Fresno Bee (California)
May 24, 2007 Thursday
FINAL EDITION
Their mission: Preserve Armenian music;
Fresno couple seeks to keep an ancient music alive.
by Margaret Slaby The Fresno Bee
As a child, John Chookasian’s New York home often was filled with
Armenian music. This was where musicians from the community went on
Sunday afternoons to eat, play, sing, dance and reminisce about the
genocide.
"You went from deep sorrow, to wonderful music, to impromptu folk
dancing," says Chookasian, 67, who remembers musicians letting him
pluck the strings of the kanoon, a 72-string lap harp, and play the
dumbeg, an hourglass-shaped drum. "Music was very important."
It still is.
Chookasian and his wife, Barbara, founded the Chookasian Armenian
Concert Ensemble 13 years ago.
"Almastuh Shoghoom Eh," a track from the ensemble’s most recent CD,
"Passage to Armenia," was singled out in April as one of 25 songs of
note of 2006 by the Indie Acoustic Project.
Released in 2005, "Passage to Armenia" was voted best traditional
world music album at the 2006 Independent Music Awards.
John Chookasian is the ensemble’s artistic director and premier
clarinetist. Barbara Chookasian, 60, is the principal vocalist. The
couple lives in Fresno.
The ensemble performs traditional classical, folkloric and troubadour
songs and dances of Armenia. Most are from early immigrant musicians,
old recordings and songs the Chookasians’ parents, grandparents and
great-grandparents brought from Armenia.
The 10- to 15-member ensemble features music conservatory graduates
from Armenia and the U.S.
"Our mission from now to the time we expire is to serve our art form
with as much fervor and energy as we can," John Chookasian says. "We
just want to save traditional Armenian music and preserve our
culture. It is a duty which we perform with joy."
That joy is readily apparent, some concert-goers say.
"John and Barbara are very passionate musicians," says David
Nikssarian, who lives in Monterey County and attended a March
performance in Santa Cruz. "But their concerts are not just song
after song. They stop to explain the instruments and their history
and the songs. Because of that, you get a renewed appreciation of the
history, the culture and the music."
Songs are about lost lands, exiled families, domination by rulers and
unrequited love. There also are wedding marches and songs celebrating
nature’s beauty.
The group uses native Armenian instruments, in- cluding the clarinet,
kanoon, dumbeg, duduk (wooden flute), oud (11-string fretless lute)
and kemenche (four-string folk violin). These instruments produce
sounds that range from melancholy and haunting (the duduk) to rich
and full (the kemenche).
"The music is very old, and it hits you at a totally different level,
at this ancient level," says Evan Raymond, 31, a film soundtrack
producer who saw the ensemble in March in Berkeley, where he lives.
"My grandfather survived the genocide and came to the United States,
but died young of a heart attack. I never got to meet him.
"I grew up without a grandfather, but it’s more than not having a
grandfather; it’s not having a culture. When suddenly you’re in a
room with all this culture, it’s very emotional. For me, the music
was very haunting. It was very powerful."
Upcoming performances will include a Sept. 22 appearance at an
Armenian festival at Cobb Ranch just off Highway 41 north of the San
Joaquin River. The group plans to tour the East Coast in October. And
it will make its second trip to Armenia in 2008. During its first
trip, the group received the National Gold Medal Award of Armenia,
the first American-Ar- menian group to earn the honor.
The Chookasians enjoy passing on their heritage through music.
Barbara Chookasian was born and raised in San Francisco; her
great-grand- parents fled to the U.S. from the 1896 massacres in
Armenia.
"My dad was a violinist, my mom was an opera buff and my sister
played the piano," she says. "I was the little sister who got in all
of this." Her grandmother taught her to dance as soon as she could
walk, and she began singing on stage in 1982.
John Chookasian’s parents came from the Armenian province of Sepastia
(present-day Sivas, Turkey).
They survived the Armenian genocide of 1915 and came to New York in
1923.
The couple met while folk dancing at an Armenian wed- ding in Fresno
25 years ago.
A month later, John Chookasian, who was living in Las Vegas, proposed
to Barbara in Fresno via telegram.
They were married six months later and lived in Las Vegas before
moving to Fres- no.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
