What Do You Get? Sneak Peek
I’m already halfway through my residency and one month has gone by so quickly! Having focused time to work on Árabe has really helped me wrap up a lot of loose ideas and I want to spend my last month making edits, finalizing arrangements, and reviewing everything.
My vision for Árabe has changed many times over the last few years, but I’ve settled on releasing it as a music book similar to the read-a-long book/cassette combos you could check out from the library, but for all ages and you don’t have to read it while you listen, but you could.
The book will have essays that are about the history and stories that inspired my original music, a CD that has all the songs, and a 7-inch vinyl record that will have remixes of home recordings I’ve done.
Below is a sneak peek with what all these elements would look like – an essay, a demo version of a song, and some of the home remixes. These are works in progress, so things may change but this is where I’m at. I’ll also mention that the demo song is an arrangement of a song that I didn’t compose. There are two tracks that I just loved and fit so well with the concept that are original arrangements, but not original compositions. This is one of them. I’ll share an original next time!
Hope you are able to enjoy the cooler fall weather. My last songwriting workshops are coming up on 10/13 and 10/20, with a concert on 10/22 that will be livestreamed. See you there?
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What Do You Get? - For track Yenobak Eih and 7” Home Recording Remixes
Buried in the backroom closet of my grandparent’s house sat their dusty record collection, sagging on the top shelf shut away from use. They had long ago gotten ridden of their turntable. Along with their Willie Nelson, Fats Domino, and movie musical soundtracks was an aged dark brown home record album with a fleur-de-lis type imprint.
“Those belonged to my mother,” my Sito commented as I pulled the album down. “She would order records from a catalog and have them sent here.”
I gently opened the cracked binding. Inside the home album were 78 records. My great-Sito, Jamilee enjoyed getting dressed up in her fur coat and going out in downtown El Paso, she loved gambling and boxing matches even knocking out one of my uncles when he was late coming home, and played in the local Shriners drumline. From the stories I’ve heard about her, she liked having a good time, and it’s no surprise to me that music was part of her thrills. Her saved records were mostly from the Alamphon record company, one from Sun Records, one from a St. Jude’s Hospital fundraising event, and several home recordings recorded on lathe acid vinyl that were chipping away.
In Little Syria there were three Arab American record labels – Maloof Phonograph Company, A.J. Macksound’s Phonograph Company, and Alamphon Records which produced records from the 1930s – 1940s. Between 1890 and 1940, Little Syria in New York City was a community hub. The three-block radius near present day Washington St had everything from Syrian newspapers, magazines, restaurants and grocers to churches, banks, record stores, and barbers. Richard Breaux, writer of the blog “The Recorded Sounds of the Syrian/Lebanese Diaspora at 78 RPM” refers to this area as the Mahjar, the start of America’s Arab diaspora. The Mahjar was a movement started in the United States by Arabic writers who had immigrated from the Ottoman Empire (Lebanon, Syria and Palestine). It was an “Arab Renaissance” whose figures were fueled by their encounters with the western world. This is where Jamilee read about and ordered her records.
“How old are these?”
My Sito tilts her face in thought getting up from her recliner. “Let me see...probably 80 years now.”
“Can I borrow them? I can digitize it all and bring them back.”
“Digitize?”
“You know, put them on the computer to make a CD or just an mp3 file.”
“Wullah, you can do that?” raising her hand to gesture in disbelief at me. “Just take them we don’t use them.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! Too much junk in this house!”
She put a strip of duct tape on the album spine to prevent further splitting and wrapped it in bubble wrap and old grocery bags for the journey in my suitcase back to New York.
When back in New York, I very carefully unpacked the record book and began slowly sliding each one out of its paper sleeve, placing them on my turntable one at a time. They were scratchy, heavily used, roughly edited, distorted in places, and I loved them.
Yenobak Eih was the first record I played. The Alamphon logo painted on the record label featured a drawing of a pyramid with a camel in front next to some palm trees. Arab American musicians at the time played into the orientalist tropes for marketing with record packaging featuring camels, pyramids, and belly dancing ladies. Below the logo read the track name in Arabic and English, the performer, and the identification number of the take, record number, and side. It opened with a man speaking in Arabic “almutribah Sana” telling the listener or most likely the recording engineer keeping track of takes, the singer is Sana. It then opens with a derbake drumbeat, followed by strings playing a bouncy scalar melody, arriving at Sana’s entrance which is strong and steady behind the warped decay of time.
Over the following weeks I played it over and over again, transcribing the music which is lively, joyous, and celebratory and translating the lyrics which are about pain, confusion, and heartbreak. I loved the juxtaposition within the music and lyrics and began highlighting this deception in an arrangement of my own.
Translation of Yenobak Eih:
What do you get out of hurting me
Your love is a fire
In you, you have a secret
This adds to the fire
Isn’t it enough to torture me
Explain to me, what do you get?
My entire life, I’ve been living for you
Talk to me, may God save you
Explain to me, what do you get?
What do you get out of hurting me?
Your love is fire that lights me on fire
In the 1950s Little Syria and lower Manhattan were changing and many Arabic people began moving to Brooklyn around current day Atlantic Avenue. Sahadi’s and the Damascus Bakery, Arabic grocery stores, are still on Atlantic Avenue today. Alamphon Records moved across the street from present day Sahadi’s on Atlantic Ave and recorded Arab-American singers and local musicians to serve the emerging Arab-American population. With the first wave of Arab immigration to the United States, Columbia Records also saw an opportunity to cater to the growing population and started an E series, E standing for ethnic. However, the Alamphon Record company had the advantage of knowing the market, understanding where to advertise like in Syrian World, a newspaper publication specifically for Arab-American families in the United States. The Alamphon Records were advertised to, produced and recorded by, and distributed to Arab-American families across the United States including New York City, Detroit, and El Paso Texas where my great-Sito bought them.
The lathe acid home recordings in the record book were in various states. All of them were chipping but some I could play while others I haven’t been able to remove from the sleeve for fear that they would just crumble. These records have messy scrawled Arabic handwriting on the label which I can’t decipher. You can hear a mix of Spanish and Arabic conversations, the phone ringing, and arguments in the background, all behind the recorded live music.
“Hi Sito, I’ve been listening to the records you gave me and there are some home recordings in here. Do you know who is singing in these?”
“Oh no, let me hear.”
Placing my phone next to the speaker, I play a section.
“hmm maybe Jeanette? She always thought she sounded so good.” I can hear the eye roll in her voice. “...I don’t know though.”
“That’s ok, what about this man talking?”
I play a section again of a man speaking Arabic then switching to Spanish to say “cantar bueno.”
“That’s my Daddy! Oh yes,” softer, “that’s him.” Sobs creep onto the line.
I digitized all the records, burned four copies onto CDs, and mailed them to my Sito and her sisters. From the digital home recordings, I also began to create short electronic compositions using snippets of the musical moments and the background conversations and sounds that illustrated life through audio. There are sounds of laughter, compliments, multiple languages, and music that is not at the professionally recorded level of the Alamphon recordings but that are played by family members who used music as a source of entertainment and to gather. The electronic compositions began to have a character of their own; one featuring the recorded piano stacked to make an unsteady chorus, another featuring the mystery vocalist over a violin drone, and another starting with my great-Gido Fahim announcing “this is El Paso, Tejas.” These vignettes of singular sounds morphed into new compositions of their own.
What do you get? There was no way of knowing that your great granddaughter would be a musician who lives in borough where you used to order records from, have your records now, and be creating compositions and arrangements based on what you’ve saved. There is no way to know what you get, until it’s happened. I’ve rearranged music and recordings from Jamilee’s record collection, but the intent behind each is that the moment is still present, that there is a sense of what it was like to listen and be in the room, and that what you get is a memory.
Pic of home record album cover