>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. ^M00:00:04 ^M00:00:21 >> Joan Weeks: Well, good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Library of Congress and to the Noontime Lecture Series with today's program entitled Witness, Aleppo, Armerian, Assyrian, and Arab Music, Stories, and Images from Pre-war Syria by Jason Hamacher sponsored by the Near East division-- Near East Section of the African and Middle East Division. On behalf of all my colleagues, I'd like to welcome you to the series. I'm Joan Weeks, head of the Near East Section that is sponsoring this program this afternoon and especially for our chief, Dr. Mary Jane Dee [assume spelling] welcome you and give you a few kind of overview remarks about our division and the hopes that you'll plan at your back to the research in our collections. The division is comprised of three sections and served the collections to researchers from around the world. We cover 75 countries and more than two dozen languages. The African Section includes all of countries in Sub-Saharan, Africa. The Arab-- Hebraica Section is responsible for Judaica and Hebraica worldwide. And the Near East Section covers all of the Arabic countries including North Africa, Turkey, Turkic Central Asia, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Muslims in Western China, Russia and the Balkans and the people of the Caucuses. So you see it's a very wide range of coverage. After the program, we'd like to invite you to ask questions, but this program is being recorded so please know that that implicitly gives your permission to be taped and recorded. So now, I would like to invite Dr. Levon Avdoyan who is the specialist in Armenian and Georgia to the podium to introduce the program. Thank you. ^M00:02:23 [ Applause ] ^M00:02:25 >> Levon Avdoyan: Thank you, Joan and thank you for coming out on Friday, which is usually the end of the week and a trial for all of you to get through to our reading room. I want to welcome you to our division, but I also want to call your attention to Ms. Thea Austen who is from the American Folklife Center who is cosponsoring this event with us and we've done many successful programs together and it looks like this is another one. Why are we doing this program? Well, I met Jason in the best of ways. He came in to the reading room seeking our reference help when he was working on an album and we adore meeting people in this way because we learn from them. And I learned from him also that I could help him up to a certain point, but not past that point and as luck would have it, a very close friend of mine who is an Armenian specialist from Aleppo teaching at Whitman College in Walla Walla, which is not easy to say. Dr. Ellisa Mergion [assume spelling] was interested and [inaudible] meetings and I introduced them. And the reason I'm saying this is that to follow what Joan's just said, we not only help people, we establish networks for scholars and hook them up with resources both here and elsewhere. So what was he working on? Well, he was working on an album of Armenian chants from the Church of the Forty Martyrs in Aleppo. And that was quite interesting. But what I also found out interesting was that Jason works on the musical and photographic heritage of not just the Armenian's of Aleppo, but the Jewish communities of Aleppo. The Armenian communities, the Assyrian communities, the Arabic communities of Aleppo and those that know me realize that although I'm an impassioned researcher of Armenia and Georgia, I view all of these cultures together. We've coexisted together. We've live together. We've experienced things together. So this was an exciting time because he had already met that time the Armenian album but an album on Sufi music. So it was a good opportunity to demonstrate exactly what we do here. Now, as Joan said after Jason Hamacher's presentation, there will be, I hope time for questions and answers. And also at the back of the reading room as you leave, there is a survey for you to fill out if you would like to live your impressions to this program on to Jason Hamacher who is a musician, a photographer, a documentarian and the owner of Lost Origin Productions. He's also a punk rocker, a rock drummer and has been so for 25 years in the DC area. Now from 2005 to 2010 he went to document ancient religious traditions and inadvertently captured the AIPAC's of Syria's modernization before the eruption of the Civil War. His combination of photography, sound and personal experience of the Syria offers an unparalleled immersion into one of the world's oldest civilizations. Hamacher has I am told an adventure spirit, passion for people and love of culture and that's earned him the trust of the Syrian's across all socioeconomic classes which allowed him to truly captured the essence of the Syrian landscape and its people. His efforts contribute to the international conversation on Syria with frequent television, radio print and live appearances. So we're very lucky to have him today. He is recently spoken at the United Nations in Geneva. He's been a guest at Saint Mary's Church in Cambridge, the Armenian Museum and Library of the United States and at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections. And he has appeared also on NPR, BBC World Service, Al Jazeera, Voice of America-- well, you get the picture. I'm going to stop talking and I'm going to invite Jason Hamacher to come and address us on a subject which I find extremely interesting. And I am going to close the door, first. Please welcome Jason Hamacher. ^M00:06:50 [ Applause ] ^M00:06:51 >> Jason Hamacher: Thank you. Thank you. Never in my life would I think I'd be speaking inside of the Library of Congress and it is a complete honor to be in front of you and share some of these experiences. So, that was a very overwhelming welcoming to actually hear it spoken in person. I want to tell you a little bit about how this happened and that will explain what I have and kind of seek the importance of where it is in the current state of affairs. Ten year ago my band broke up. I was in Arlington and I was really frustrated with being in a band. Like, at any job or at any business you have to rely on the people that you hang out with, that you deal with everyday. Imagine being in a van that sits 10 people for eight years. It could be a little rough. So me and this guy, we grew up. We grew up together and the-- we end up pulling the plug and I wanted to do something new creatively. I wanted to do something that took the essence of punk rock and I will describe that in a little bit and combine it with something new and kind of push the limits of our creativity. So I wanted to do a symphony. Thirty drummers, theses are lofty ideas. Thirty drummers, 15 guitars, whatever and do something that crafted symphonic movements, not pop songs, but symphonic music to some ancient vocal tradition, something that puts us at the Kennedy Center instead of the 1930 club. That was the idea. And do I'm driving through Rock Creek Park. I live in Mount Pleasant and for those of you that are familiar that's--it's a riven and there's a tunnel, right before you exit and go up into the zoo. And my friend called and said, "I found these amazing chants from Serbia." And what I heard was, "I found these amazing chants from Syria," and totally misunderstood him. And it reminded me of a book of a guy named William Dalrymple, who from what I remembered I read this book a couple years prior, found the world's oldest Christian music in the deserts of Syria. So Bill [assume spelling] called said, "Dude, I found this rod chants from Serbia. You've got to check this out." And my response was, "I never got to go to Syria." I got cut-off. He said, "What do you-- no, no, no, Serbia." I was like, "I know." It sounded so amazing I never got to go up in Damascus and then my phone cut, because Sprint is not a very good cell phone coverage. And so what happened was I go to this tunnel. It's maybe about 30, 45 seconds. I've recall reading a couple of pages in this book where this guy describes allegedly one of the world's oldest Christian traditions and my memory thinks we've got to rock out to this ancient Christian music. ^M00:10:10 So I come to the other side of the tunnel and I call Bill back. I said, "Hey, man, remember the book where the guy finds the chanting in the desert?" He's like, "I said, Serbia, Caucus Mountains." I was like, "You, you do your Serbia research, I'm going to do my Syria research and I'll hit you up at the end of the week." It's like Tuesday or something. So I go and I get my book out and I'm flipping through it and I'm very impatient and I can't find the two pages that describe this ancient chanting. So, I get on the internet and I find an email address that I figured would go to either his publicist or him personally or the publisher someone to read it. So I put, you know, these are the bands that I use to be in and this is the places I've been on the planet. I love this book. I love to get a copy of the CD. And so to make sure that someone at least opened my email in my caption or my address, I put potential speaking engagement in Washington, DC. And the engagement was speaking to me on the telephone, right? That was the way I was dealing with it. And so to my shock, he opened it and emailed me within four hours. He was in the UK. He said, "This is great idea. I don't know where you can hear this music. When you go to Syria tell them at the airport, this is what the-- how you get to the neighborhood of high Syrian and the city of Aleppo." He's like, it's not a monastery in the desert, it is a church among the worlds oldest of the cities. I was like, "I am not going to Syria to start some rock symphony. I'm not doing it." But the twist and this is where everything changes was that it wasn't a monastery in the desert, it was a Syrian Orthodox Church in this small neighborhood. Three years prior, the last tour I ever did, I took a week off and flew in the deep Eastern Turkey with my camera. I'm a photographer and drove 4000 miles over the course of six days photographing the entire historical Armenia, Mesopotamia and stumbled into the Syrian Orthodox Church because I wanted to hear the language of the Syriac, Aramaic being spoken. So here we are. All of the sudden, this music I want to hear is from this community. So it was like, I got to email the archbishop I had launch with on the planes of Mesopotamia. So, again, I'm on the internet and I find another email address with no corresponding website. It's info@syrianorthodoxchurch.org. There is no website for syrianorthodoxchurch.org. This is just an email address. So, same email. This is the authorized book to, this is the book I read, these are the places I've been I'd love to get a copy of this music. And then two days later, the archbishop of the United States for Syrian Orthodox emailed me back saying, "This is a fantastic idea. Next time we're in your-- the next time you're in New York come and sit down with me and we can go over your idea." I was like, "Oh, OK let's talk." So I emailed and ask if it would be OK to talk on the phone. We had a phone conversation and he said the music that I was looking for was one of their oldest traditions and he didn't have a copy of it to send me, but he could send me something similar. And I said, "Where do I get a copy of the music that I'm looking for?" He said, "Well, we don't have one." I said, "Where do I get one? I'm willing to pay whatever it cost to get it shipped from Syria to DC." He said, "We don't have a recording to send you." Its like, "Period, you don't have a recording. 1800 years you don't have this recorded and I can't hear it." He said, "No." I said, "Do you want me to make one for you?" He's like, "What?" I said, "I'll make a recording. I can make an album." I said, "That's my music career. I can make records." And he was just like, "Do you-- if you know how, yes, OK." So then all of a sudden my rock orchestra goes out the window and all of the sudden I'm going to faced with a potential reservation initiative and so we had to go up in New Jersey and came up with this whole proposal on how do I record a music, an album on ancient chants and what does that mean and why am I doing it and, you know, everything. So that is the beginning of this entire project. I totally misunderstood someone and then just started sprinting into the wind to preserve the ancient chant of Syria. And so I was ready to go for the first time in February of 2006, which was the same month that cartoonist did a cartoon and inflamed the Middle East and my trip was promptly canceled and I was told I was potentially never going to be able to come. And then the archbishop of Aleppo, he was the one that was kind of bringing me and housing me. I was staying with him. He called me and said, "I cannot guarantee your safety. I have no idea when this will be OK. I'll let you know." And so I told my wife, I was just married. I've been married a couple months. I don't think I'm going to Syria. They have riots in the streets. And then my wife was like, "Great." ^M00:15:43 [ Laughter ] ^M00:15:44 And so in character to the region, nine days later I get a call, "Everything is totally fine, you can come next week." And I was like, "Wonderful." So, I arrive and I was confronted with an image that was one of the more life changing images I've ever seen and it was, one, I was an official guest of the church. I didn't know what that meant. And then, two, no one came to pick me up. So, I'm just at the airport. I cannot speak a leak of Arabic with my bags and a little bit of Arabic written down the address of the archbishop. So I'm just standing around, hopefully someone is going to let me in. And the reason why no one came to pick up is because Bishop Yohanna had gone on television with the Grand Mufti, the head of Islam for Syria, Mufti Hassoun and together they were denouncing the riots together in unity and it was broadcast on television. They were standing side by side and it was so striking to me that this dual attack of pluralism was something that was on national television. It doesn't happen in a lot of places. And it was very, very interesting. And so that was set the tone for my entire experience in Syria, all these extremely delicate centuries old relationships back and forth and it was really incredible. And to be honest as I said, you know, I'm a punk drummer. I know zero about the history of Syria at the beginning of all of this. And so the first couple trips is just me by osmosis absorbing the culture, listening to everything, kind of spending time, a lot of time with this much people as possible. And after that first trip in 2006, then I had to get permission from the Syrian government. Not a big deal as someone that's not a diplomat or any experience politically, whatsoever. So I put my proposal together, fax to Syrian embassy and called, "Hello. This is Jason Hamacher. Do you get a chance to review my proposal for this project in Syria?" "No, we haven't." "OK. When can I call back to confirm?" Two weeks. And I called every two weeks for months and months and months and months. And then a political scenario happened. Hezbollah and Israel started fighting each other and I, again, not understanding how sensitive that makes the region. I called and I said, hey, at this point we're all first name. "Jason, how are you?" "Pretty good. Get a chance to review that proposal?" "No, we haven't." OK. In the very amount of fact they not condescending, the woman that answer the phone goes, "Have you been paying attention to the news?" I was like, "Absolutely." "So you know that Israel and Hezbollah are kind of fighting." I said, "Oh, yes, yeah." "So, which means that we are on high alert and I have no idea when anyone is going to be able to review your proposal." I said, "I totally understand." And this is verbatim what I said, "I'll call back when the war is over." As it fell out of my mouth, I realized I was never going to return to Syria. I was completely embarrassed and the woman just goes, "OK." ^M00:19:33 [ Laughter ] ^M00:19:34 And so that was it. It was over. You know, I knew that that was just completely embarrassing. I would never be able to go. And so I just-- I don't know. I got to go one time and see all of these things and have all these really nice photos and then two weeks later I got a call from the embassy where someone had read my proposal by accident and he's father-- one of his fathers best friends attended this one church in the one neighborhood in Aleppo and had just past away and he went to his funeral and the son went. ^M00:20:07 And so he was like, "Yeah, I heard this amazing chant at this funeral and then I came back to work and found the proposal trying to record it on someone's desk." He's like, "Is this you?" I was like, "Yes." He's like, "When can you come in and meet with the ambassador?" I was like, "Whenever you want me to." And so, that's what led to the next several phases of this project, the former ambassador from Syria to United States invited me over and because I'm, you know, a lone wolf. I'm not official journalist or representing anyone other than the sake of preservation. He kind of green-lit all my ideas and then one of the components was I wanted to photograph extensively these older neighborhoods in the City of Aleppo. And I'll be showing you a lot of these photographs later. And he's like, "I'm a big art's fan. I'd love to see your photography." I was like, "I didn't bring any with me." And so I was invited back and I showed him my vision of my first trip and he kind of tasked me to make a book on the City of Aleppo and that's something I've been working on for the last eight years. And, at this point, I always like to say I was never paid by the Syrian government in any way, shape or form to do any of this but far more valuable for those of you that are know, he cut all the red tape. So, I was given inside access to all these places inside the city that most Syrians don't ever get to see. And so over the years, things developed, things developed and then I made my actual first recordings in 2008 and this is what it sounds like. So this-- now, I'm going to explain why I do this on record in a little bit. So this is called "Holy are you God". It is from the ancient tradition of Edessa and this is from that little neighborhood inside Aleppo. ^M00:22:21 [ Singing ] ^M00:25:32 So at the time of that recording which is 2008, five people on the planet were the masters of this. That's dramatically dropped. Dramatically there are five. There are now three since this recording. So that was in 2008. Those recordings will be in production with Smithsonian Folkways. This album has been in production for 10 years. Hopefully, it will come out within the next year or so. But, on that first trip in 2006, every single minute of my time was accounted for. You know, the archbishop had me doing everything with him. One day he had me sit and remember I cannot speak any Arabic. I just sat down and he wanted me to kind of photograph and see what his day looked like in the day of meetings. So, there's a big kind of grandiose hall, about half the size of this room, just as high ceilings and I just sat on the side and people came in and out all day. And the first person that came in was an elderly widow who was asking for assistance to just keep her house because she couldn't afford it anymore. One was a businessman who was coming in to plan financially. They were building a hospital in one of the suburbs which you can now see on YouTube, just being totally decimated. To the highlight of the day was the Prince of Greece. The Prince of Greece came in who was his sister is the Queen of Spain and the bishop thought it was really funny always to make me all of a sudden launch into, "Jason, this is the Prince of Greece. Tell him what you're doing." I was like, "What do I"-- I was like, "Forgive me. What do I call you?" I'm like, "Is it your highness? What do I?" He's like, "I'm Prince Michael." I was like, "Prince Michael" and then yeah, I go into these things. And so it was back and forth and during the course of this six hour extent of meetings, this elderly man walked in kind of unannounced and it looked like he was lost, to be honest. He just kind of sat down and we're sitting there and the bishop was speaking and he broke and just goes, "This is the leader of the last Jewish family in the North of Syria," and he just kept talking. I was like, "What?" And so, I was, "Yeah, nice to meet you. How are you?" And so-- well someone had told me that there is this amazing historical synagogue inside the city and afterwards I asked him about the synagogue. And, someone's remote control car is going out of control in the back. Is my son here? He's three. So essentially, the-- I asked him about the synagogue and not recognizing the weight of an official guest. He felt complied-- compelled to take me inside the synagogue. So, in 2006, I got to go in the ancient synagogue of Aleppo. The foundation has been traditionally held. It was built by King David's general and the current structure is the oldest continual used structure in the entire City of Aleppo. Meaning, it was never destroyed and rebuilt-- I take that back. It was never repurposed. Meaning, it's 1600 years old in the dead center of town and that leads to the second phase of my experiences in Syria which was I ended up doing a photo exhibit here in DC. at the JCC on '16th of the synagogue. A synagogue exhibit, which led to me working with a Jewish museum, that's not open yet in New York as their documentarian and explorer for all of the Jewish properties in all of Syria and the project was the photograph document and assess what was there, what's left, what is everything. And so, I did that in 2008, '9 and '10. 2010, unannounced the government support for that project was totally bold. So I showed up and I was not allowed in to anything that was Jewish anymore. ^M00:30:04 I was allowed to go. I could bring all my equipment but I couldn't go in. And so I had free time for the first time in my six year experience in Syria. So I started out of boredom recording all of the places that I used to walk by, just my walk. This is what my day sounds like in Syria. And so, the Forty Martyrs Armenian Church is located in a neighborhood with the best restaurants, right? And so I would go there and that's where I would have lunch. There's this place called CC House or Casa Cavalli. You know, you'll see some of these photos in a little bit. And I went in and would asked, "Hey, I'm-- I've got some time off. I'm a guest of the bishop. Would you permit me to come in and make these recordings?" So, I made them for no other reason but just to kill time walking around the ancient city. And that was October of 2010 and then I was going to return in May of 2011. And then, I'll never forget this I was at Del Chess in Dupont Circle talking with a friend Inash [assumed spelling]. He was a former diplomat from the Syrian embassy. We were talking about how insane the Arab spring was and we couldn't believe how it was happening and how it would never happen in Syria, neither was ever thought it would happen. And then, I think it was nine days later it kicked in and it happened. and I was in shock as most people. A part of my shock was not because of what was happening but was for the first time in my life, I was connected to a world event. That's not something music related. You know my music community is real small and it's influential but it's not world news in any way, shape or form. And so all of a sudden-- and I just become a father. So I have-- at this point, I'm totally sleep wrecked because I've got a daughter that's weeks old and the war has kicked in and this Smithsonian has officially accepted the project and it just keeps getting worse. And so, in my little Facebook feed, all of a sudden I'm getting commercials for Syria related things, "Oh, you've typed Syria in. You would be interested in buying this or buying that," and it started to disgust me, to be honest. That, all of the sudden, no one had cared anything. Like, I would try to tell people, "Hey, I'm going to Syria." Like, "That's cool. What else-- tell me something else?" And so all of the sudden that, there's destruction happening. Now it's considered commercially viable and I'm getting ads about this on the computer. So, I stopped working on everything, to be honest, in solidarity for what's still happening. And so, I stopped working on the book. I stopped working on the albums and all of this and then it just kept worse and getting worse and getting worse and then it came up North and then it was in Aleppo. And, now all of the sudden, at first it was kind of mentioned everyone, you know, I am like NPR feeds or BBC or something but now it's on TV. Now it's on the news. So people are starting to ask me, "Hey, didn't you go there?" I was like, "Yeah. Remember when I tried to talk to you about and you didn't care?" And so, we were-- all of a sudden, people are now asking me "Is that what the place looks like?" I'm like, "No, absolutely not." And so, I decided to take up, "OK, I need to finish this book so I can show people what this place really looks like." And so, I have a really good memory for where I went but not names of anything, people, place, anything. So the way that I do my captions, I get on Google maps and I retrace my steps. I retrace the way I walk and a friend of mine was on Facebook chat. He's like, "Hey, I need you. Give me the name of this mosque because it's my favorite place." And as we were trying to figure this out, the full blown attack in Aleppo started on the street and he was like, I-- he's like, "Dude, guns are going off in my house." He's like, "We should probably get off the computer." And he was like, "If I don't make it, you're in charge to show people, to show people." And so I'm crying because, again, I'm a punk dude. I'm not an academic. I didn't go to college, which it doesn't make-- it doesn't matter a lot but all of the sudden, I'm finding myself in this juxtaposition and I was like, "Yeah, I'll do it." He's also a professional photographer. His family have-- has been in the City of Aleppo for 750 years. They used to be the governors 500 years ago. And so, I said, "Yeah, I'll do it." I was like, "And let's stop the online chat so you could go hide." He made it through the night. Everything is fine. He's still alive. And so, everything changed at that point. I was like, "OK, it's real. Let me start doing this." And so, then it just kept-- this is 2012. This is three years ago and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse and worse. A friend of mine came up from Richmond in 2013 and said, "You're sitting on a huge archive of information and you need to do something with it." I was like, "I am. I've got this book. I've got this album in Folkways." He's like, "When are they coming out? Where can I see them? How do I learn?" I said, "I don't know." He's said, "Do something else." And so I decided to do what I've done in my whole life. I made more records, right? I started my own record label. And so, I hadn't listened to any of these recordings since I made them. They're just been sitting in my house. So, the name of my record label is "Lost Origin Sound" but the first of my release it was "Nawa". This is the Sufi album. And-- So this album, this is the first time they ever let a westerner see them or hear them. They were practicing outside of a Sufi lodge in the courtyard of a 500 year old house in the ancient city and this is one of my favorite albums. And my friend Bassil [assumed spelling] that introduced me to these guys, his great grandfather to my surprise was one of the most influential Sufi Sheiks in Aleppian history. So he made the call and they kind of vouched for me to come in and allowed me to make this album. So I'm going to show you what this sounds like. It's one of my favorite recordings. And so it was two different recording sessions. It was like a trial run. They want to see if I can handle it. And then there was the second one where they kind of let me come in. So this is called "Fasel Kesmet Al Sawi". I'm going to play in a bridge version because it's a very wrong-- this is essentially a prayer. And I'm going to tell you after this why we record. ^M00:38:01 ^M00:38:07 [ Singing ] ^M00:38:33 To tell you a little bit about these guys, the founder of this group was 15 years old, and on this recording he's 17. And the guys-- the main voice you hear, he's 20. So everyone was between 15 and 55 and the 15 year old, his teacher was in his 90s and past away and left him a pile of manuscripts from the mid 18th century. And so, they took these manuscripts and they had to do it outside of the Sufi lodge because they weren't practicing these modernly and we're doing it in this courtyard and that's what we're listening to. So-- ^M00:39:13 [ Singing ] ^M00:39:53 In rock terms, that's called the hit, right? I love that record. And as I said my daughter was four months old when that was recorded. So that was her lullaby when she couldn't sleep. I'd throw on the Sufi recordings and make her go to sleep. So, before I end with the slideshow, there's a-- it's really opt that we're in the Library of Congress. All of these traditions are heavily academically researched, all of them. And as someone that's highly inquisitive, I couldn't find that much on where the research into this stuff. And so, what I kind of found is once I started to really try to dive into it and figure out where to get this, this whole building is nothing but information and all these academic depositories and repositories all over the earth, there's a lot of information. And for someone like me that's an experiential learner, it's difficult to jump in to a lot of these books that are just information. I wanted a story. Where is the story about this or where is the story about the Syrian Church? And I could read all the details about it but it wasn't hitting me the way that lyrics do, essentially. And so, when I decided to start putting my records out, I wanted to tell the story of the communities, not just the information about the communities. And so, all of these records are extremely expensive to produce. I say that because each individual record has to be representative of not just the music but of the community that this is a recording of and it's not my decision. I have people. Everyone on the recording has to agree that this-- not just represents them but who they are and where they come from. So there's always native script. Since this is Sufi, this is Arabic. This photo was taken by my friend that that I had told him we should get off the computer with. He took this photo personally. And then for those like me, there's always a map. There has to be a map that sits the modern country of Syria with current boundaries. And that's what brought me to the Library of Congress, for the Armenian album which I'm getting ready to show you. How do you delicately draw the boundaries of historical Armenia? That's what I came to live on, to figure out how to solve, which gets me to my second album which is the "Forty Martyrs" album. It is-- I went deep on this one. Anytime you add a fold, it gets significantly more pricey, so I put in three folds. So, triple gate fold. The punk rock at me has always want to do this and never been able to. So now that I'm in charge and I'm losing money permanently, so let's just lose a lot of it, right? So, the native script here, these are actually the notes that we were taking while the recording was happening and all of the photography is my photography from inside. Metaphorically speaking that background of all of these is a photograph I took in 2002 of the ancient City of Ani, and map again. This one is the shortest album, and Armenian-- the Armenian community is-- and I learned all of this as I'm doing the research. I know none of this until it comes time to figure out, "OK, what am I doing?" Is the tradition of [foreign language]. Did I say it right? So I'm learning and pronouncing things correctly. Inside the Forty Martyrs Church, there's a wall of all these different stone carvings, which are crosses and that tradition is actually on UNESCO's defined list of intangible heritage. And I didn't have enough music for a two-sided album. So for this one, I put a silkscreen of one of the oldest carvings on the backside of the album and this is a 16th century stone carving, that's the backside of this. So what we're getting ready to do is, I'm going to show you some photographs and play you some Armenian chanting but I want to read a poem first. With all of these, this is not a solo effort. I have to rope people in. I am clearly not the expert, just the enthusiast. So I went to New York and I sat down with one of the heads of the Armenian theological seminary and he told me about this poem which was written in 1947 when they were trying to-- when they-- when Russia was trying to get Armenians to move back to Armenia and this guy's older brother, he was at-- this guy is a survivor of World War I, of the Armenian catastrophes on World War I and had relocated, built his life back up in Aleppo and was thinking about moving back to Armenia with his brothers but his brothers discouraged him from coming. So in his torments to figure out whether he should stay or go, he wrote this poem called "Farewell Aleppo." I'm going to read it for you before I play the music and the photograph I put on here almost everything in this photograph is totally destroyed. It's either ruins or just not in existence anymore. So this is "Farewell Aleppo". "You are in Arab City, my honorable birthplace. My eyes opened and I saw you, I knew there was no other city. My second fatherland, with your Syrian people. You became the good protector to the Armenian. You gave us bread and shelter. We have lived always together, as brothers Armenian to Arab. We have worked always together, as a Syria without guile. The day of our separation is near, O alter of the light of my childhood. We shall ever remember you, O alter of the hope of my childhood. Etchmiadzin's carillon rang out, calling her children to her. I am parting from you with love, City of Aleppo farewell." And, that is the poem for all of us since the city is essentially destroyed. And so, I'm going to play-- I'm going to show you guys some photographs. They're minimally captions. I do it that way because that's the way I experienced it. I kind of knew what I was looking at but really and I want people to see the beauty of the country. And a lot of people ask me, "Why don't you do a before and after slideshow?" And it is because it is very difficult to erase the memory of something destroyed. I always talk about going to see my grandfather at the funeral home. It's hard to lose the memory of the way he looks in his casket. It's really difficult and it takes time for me to think back to when I was six and we were playing in the yard. So this is the yard. This is not the casket, which brings me to-- it's a very symbolic day. Three years ago today, the archbishop that housed me was abducted by terrorist and he's gone. And so there's little information about it at the end. And so, as you can hear, I'm extremely emotional about all of this because it's so heavy. So, this is the "Forty Martyrs" album that we're going to play and then I'm going to show you some photographs. And then, if there's any time, you guys can ask me official questions or hit me up in the lobby. ^M00:48:31 [ Singing ] ^M00:52:58 ^M00:53:06 [ Singing ] ^M00:56:19 ^M00:56:27 [ Singing ] ^M00:59:19 So, clearly, the war wages on. Some insight the day that the Forty Martyrs album came out the church was bombed. The structures that were in the photographs are still there. It came in the courtyard. So the scope of all of this and this archive of information that I have, the information is the same but the context changes on a weekly basis. And so what I'm trying to do is go around, put my record player and my stories and my pictures and just expose for the sake of knowledge, what this place was and the only reason I went from the very beginning and I've been like this my whole life from my bands to my music to this, to my photography is to show the thread of how we are the same as humans as oppose to how we were different and I hope you got some of that today and I thank you for coming. ^M01:00:24 [ Applause ] ^M01:00:28 >> Levon Avdoyan: Jason I want to thank you. >> This has been a present of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.com.