aysor.am, Armenia
Aug 7 2009

Is classical music for funerals?

`They tell me `Your estrade’ I tell them `I have no connection with
it’. I ask a question to myself `with what do I have a connection? Who
am I? In which genre do I create?’ I can’t answer, I do not know as it
is not an estrade any more. It is too far from the present so called
estrade’,- thinks Emma Petrosyan, a signer who during the meeting with
the journalists tried to find out why the music and singing started to
degrade as a result of which the values started to lose their
significance.

To E. Petrosyan’s opinion the genres have been mixed during some
time. According to her the founder of Armenian pop music as many
others think is not Arthur Grigoryan. She, being one of the founders
of `Ayo show’ together with Arthur Grigoryan, assured that once an
army of individuals gathered together who have become authors of many
wonderful works.

`That time I didn’t know what I was doing, why I was doing? I just was
doing something I couldn’t not to do. I suppose we had wonderful roots
like Tatevik Hovhannisyan, Erna Yuzbashyan, Elvina Makaryan, Georgi
Minasyan, Orbelyan¦ a very strong school’,- remembered Petrosyan
and added, `Suddenly half-educated people came out, who decided that
they can do something.’

`They started to record everyone and covered with these records
everything.’ In the result of this according to E. Petrosyan the bad
music spread so quickly that she doesn’t even know how to prevent or
stop its circulation.

To the question why the bad music is not being criticized by the
artists and the corresponding professionals E. Petrosyan answered
`Everyone is tired of criticizing as nothing is being changed.’ She
said that her criticism and her opinion is being heard only by her own
students who understand and accept it.