of a great singer whose life spanned from the collapsing Ottoman Empire to the emerging American Empire. And it is the story of an early attempt to make a star out of an immigrant singer, an effort that nearly succeeded, but not quite. It is an introduction to what remains of one life, derived from magically speaking black discs which say as much about the eter- nal as the white stone of the Parthenon.” His notes may not be ready to be
published in any university press, but Holst-Warhaft believes Nagoski has done Papagika justice. “Other people have rec- ognized her great genius as a singer, but nobody thought to do an in-depth study of her as an all-around personality,” she says. “There’s very little known about her, and he’s painstakingly gone about find- ing everything. I take my hat off to him.”
N
agoski’s domain is the yard sale, the thrift store, the eBay auction no one else is bidding on. “I like the smell of mold, because I associate it with
the euphoria of discovery,” he says. Nagoski’s “approach is great, because
he has a DJ’s ear and he’s got this histori- an’s perspective,” explains Jace Clayton, a New York artist who performs under the name DJ/rupture. “He’s looking at these songs as somewhere between a poem and an autobiography.” Nagoski says the true aim of his eth-
nomusicology is to simply add to the musical canon — to build on the efforts of older archivists, and uncover a bit more of our hidden history. This year, he hopes to have released another compilation, “Brass Pins and Match Heads,” a study of Armenian and Syrian immigrant music from New York, and a full-length study of an Indian virtuoso singer. He’s constantly listening for his next great obsession. “He’s always on a project,” says his
wife, Amanda Vickers, a conservation- ist who remembers meeting him at one of his screaming performances, which she found uncomfortable but compel- ling. “There really isn’t any Ian not on a project.” All of the work may not just add to the
canon but correct it. African and other non-Western music used to be big busi- ness in the United States and England. In the ’20s, record labels recorded countless Nigerian, Greek and Iraqi immigrants,
only to end up in one low-wage job after another. Last year, he drove a city cab on the overnight shift for two months. Until recently, he had a job answering phones at a census office. Money is always tight. In early spring, Nagoski took some
nagoski in the courtyard of his Baltimore apartment earlier this summer. (he and his wife have since moved to Frostburg.)
selling these works as musical postcards from home. But the mid-century folk re- vival, which venerated such homegrown figures as Woody Guthrie and the Cart- er Family and whose version of history echoes throughout the annals of rock- and-roll, helped erase the non-Western material from the American playlist. Nagoski is comfortable with his sta-
tus as a DIY scholar-fan boy, a role that has led him all over the world, giving lectures on his 78s in a 100-year- old theater in Montpellier, France, an abandoned hotel-turned-legal-squat in Brussels, an art gallery in Milan and a warehouse space in Boston. “It’s schol- arship in the service of poetry,” he says. “There [is] a part of me that likes being thought of seriously by serious people. But serious people take many, many forms. The academy is not entirely made up of serious people.”
T 30 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | august 22, 2010
he first thing you notice about Nagoski’s home is what you don’t see. There aren’t thousands of records lining the shelves. He will
not be leaving behind a trove for any fu- ture treasure hunters. “I have virtually no records,” he says. “I don’t collect. I’m a conduit for records.” A few years ago, he exited True Vine (his partners reopened in a new space),
records to the African music library in the basement of Voice of America’s Washington headquarters. He had an appointment to see Leo Sarkisian, age 89. Sarkisian had spent decades criss- crossing Africa and the Middle East working as a field recorder, archivist and broadcaster for the Voice of America; he’d been hired by Edward R. Murrow. Sarkisian’s family had immigrated to Lawrence, Mass., from Armenia at the start of the 20th century. He grew up en- grossed in the music of his homeland and later became a fixture on the New York scene just after Papagika’s time. The library, whose walls are lined
with dozens and dozens of his reel-to- reel recordings, is named after him. Nagoski hoped the ethnomusicologist could help him translate a batch of Turkish and Armenian records, assist him with research about the old im- migrant music circuit in New York and maybe tell him about other recordings he should hunt down. Nagoski played track after track for
him, and Sarkisian started filling in the blanks. Every song came to life with a story, bits of translation, a flood of memories. These songs weren’t myster- ies or collector bait. They made up the soundtrack of his childhood. Nagoski had picked right. Soon Sarkisian took the hand of his wife, who had joined him for the meeting, and started to dance in a crowded aisle. Toward the end of their two-hour
meeting, Nagoski decided he had to put on his beloved Papagika song. Sarki- sian said even he had never heard of the singer. He was curious. When that first note struck the room,
Sarkisian stopped fussing with the piles of old records and reminiscing with his wife about the old days. A big grin creased the man’s face, his eyes bright- ened. And for the first time all day, he fell silent and let the music take hold.
Jason Cherkis is a freelance writer based in Washington. He can be reached at
wpmagazine@washpost.com.
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