Last night, I went to the Opera House to watch a live screening of a concert held in Paris by the Armenian World Orchestra in honor of the victims of the genocide. Shown exclusively in Paris and Yerevan, but a message for the world, it included three pieces by Armenian composers, followed by Mozart’s requiem. The music was beautiful, and at times haunting. The third piece performed was a world premiere of a piece by Michel Petrossian, and while it was at times incredibly bizarre, the end had almost the entire audience in tears. It was a very experimental sounding contemporary piece, but at the end, the choir and some of the orchestra members began holding up signs with names of historic Armenian cities on them and ripping them in half. It only took seeing VAN being destroyed in front of me to know what was going on, to feel the symbolism like a punch in the stomach. ZMURNIA, SHUSHI, and ARAPGIR. The audience had been restless during much of the disjointed sounding piece, but went wild with applause after, with cameras flashing as soon as we saw the names of our historic cities.
Armenian geographical places renamed in Turkey
Throughout the concert, my mind kept wandering back to a feeling that’s been fairly common, if not unexpected, since being here. Mostly, I just can’t believe I didn’t know how much this culture has to offer. Symphonies by Khatchaturian and Komitas, music by Charles Aznavour, traditional folk songs, even musical instruments like the duduk, plus this language with its own awesome story… So much that I wish I’d always appreciated and now inspires me to make it a more central part of my life. I envy my friends here their second language, their familiarity with these things that I’m only now discovering or embracing. Armenia is so much more than the genocide – but the genocide took it from me in a way, a loss I’m only beginning to understand.
Unlike many others in my group, my family left Harput (now Elazığ) before the genocide officially began, although I know pogroms had already begun in the area. What followed in the years after has meant that I am left with answerless questions and a permanent state of liminality. Would I have family in Armenia today? Or Turkey? Would that make me Turkish? Or is Armenian-ness deeper than geographic location? What does it mean to be Armenian but from an Armenia that was erased? To be from a place that doesn’t exist any more? There’s a certain aching that comes with that kind of displacement, questions inscribed in the soul of each spyur’kahay (Diasporan Armenian) like me. With so much talk about the genocide, I’ve had to ask myself how it is relevant to me now, a hundred years later, and why its memory is something I need to talk about.
The French Ambassador welcoming us, and a really lousy picture of the stage
Sitting in the Opera House last night, I felt some answers begin to form in my mind. I don’t know if I had family who was affected by the violence, but I know that I have lost the culture and tradition and memory that is so integral to ethnic identity. The genocide means I’m a third generation refugee – that, in some sense, I can’t go home again. The genocide has overshadowed so much of Armenian history that it’s easy to lose awareness of the cultural achievements for some of us in the diaspora, because these things are talked about so much less frequently. The genocide means we only know our heritage through loss and sorrow – and are bound to that sorrow because it’s still so unresolved. I am so grateful to be American, but sad that I only learned one version of history in school, learned mostly of the accomplishments of one kind of people, that until recently I had a very ethnocentric, Western European world view and understanding of the great milestones in history. Sure I learned about dynasties in China and India, the Aztec and Maya, the Fertile Crescent, and trade throughout Africa, but I didn’t learn about Armenia, how Armenia was the first Christian nation, or how early the alphabet was developed, or that the first wine and shoe were both from here.
I don’t want to only know the tragedy of my people, and don’t want the world to think only of the poor starving Armenians (or the Kardashians, for that matter). I wish they could see the rich history of achievement and accomplishment as well, or even instead. It’s easy to think only of the darkest times in a people’s history, but it’s an equal tragedy to let that darkness obscure the overwhelming good, or the strength of the people, the resilience and tenacity that characterize this nation. It feels criminal to me to reduce a nation to their darkest hour – to know only the worst – which is really what brought me here in the first place. I feel truly blessed to be here at this important juncture in history to observe the memorial activities, but to simultaneously learn about the other thousands of years of proud Armenian history that I am the seed of.
performance across the street from my apartment of two Armenian scores for the genocide, plus a display of the original manuscripts
I love that music goes beyond language, but is instead capable of reaching the heart in such an intimate way, connecting people from all walks of life. I love being in a room where each of us is moved by the same sounds, and though we might internalize and interpret them in different ways, we are all in that moment together, united by it. Much as I feel an outsider in Armenia, through concerts like this, I feel this as my history too, that this tragedy fits somehow into my story, and that all of us of feel the wrong done to our people, but pride in who we are and who we have always been. I can go to historic sites and read texts, but perhaps because I was a musician for so much of my life, the emotional power of it is so much more evocative in me. Discussions are good for thinking and asking questions, but at least for me, music is always better for feeling.
statue in Paris dedicated to the composer Komitas and to all the victims of the Armenian Genocide
Adventurous Of All Things 