By Hrag Arakelian
We are familiar with the revolutionary songs and lyrics of Karnig Sarkissian and George Tutunjian. These songs were mostly written during the birth of the fedayee and the ARF. They commemorate Armenian revolutionaries, the motherland, and heroic events that took place at the time. Some of these revolutionary songs called for young Armenian men to fight next to their fathers and to protect their villages from murderous Turks and Kurds. Other songs explained that the only way we would see freedom was by taking matters into our own hands. For a long time I thought that Armenians were the only people who sang about revolution and freedom. However, I have come to realize that the African American community has very similar lyrics in hip hop music.
Hip hop artists talk about the current state of African American communities. They express the problems within their communities and the way they have been oppressed by white society. Like Armenian patriotic songs, hip hop also talks about being proud of who you are. Some hip hop artists are politically conscious of society, the school system, and express their dissatisfactions. Others call for brothers and sisters to protect their own communities, because society has left them in poverty. One example is from Dead Prez who sings, “You can’t fool all the people all of the time. But if you fool the right ones, then the rest will fall behind.”
How different is hip hop from the songs of our revolutionaries? There is a common message in both Armenian revolutionary songs and in hip hop; and the more you listen to it the clearer it becomes. Just like Armenian revolutionary songs, hip hop is a way to lift the spirits of the African American community and to raise awareness of certain issues. It is to open up the minds of people that oppression and racism still exist. Armenian revolutionary songs focused on the Ottoman Turks while hip hop focuses on white dominants. If only the radio stations would play the hip hop music I have described… But maybe that’s just the type of oppression these lyrics are referring to.
Guest Contributor
Latest posts by Guest Contributor (see all)
- Mourad Armenian School celebrates 90 years - April 17, 2024
- ARS & Hamazkayin celebrate Sona Zeitlian’s trailblazing 70 years of service jubilee - April 16, 2024
- Illinois communities hold flag raisings to commemorate Armenian Genocide - April 16, 2024
Great article Unger. The points you made can apply more broadly to one of the biggest issues we face as diasporan Armenians.
Many of us, particularly in countries like the US in which we have more freedom than at any other time in our history, feel a strong disconnect from the stories, values, and issues we hear in heghapokhagan music. A simplified reason for this is that we’ve grown up (and are growing up) in a time and place that doesn’t place much relevance on these topics. I’m not saying that heghapokhagan themes are or should be considered irrelevant to us, but rather that our ancestors have fought so hard to assure our freedom and safety that we now have grown too comfortable, which is understandable given the conditions we faced; Our current environment is becoming our new home or destination, rather than a temporary home away from home.
That’s a whole other discussion in itself, but what I’m trying to get at is that a major focus in our ongoing battle against assimilation should be the restoration and progression of our culture. The term culture can have a broad and even all-encompassing connotation, but I’m referring to it here in terms of the history that drives heghapokhagan music. The youth feel disconnected from the stories conveyed in these songs; They might not understand the language well or they might simply feel like these are things their parents were into and that, as kids, they have better or more present-day things to worry about. And that’s true to an extent. If our culture had been developing in a normal and organic way (since even the prior generation), today’s youth would have more modern or “relevant” Armenian things to concern themselves with.
With that said, I don’t think the relevance is up for debate. Heghapokhagan music is and will remain relevant to the present-day until the issues and goals conveyed in those songs are resolved. So although people like you and me can listen to old Karnig recordings because we still feel that connection and relevance, a lot of kids listen and hear nothing but outdated music with tacky ’80s synthesizer sections, etc.
As with other aspects of our culture, we need to revamp and progress the music of the heghapokhutyun. It’s not a matter or modernizing the music; It’s a matter of expressing the values in these songs through our current selves. If we still find these issues relevant, why don’t more of us express them through artistic means as the prior generations did?
I think that’s the main difference between hip-hop and heghapokhagan. Hip-hop went through an evolutionary process, and continues to do so. Heghapokhagan, however, struggles to remain, period. The best and most we can do is to embrace our culture and to express it, rather than simply referring or alluding to it in lectures, discussions, etc.
There is definitely an Armenian hip hop and rap scene, by the way, in Armenia and the Diaspora.
Here’s a song on the genocide, for those who are not familiar with “Open Wounds” by R-Mean –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIi8bhb0zB4