The Daily Star, Lebanon
Dec 1 2004
Armenia’s Gasparian enchants crowd
Famed duduk musician played big hits and folk tunes
By Betty Panossian
Special to The Daily Star
BEIRUT: Jivan Gasparian, the 70 year-old Armenian musician world
famous for his playing and composition on the duduk, or Armenian
traditional flute, hit Lebanon last weekend for two concerts of
sublime music after an almost three decade absence.
Organized by the Armenian cultural and Benevolent Association,
Gasparian performed to a primarily Lebanese-Armenian audience at the
Emile Lahoud Exhibition Hall located in Dbayeh.
Tantalized by their hero’s orchestra playing traditional folk songs
and a number of folk dance shows performed by a team from Armenian
choreographer Sophie Devoyan’s “Theater of Dance and Soul” troupe
during the the first half of the concert, the audience erupted into
cheers when Gasparian himself appeared after the interval.
Gasparian played a rich and varied program of popular Armenian songs
and melodies, and included an excerpt from his work on the soundtrack
recording to the Oscar-winning Ridley Scott film “Gladiator.” He
ended the show with a personal composition “Sokhag” (“Nightingale”),
in which his duduk narrates a tale of love and nature.
Gasparian is famous globally for his mastery of the duduk and is a
regular contributor and performer on the popular world music scene.
Armenians generally believe that no other musical instrument is able
to convey the emotions of the Armenian people so honestly and
eloquently as the duduk. Because of its evocative and colorful timbre
and warm sound, the duduk has become part of everyday life in
Armenia. Today, no festive occasion, wedding or family feast is
complete without a dudukist. The duduk is a cylindrical wooden flute
with a 1,500-year history behind it. A form of oboe, hand-made almost
always of apricot wood, the duduk is strictly Armenian.
Gasparian himself prefers to call the duduk by its Armenian name,
“dziranapogh” (apricot pipe), explaining that the word “duduk” has
been used in reference to the instrument for no more than a century,
when it was borrowed from the Russian word “dudka” – another kind of
folk pipe instrument.
Gasparian, who coaxes the sounds and spirits of nature and the human
soul out of his instrument, discovered it when he was an 8 year-old
orphan watching Armenian silent films with live musical
accompaniment.
“The musicians sat between the screen and the audience. They played
cheerful folkdance music when the scenes were cheerful, and solemn
ones, when the scenes were sad,” Gasparian recounted.
Gasparian’s collaborative projects have included recordings and
performances with the Yerevan Symphonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles
Philharmonic Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, as well internationally
famous musicians and composers such as Peter Gabriel, Michael Brook,
Lionel Richie and Andreas Vollenweider. Of the many awards he has won
for his music the most recent was in 2002 when he was presented the
World Best Musician Award at the World Music Expo in Berlin, from a
total of 1900 artists from 80 countries.
“The duduk has a marvelous temper. Whoever listens to its sound,
falls under its spell,” Gasparian said. He stressed the crucial
importance of playing the instrument with great skillfulness, adding,
“If you use it in the right way, it turns out to be an extremely
valuable instrument.”
Most recently the duduk received wide attention in Mel Gibson’s film
“The Passion of Christ,” when a former student of Gasparian, Levon
Minassian, plays the instrument prominently in the musical score.
For Gasparian it is a part of his legacy. “I have paved duduk’s
international path and have equaled it to violin. If the young
musicians wish to become artists, to continue my story, I will be
more than content,” he said.