![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
This paper examines the controversial music genre rabiz in relation to political and socio-economic developments in post-Soviet Armenia. Rabiz, an urban folk-pop genre characterized by melismatic singing and “oriental” embellishments, is a ubiquitous soundtrack to everyday life in the country, with lyrics commonly covering romance, male friendship, and family ties. Ethnographic observations suggest that its popularity draws on the affective appeal with which it captures common hardships and aspirations of post-socialist transition. In spite of this, rabiz is almost universally denounced by nationalist intellectuals and liberal citizens for foreign influences, sentimentality, consumerism, and conservatism. While for the cultured classes, the rejection of rabiz as “un-Armenian” is often an integral part of the construction of a virtuous self, the alternative conceptions of performers and fans reveal the polysemy of Armenianness as a moral category.
Acknowledgements
This paper is a revised and expanded version of a text that first appeared as a chapter of my Master’s thesis Sonorous Borders: National Cosmology and the Mediation of Collective Memory in Armenian Ethnopop Music, defended in 2011 at the University of Amsterdam. The sharp-witted questions and insights of Gerd Baumann (1953–2014) during my thesis defense are a continuing inspiration in rethinking the relations among music, identity, and alterity. I would like to thank Mattijs van de Port, Yolanda van Ede, Lusine Margaryan, Vincent de Rooij, and two anonymous peer reviewers for the comments they have provided at various points in the long history of this paper.
Notes
1. The dhol and zurna are, respectively, a frame drum and a folk oboe. Unlike the lower pitched Armenian woodwind instrument duduk, which is often used for solemn and melancholic expressive contexts such as funerals, the zurna is mainly used for up-tempo dances and for occasions ranging from weddings to warfare (Pikichian Citation2001).
2. A fascinating analysis of the mediatization of this type of event is given by Pikichian (Citation2010). In her analysis of a Saturday evening television show featuring live rabiz performers, Pikichian demonstrates how the host Gagik Sekoyan, himself also a singer, became a veritable television tamada, the traditional master of toasts, who united his audience into one large imagined feast table, as families across the country would tune in and dine together while watching rabiz singers perform live.
3. The plaintive style of duduk playing which has become famous across the world, and is nowadays even recognized by UNESCO as the intangible cultural heritage of Armenia, was also much shaped by this Soviet-era institutionalization (Nercessian Citation2001).
4. Sometimes an explicit continuity with this tradition is sought, as in the state proclamation of Aram Astaryan as “Gusan Aram.” This honorary title is also sculpted above the entrance of the only rabiz museum in Armenia, the Aram Asatryan Museum in Echmiadzin.
5. This process is reminiscent of the forceful expulsion of Turkish music from the public spaces of the Lebanese-Armenian diaspora from the 1950s onward, described by Sylvia Angelique Alajaji in her book on the music of the Armenian diaspora (Citation2015, 89–93, 115–118).
6. Quote from Azg Oratert, March 31, 2006.
7. The early Turkish state similarly attempted to remove “oriental” elements from Turkish national music culture. In recent decades, the arabesk genre has been often denounced in Turkey with a criticism comparable to that of rabiz in Armenia, locating the source of the undesired musical elements in Egyptian film music (Stokes Citation1992).
8. Quote from Berd Babayan in Azg Oratert – Mshakuyt #019, October 6, 2007.
9. http://www.armenianow.com/hy/arts_and_culture/24584/armenian_singers_about_influence_turkish_music.
10. The arabesk singer İbrahim Tatlıses's version of the song is called “Haydi Söyle.”
11. Here, one is reminded of the documentary “Whose is this song?” by Adela Peeva, in which the director traces a folk song claimed equally by Turks, Greeks, Macedonians, Serbs, Bosnians, and Bulgarians to be truly and exclusively theirs.
12. It appears that “6/8 music” is used as a euphemism, as the very uttering of the word rabiz might be considered a moral offense.
13. Papian's letter can be found at http://www.aravot.am/2016/09/30/810911/.
14. Opinions vary on the exact relation between rabiz music and qyartu culture, as those who are classified as qyartu often also listen to other genres such as Russian chanson.
15. Notable female singers include Gayane Danielyan, Gayane Serobyan, Armine Grigoryan, and Nana. There are even fewer female instrumentalists, with exceptions such as duduk and zurna virtuoso Armine Simonyan. Pikichian (Citation2001) has suggested that it is due to the phallic shape of such instruments that they are taboo for females.
16. An interviewee critical of rabiz defined the dress code as “being dressed for a funeral.”
17. Armenia is famous throughout the post-Soviet space for its cognac, and grapes figure prominently in Armenian national iconography, particularly in medieval church architecture and cross-stones.
18. “Haykakan rabis” in El Style magazine, N2/38, March 2008.
19. A similar balancing act can be found in an early song by Armenchik, simply named Rabiz. In the lyrics to this song, criticisms of rabiz as oriental are imitated by the singer, singing that “These songs are not yours!” In the refrain he responds with a defense, stating: “I sing rabiz, I wear European clothes, and I travel the whole world to make Armenians happy.”
20. The name is a play on that of the popular rabiz singer of Yezidi descent, Vle Khaloyan.