As we close out the fourth year of the Sound Archive project here at the Armenian Museum of America, we are thrilled to have compiled 40 presentations in that time. Each has been dedicated to a different story of Armenian artists who made an impact on the musical and cultural heritage through the legacy of their audio recordings. Across those 40 articles, we have shared 156 different recordings, all digitized and restored from the Museum's expansive collection of early to mid-20th century 78rpm records. Presented here are some highlights from this year's selections.

One of the strongest areas of the Museum’s 78rpm collection is the output of the first generation of Armenians who came to America in the early 20th century, largely coming from Kharpert and Dikranagerd. This generation made a remarkable effort in the 1920s to document their folk and popular music through numerous independently run record labels. This year we looked at musicians from that cohort on the East Coast, including Kaspar Janjanian and Megerditch Douzjian. We also covered the work of that generation in continuing independent record production in the 1940s and 50s on the West Coast, focusing on the couple Reuben & Vart Sarkisian. Also from this mid-century period, we celebrated the music of iconic Massachusetts born band leader and clarinetist Artie Barsamian. The article on Barsamian continued the Sound Archive’s efforts to collaborate with experts and researchers in the field of Armenian music. In this case, the body of the article was excerpted with generous permission from Hachig Kazarian’s excellent book Western Armenian Music: From Asia Minor to the United States (available in the Museum's bookstore.). 

Two other features this year explored the aesthetic shifts and integrations of popular film and orchestra music that developed in the 1940s and 1950s, mainly on the West Coast. The artists Zaruhi Elmassian and Setrag Vartian and Hrach Yacoubian describe different facets of those aesthetic shifts. Similarly, the works of Kurken M. Alemshah and Shara Talyan give us a window into the hybridization of Eastern Armenian folk music with Western classical orchestra and operatic traditions. The work of these artists shows how this process was impacted by the fluid movement of artists studying and working across Europe, the Soviet Union, and the United States in the late 1930s until the late 1940s. 

This year, we were also able to identify the voice of the renowned oudist and teacher Krikor Berberian. We identified Berberian as the performer on a record by the label Orfeon Records, which was a reissue of a recording Berberian made in 1910-1912 in Constantinople. This record became the key to identifying numerous other recordings of Berberian which were reissued (without attribution) on the labels Odeon and Popular Haygagan. 

The final two subjects we covered this year were each special in their own right. The first exemplified the significance of audio recording in presenting non-musical works, and is a beautiful recitation of poetry by the famed Armenian actor Ardashes Kmpetian that was recorded and produced by the independent French label Ararat in 1953. Last, but certainly not least, we were thrilled to share the solo voice recording of Dr. Elizabeth Gregory, singing the Van regional folk song Le Le Jinar on a one-of-a-kind home recording made as part of a private project exchanging folk repertoire with Yenovk Der Hagopian. 

After four years, having shared dozens of stories and over 100 pieces of Armenian recorded sound history, we are still just scratching the surface of the Museum's audio holdings. We look forward to sharing more of this history with you in 2025 and we hope the recordings shared here bring you joy as we head into the new year. 

A special thanks to the SJS Charitable Trust for their generous support of our work to digitize and share our collection of 78 rpm records.