Notated Armenian folk songs largely unknown to public - debate

Entitled Armenian National Treasury, the project is aimed at revealing identity features through folk music, as well as preserving that part of the nation’s cultural heritage.

“It is the result of 1.5 years’ work, which we are now introducing to the public. Our foundation, in general, aims to offer support to different branches of art, so we selected music first as the very first means of expression for all Armenians in different parts of the world. It is a very important endeavor in the present-day world full of challenges. In the frameworks of the project, we created a modern digital database of Armenian songs,” the project's director, Marina Sultanyan, told reporters.

Any attempt to explore a nation’s identity reveals it most important elements, including language and culture, which are part and parcel of it, said Armen Martirosyan, the musical producer.

“Have you ever tried to search ‘Armenian music’ on the internet? I have, and my result was not unfortunately quite convincing. We see music which is in the Armenian language, but it isn’t Armenian. It is a global problem for a nation which wishes, on the one hand, to preserve its cultural identity, transferring to generations and on the other hand - to introduce it to the international community. So we saw we needed a large-scale project to solve the problem in a way,” he added.

Elaborating further on their activities, Martirosyan said they comprised several phases, including also research in collaboration with folk music professors from the Komitas State Conservatory.

The project’s chief music editor, Arthur Shahnazaryan, added that the selected repertoire includes multi-genre songs from Eastern and Western Armenia.
 

“We had reviews written for those more than 500 samples to give a description on each, as well as the persons who recorded and sang them. Then we selected – though with difficulty – singers to perform them. We taught the singers those songs, simultaneously recording them. The next stage was notation, which we did in line with the modern standards,” he explained.

The selected songs can be accessed on Armenianmusic.am. Around 100 samples have been posted so far with their ID numbers and descriptions.