the "death road":

Green grass did not grow in the desert of Deyr-el-Zor,

Fifty thousand persons were shot down,

The people's teeth fell down from affliction,

Armenians dying for the sake of faith! (1999, p. 20)

Here the Christian faith becomes a shining badge of "Armenianness." Having embraced Christianity in the fourth century ce, Armenia is regarded by many as the first Christian nation. In the very name of faith, Svazlian reports that the following song recounts the torture inflicted on Armenians in the town of Marash:

Marash is called Marash, alas!

Marash, how do they call you Marash?

When they burn a church in Marash,

And they burn Armenians in the church. (1999, p. 33)

These are but a sample from the vast collection of ethnographic songs that Svazlian assembled. The songs are memorials to the many who perished—in the writer's own words, "the Armenian folk memoirs and the Turkish-language songs entrusted to the generations, become owing to their historico-cognitive value, testimonies, artistic, yet reliable, objective and evidential documents illustrating, in a simple popular language, the historic events and the Armenian Genocide" (1999, p. 36).

Sacred Music: Preserving Armenian Identity in the Diaspora

Armenians have maintained much of their history through the ritual performance of their Christian faith throughout the diaspora. The Armenian liturgy and its music comprise the Badarak (Mass) and the sharagan (hymns) sung at the services, also called offices, and the sharagan sung for the sacraments. Sung in the classical Armenian language of Graber, the music lends spiritual meaning to the text of the Soorp Badarak (Divine Liturgy) or Holy Sacrifice. With the participants gathering for the liturgy, their performance becomes an active expression of communal identity, evoking their worldview, which is a direct reflection of their religious belief system as well as the event that brought many of them to the diaspora—the Armenian genocide. If music is then considered in ritual contexts, one can look at it not only as an integral part of the liturgical performance, but also as a way of maintaining historical identity.

If music is a sign of a people, then without a doubt Armenian music may be regarded as a referential idiom—embodying meaning that extends the purely musical to that of memory, history, and identity.

SEE ALSO Armenians in Ottoman Turkey and the Armenian Genocide

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Komitas, Vardapet (1950). Chants of the Divine Liturgy of the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church, adapt. Wardan Sarxian. New York: Delphic Press.

Komitas, Vardapet (1998). Armenian Sacred and Folk Music, tran. Edward Gulbekian. Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon.

McCollum, Jonathan (2004). "Music, Ritual, and Diasporic Identity: A Case Study of the Armenian Apostolic Church." Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, College Park, Md.

McCollum, Jonathan, and Andy Nercessian (2004). Armenian Music: A Comprehensive Bibliography and Discography. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press.

Nersessian, Vrej, ed. (1978). Essays on Armenian Music. London: Kahn and Averill.

Poladian, Sirvat (1942). Armenian Folk Songs. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Poladian, Sirvat (1978). "Komitas Vartabed and His Contribution to Ethnomusicology: Komitas the Pioneer." In Essays on Armenian Music, ed. Vrej Nersessian. London: Kahn and Averill.

Svazlian, Verjine (1995). Genocide: Oral Evidences of the Western Armenians. Yerevan: Gitutiun.

Svazlian, Verjine (1999). The Armenian Genocide in the Memoirs and Turkish Language Songs of Eye-Witness Survivors, ed. Sarkis Harutyunian. Yerevan: Museum-Institute of the Armenian Genocide of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia.

Yekmalian, Makar (1919). Chants of the Divine Liturgy of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Boston: Azk Press.

Jonathan McCollum