41 f Armenian Soul
If all he’d ever done was create Eleftheria Arvanitaki’s The Bodies And The Knivesalbum and duet with Arto Tunçboyaciyan, Ara Dinkjian would still be a massive musical hero. Elisavet Sotiriadou reveals lots more.
“G
od is Armenian! You know that, right?” Ara Dinkjian replies to my joke about all things actually being Greek as
we meet for tea and coffee in Waterloo on a Sunday ahead of his London con- cert. It doesn’t feel like I’m talking to one of the world’s most renowned oud play- ers. There is common ground between the Armenians and the Greeks: in particu- lar there is an affiliation between the Greek refugees from Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia Minor and the Armenians. Shar- ing the very painful history of the atroci- ties of the Ottoman rule’s extermination of Armenian, Greek and other Christian minorities – plus the experience of life in diaspora – makes it easy to feel that we have a historical and cultural connection. But it doesn’t end there. Music unites the same people, both victims and perpetra- tors; there is wisdom that comes from the same pain.
Ara is a great presence, a man with humour and a big warm heart, yet very discreet. With him is his beautiful daugh- ter Arev who smiles shyly as her dad tells me of her talents and musical gifts. As the waiter looks for a table for us, he sees my microphone and asks me if I am meeting anyone famous. Ara answers humbly and relaxed in his New Jersey accent: “No, it’s nobody famous!”
Had he been back home this Sunday, he’d be in church. For 40 years now he’s been the Armenian organist at the church back home and he gets a replacement when he’s on tour with his oud and musicians.
So back to god, who if he played the oud, would certainly be playing it like Ara Dinkjian with such flow, grace and virtuos- ity. That night when I look around the auditorium at his London Jazz Festival con- cert at the South Bank, he has managed to gather Armenians, Greeks, British and many more nationalities under one roof. His wife and two daughters are there, his friends, fans, and Greek star Eleftheria Arvanitaki’s daughter too. It is the power of music, and of course the way that he plays the oud that has brought everyone together. His compositions are so complete that they are as authentic and beautiful whether Sezen Aksu sings them in Turkish or Eleftheria in Greek.
There is so much conflict around the world, Ara says, and music is the one thing that brings people together. “Music is a uniting force indeed. My songs have been sung in over a dozen languages and you know those are cultures that are historical-
ly and politically at war, yet here they are singing these melodies as if they are theirs, that’s great. I am proud of being part of that history of musicians so I say I thank god for music, god in the very general sense, in the uniting sense, not in any dividing sense.”
He is of Armenian heritage and his
father’s family came from the Armenian community in Diyarbakir or Dikranagerd as it’s called in the local dialect. His father, one of the greatest Armenian singers, Onnik Dinkjian, sings in the Dikranagerdsi dialect that very few people speak today.
There are two songs in the Dikranagerdsi dialect on the amazing Voice Of Armenians Live In Jerusalem album recorded at the Jerusalem International Oud Festival, where Onnik sings and Ara plays the oud. Both Onnik and Ara are featured in the recently released documentary Garod, a film about how they travel to Diyarbakir to reunite Armenians with their stolen past. By performing and recording traditional Armenian folk songs that had been lost and forgotten, they have managed to save them and bring them to the fore for future Armenian and non-Armenian generations.
Photo: Kendall Messick
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84