Treasured history of Turkish music housed in Yerevan library

A treasured history of Turkish music is housed in the Armenian Music and Science Library, located a few kilometers away from the center of the Armenian capital, which maintains an archive of world music.

Besides maintaining recordings of the usual international names in music, from Beethoven to Mozart, and to Armenian music's best-known figures such as Gomidas and Khacaduryan, and tens of thousands of documents, manuscripts, musical notes, gramophone recordings and some famous composers' private correspondence, an archive of Turkish classical and pop music is kept in a special room in the library, which also features an impressive collection of Azeri music. It is almost impossible to find such a comprehensive archive in Turkey, writies Turkish Hurriet Daily News.

The museum's director, Gulo Nahadakyan (L), told the paperthe reason for maintaining the archive was to preserve especially regional music, because music transcends geography and politics.

"Turkey and Azerbaijan are our neighbors. Moreover, art does not have a religion and language. Music is universal," Nahadakyan said, adding that her biggest wish is to collaborate with a Turkish organization and university working in the field of music in order to safeguard the archive.

"People are not aware of the riches here. If they knew, they would steal everything in one night," she said.

The museum employs 36 expert staff, almost 90 percent of whom are women. Nahadakyan said the reason why it is mostly women who work in the museum is due to lack of funding. "The maximum amount of money we can pay is $30 dollars a month. A man cannot support a family with this money."

The room where the Turkish and Azeri collections are kept is full of gramophone recordings. A Turkish music expert who simply calls herself Ruzan said they had transferred the collection of gramophone recordings onto CD over the last few years in order to make things easy for researchers. "In this way, we try to protect gramophone recordings as much as possible. Researchers can take them home, which makes things easier for them," she said.

Yet one day, as a surprise, Ruzan and her friends brought a record player to the library and played a record of renowned Turkish pop singer Nilufer. The Turkish singer's voice echoed around the library on the other side of the closed border and everyone in the room was moved to tears, she said. The name of the song was "Taa Uzak Yollardan" (From Very Far Roads). Nilufer is the most beloved Turkish pop singer among the women working in the library, Ruzan said.