During and after the Second World War, Arab-American music entrepreneurs flourished in Brooklyn. The Alamphon and Al Chark labels issued locally recorded material in tandem with many hundreds of pirates of imported Egyptian and Lebanese performances. Adding to their output, the Arabphon and Alkawakeb labels had a similar business model. Smaller, short-run vanity labels run by and for individual artists and their friends appeared in the 1950s, paving the way for the many labels that flourished during the microgroove era of the 1970s-80s.
This album presents a handful of the women who released discs for the 1940s-50s American labels during the period when immigration from Arabic-speaking countries was heavily restricted. Several had already achieved significant success before having arrived in the U.S. (Kahraman, Hanan, and Odette Kaddo), while others (Jamileh Matouk, Miss Nuhad) remained more or less obscure perhaps the result of having been born in the wrong place at the wrong time to have been appreciated widely. They operated within a close-knit circle of performers for community gatherings, and in the notes below one will see the names of the instrumentalists who accompanied them repeated over and over.
Of the biographical information below for the eight singers presented in this collection, six have been researched by Prof. Richard Breaux whose syrianlebanesediasporasound.blogspot.com site has been a significant resource. Those singers have been marked with an asterix [*] and URLs for Breaux's associated texts are included after each of them. Where Breaux’s research has been derived from public records or newspaper accounts, I have made an effort to confirm or expand on his work. Writing about this circle of immigrant performers is a relatively recent phenomenon with only a few people I’m aware of doing original research, of whom Prof. Breaux is the most prolific and dedicated. So, we present this collection with gratitude for his making his work available publicly.
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*KAHRAMAN
Born Olga Agby on Dec. 21, 1926, in Ehden, present-day northern Lebanon. She and her older brother Naif (b. 1920) were signed in 1946 by a talent scout to perform in Egyptian films. About two years later, the siblings emigrated to Brooklyn. They performed around New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan from late 1949 through 1956 during which time, they recorded for the Cleopatra label (likely operated by Mohammed El Bakkar briefly in the mid-50s), the Alkawakeb label, and Naif’s own Sun label. Olga married Nat Sutton in 1955. In the first year of their marriage she announced her retirement to become a housewife, and she briefly penned a column reporting on events in Brooklyn for the English-language Caravan newspaper including the first U.S. appearance by the iconic Lebanese performer Sabah (b. 1927; d. 2014). Olga was naturalized as a U.S. citizen on Sept. 4, 1956, around the time that Ogla and Naif’s younger sister Jeanette immigrated. Olga’s time away from the stage was brief. Following trips to Europe and Florida with her family, and a visit from their mother, who ultimately settled in Michigan, Olga came back to the stage, performing relentlessly through 1957-61 across the eastern U.S. with her husband acting as her manager. April 1958 she released an LP titled Flame of Araby, comprised of songs composed by Naif, on the Des label (presumably a subsidiary of Sun, along with the E.S. and Metrophone imprints) including re-recordings of some material she’d previously issued on 78rpm discs, notably her English-Arabic hybrid performance “Come On, Honey,” first recorded at least five years earlier. That album was subsequently picked up by ABC-Paramount and reissued a few years later during the bellydance boom; Naif’s own LP El Debke: Music of the Middle East was issued by ABC-Paramount around the same time, followed by an LP for the Audio Fidelity label for whom their sometimes-collaborator Mohammed El Bakkar (b. 1913; d. Rhode Island 1959) was having enormous success by selling gaudily Orientalized packages. Both Olga and Naif prospered through the 1960s-80s. Naif died May 8, 1992 in Grosse Point, Michigan; Olga died Jan. 22, 2017 in Brooklyn.
syrianlebanesediasporasound.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-incomparable-kahraman-and-naif-agby.html
*JAMILI MATOUK
Jamileh Matouk was born in Tripoli, Lebanon Feb. 25, 1911. Richard Breaux points out that her family gradually came through Brazil and Argentina to North America during the period 1912-23. She settled in Brooklyn and married Antoine Joseph Deeb in 1934; they had four children. Her first recording "Shouf Ya Ammi," appears to have been self-released in 1941. She recorded at least two discs for the Alampon label in the ’40s before recording two discs for the Karawan label. In the late ‘50s, her family had a home in Florida but split their time with their home in Brooklyn. She died in 1997.
syrianlebanesediasporasound.blogspot.com/2019/06/jamili-matouk-or-jameeleh-matouk-or.html
MISS NUHAD
It is not out of the question that this singer is any one of several women with the surname Nahat born in the mid-1910s in Greater Syria and living in the U.S. by the 1940s, but even this remains speculation. The disc was issued on the Alkawakeb label run by Anthony M. Abraham (b. Aintourine, present-day northern Lebanon, 1893) of Newark, New Jersey who worked for decades as a crane operator at Crucible Steel Works and was a naturalized citizen as of 1928.
*MISS HANAN
Born Jeanette Nehme Hayek on Nov. 8, 1929, in Beirut, Hanan was a trained singer. She traveled to Brazil and Argentina to perform in 1947 & ’48 and married Michel Harouni in Beirut in 1948. She appeared in the film The Bride of Lebanon in 1950 and toured South America, North Africa, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine in the early ‘50s. During that period she released discs on her own label in South America and collaborated on record in Lebanon with Fairouz (b. 1935). In the Fall of 1954, she commenced her first tour of the U.S. Over the next year, she performed widely at events in Brooklyn, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Mississippi, and Florida. Her daughter Claire was born in November 1955, and the family settled in the Prospect Park section of Brooklyn. From January through April of 1956, she was back on the road, performing in Miami, Detroit, Paterson, and Utica. Her son Joseph was born in November of 1956, but once again, she was back on the road by January, traveling with her husband and two infants through New England, upstate New York, and Michigan . Like Kahraman, with whom she often shared bills, she worked with a who’s-who of the Arab-American musical community, including Elia Baida, Eddie Kochak, Naim Karacand, Joe Budway, Sami Shaheen, etc. During that hectic period, she recorded in New York for the Alkawakeb (including the performance presented here) and Cleopatra labels (the latter in collaboration with Mohammed El Bakkar). An LP titled The Arabian Nightingale was issued in 1959 by the classical music label Period, followed by a half-dozen more albums and some 45s. She dedicated much of the 1960s to life as a mother but returned to Lebanon to perform and record prolifically in the early ‘70s. She performed periodically into the early 1990s during which time she was a care-taker to her ailing husband, who died in 1992. She subsequently moved to Staten Island where she died on Oct. 8, 2011.
syrianlebanesediasporasound.blogspot.com/2019/10/hanan-dont-miss-her-wherever-she-will-be.html
*NAJEEBA MORAD
Mary Morad was born in New York City on June 28, 1911, to parents from the village of Mradiyeh, present-day northern Lebanon. Her father was a musician. The eldest of fourteen children, she was raised in Boston where her father ran a grocery store and then a laundry. She worked at a shoe factory in early adulthood, began performing around 1933, and earned her high school diploma in her mid-20s. During WWII, she recorded some songs of American patriotism in Arabic for the small Petrophon label under the name Najeeba Morad. She married Toufic M. Karam in 1952 with whom she had four sons. The family settled in Buffalo, NY, and performed regularly in New England through 1953-1960 often accompanied by Russell Bunai, Philip Solomon, Joe Budway, Anton Abdelahad, Antoun Tawa, Mohammed El Bakkar, Elia Baida, Naim Karacand, and the Hamway brothers. Around 1958, she self-released a half-dozen discs. She continued to perform until about 1988. She died in Buffalo on July 22, 2004.
syrianlebanesediasporasound.blogspot.com/2019/06/nageeba-morad-karam-daughter-of-mahrajan.html
*ODETTE KADDO
Born August 21, 1927 in Zgharta, present-day northern Lebanon, she was one of six children and began singing at the age of nine, influenced by Oum Kalsoum (b. 1898; d. 1975) and Asmahan (b. 1918; d. 1945). Along with her brother Nassir, she performed in Lebanon until the eminent composer and performer Mohammed Abdul Wahab encouraged her to relocate to Cairo, where she studied at the school of Farid Ghosn, who’d mentored Asmahan and her brother Farid Al Atrash, and began recording for the Baidaphon label in the 1940s. Some of those discs were issued in the U.S. by Naif Agby, who grew up in the same region that she did, on the E.S. (Eastern Star) label. Following a series of appearances in Paris, Agby sponsored a series of U.S. tours for Odette and Nassir Kaddo in 1955-56 performing in Detroit, upstate New York, Los Angeles, and Miami alongside Agby, Djamal Aslan, Philip Solomon, Mohammed El Bakkar, Anton Abdelahad, Mike Hamway, and others. During these tours, she met Philip Peters (b. Hasroun, present day northern Lebanon; d. 1978) in Detroit and married him on May 4, 1957 at a huge party with three bands including Naif Agby’s group. Their first child was born in Michigan in April 1958. King Hussein of Jordan came to visit her there in Detroit. In 1959-60, she recorded several 45s and an LP, The Voice of the Cedars, with Nagby. Several more LPs followed along with several more children, coinciding with the development of a family business making sausages. Although much admired, she performed only sporadically through the ‘60s. She became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1968; her mother and sister immigrated to Michigan shortly thereafter. On tour in Lebanon in 1970, she appeared on television and sang for president Sleiman Frangieh. She returned to more regular performing in the late 1980s and continued into the ‘90s, during which time her appearances were a point of connection between Christian Arabs from Detroit’s east side and Muslims from the west side. She died in Grosse Pointe, Michigan of cancer at the age of 70 on Sept. 1, 1997.
The performances presented here were recorded for Baidaphon in Cairo and issued in the U.S. by Naif Agby in the 1950s.
syrianlebanesediasporasound.blogspot.com/2019/09/odette-kaddo-arab-music-it-gives-me-life.html
