Uccelli [née Pazzini], Carolina Uccellini, Marco

(b) Armenian.

Armenians have contributed greatly to the enrichment of American musical culture, and a large number participate in the artistic life of the USA. According to the records of the Virginia Company of London, ‘Martin the Armenian’, a member of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, reached the USA in 1618 to serve as an aid to Governor George Yeardley. A small group of Armenians began arriving in the USA in the 1830s, principally to get an education, learn trades and engage in commerce, with the intention of returning to their country within a short time. It is estimated that by 1894 there were about 3000 Armenians in the USA. The first significant wave of immigration began immediately after the 1894 massacres of Armenians in the town of Sassoun, Turkey. Many more came after the 1915 Ottoman Turkish genocide of Armenians, World War II, political upheavals in the 1970s in the Middle East, and as a result of the economic uncertainties in the Caucasus in the late 20th century. Armenians in the USA now number more than one million. The majority reside in the metropolitan regions of New York, Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Fresno, California. Significant numbers of recent arrivals, however, have settled in small towns.

Soon after the early Armenian communities were established, a church was built in each town; the first Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church in America was built in 1891 in Worcester, Massachusetts. During the religious service a deacon would intone traditional liturgical chants, which were grouped according to a system of eight melody modes identified by such characteristics as tonal progressions, ornamentation and rhythmic patterns. On occasion a group of choristers would join the deacon and sustain a drone or sing the melody in unison. In 1896, following a trend to adopt Western ways, a polyphonic version of the liturgy was composed by Makar Ekmalian in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) and was printed by Breitkopf & Härtel. This arrangement was gradually accepted in many Armenian churches, including those in the USA. A different setting of the liturgy for a cappella male chorus by Komitas was introduced to the USA in 1948. Most Armenian churches now maintain a permanent choir.

The singing of folksongs was also an integral part of the cultural life in many communities. However, because such melodies were handed down orally they were subject to continuous change. In addition, when Armenians from urban centres immigrated to the USA, they injected musical elements and mannerisms such as unidiomatic melismas, embellishments and melodic idiosyncrasies into their folklore, further blurring its character. In the 1960s traditional melodies were reintroduced to the Armenian Americans, largely owing to improved relations with the former Armenian SSR. Occasionally singing groups made a public appearance, highlighting a hantes (social-cultural event).

By the 1920s Armenian music stores included the Sohag [Nightingale] Record Company of New York City and the Yaghubian Royal Piano Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, as well as the instrument maker Pakrad Mahjoubian of New York City and the music editor and agent Prof. James Moscofian of Astoria, New York.

Armenian music has a strong foothold in American culture. As early as the 1890s, Alexia Bassian (‘the Armenian Nightingale’) majored in music at the Mills College, Oakland, California, and later settled in London to pursue a musical career. A semi-professional group of musicians, the Armenian Instrumental Ensemble of Rhode Island, performed for 14 years until about 1910. During the early 1920s, two Armenian singers – the tenor Arman Tokatyan and bass Paolo Ananian – joined the Metropolitan Opera. Following World War II, the Armenian National Chorus of Boston and the New York Armenian National Chorus were among the prominent vocal groups to disseminate Armenian vocal music. Philanthropic and educational organizations, such as the AGBU Alex Manoogian Cultural Fund, Tekeyan Cultural Association and Hamazkayin Armenian Cultural Association, have encouraged many to pursue their interest in Armenian culture. From 1971 to 1991 the Aram Khachaturian Music Competition, restricted to musicians of Armenian parentage, was a source of encouragement for young musicians. Radio programmes of Armenian music, some produced by the Heritage of Armenian Culture, are made available weekly on National Public Radio, though not all station affiliates broadcast them. The Armenian Allied Arts Association of Los Angeles and the Friends of Armenian Culture Society of Boston promote talented students, performers and composers. The Zohrab Information Center of New York and the music library at the University of Southern California serve as extensive resource centres for Armenian music.

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern

(c) Baltic.

Immigration to the USA from the Baltic States began in the late 19th century, and by World War I had reached large proportions, particularly among Lithuanians, who remain the largest Baltic ethnic group. Amid Catholic and socialist factionalism and hard economic conditions, the early immigrants could not afford the reconstruction of Baltic culture in the USA as their primary interest. After World War II the necessary organizational base for cultural revitalization was broadened by middle-class nationalists who arrived as political exiles (from 1948 to 1950 approximately 10,000 Estonians and 45,000 Latvians).

The early Lithuanian immigrants retained from their rural background a repertory of traditional songs. A large sample of these, characterized by a narrow melodic range and variable metre, was recorded in 1949–50 by the folklorist Jonas Balys, who recognized their value in the light of encroaching harmonized styles. In Pennsylvanian mining towns of the 1880s, Lithuanian singing and fiddle and accordion music resounded in meeting halls and taverns. At this time brass bands and parish choirs were formed and soon afterwards the first secular choral groups. This activity led to the first Lithuanian American song festival in 1916, which preceded the mother country's first festival (1924).

Although they date back to the 19th century, Estonian and Latvian song festivals were transplanted to America only in 1953, as a result of postwar immigration. The later immigrants brought with them the traditions of urban cultural organizations, as well as the experience of a period of intense concert activity in displaced persons’ camps (1944–50). Cleveland’s prominent folksong and folkdance ensemble, Čiurlionis, was started in Lithuania’s capital, and Dainava, based in Chicago, was created in the camps. Because of its prominence in camp functions, the Latvian choir Dziesmu Vairogs received sponsorship to immigrate in its entirety to Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The native Baltic zithers, revived and modernized in the early part of the century, were carried to the USA with the Lithuanian ensembles and became a distinctive feature of Baltic American music-making. An orchestra of kanklės supports Čiurlionis, and there is an academy in Cleveland for its instruction. Family traditions also make for continuity. Balys Pakštas, the leader of a folk instrument orchestra in Vilnius, founded an ensemble in the large Chicago Lithuanian community that was later led by his daughter. An initiator of the still-modest movement in Estonian kannel playing, Lilian Esop, was taught by her father, using the instrument he had brought out of Estonia after World War II.

While some Estonian and Lithuanian players employ zithers (with up to 37 strings) that were adapted to the performance needs of larger urban ensembles, amateur ethnologists and craftsmen have turned instead to indigenous rural models. The Latvian kokle, with 13 strings and wooden tuning pegs, began to be built in the 1960s; smaller Estonian kannels, with five to twelve strings, have appeared since 1975. A playing method and manual were soon developed by Andrejs Jansons, and this new idiom was popularized by the Latvian Folk Ensemble of New York under his direction. Annual kokle festivals have brought together a growing number of ensembles since 1965.

After a period of stability during which the familiar choral repertory dominated musical performance, the zither revival indicated a search for new forms. The first seminar dealing with the kannel (1981) also included demonstrations of Estonian runic singing and shepherd’s calls. Groups of singers and instrumentalists, including the Latvian Kolibri (formed in Boston in 1979), recreated traditional styles from printed collections. The Boston-based group Sodauto specializes in simple unaccompanied songs learnt from an older member of the Lithuanian community. It has also revived the art of the sutartinė, two-part singing characterized by distinctive hocketting rhythms and intervals of a 2nd.

A contrast to the nationalistic basis of most of the song festivals is found in the Latvian celebration of St John’s Day, the summer solstice. Members of each community gather at a nearby rural site and, draped in garlands of oak leaves, sing the traditional līgo songs. The Dievturi, a non-Christian Latvian sect that has been in the forefront of the ethnographic revival, has assiduously reconstructed the ritual and bases its religious services on folksong texts.

Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian national song festivals take place every four to five years and are supplemented by numerous offshoots: festivals for Estonian male choruses, young Latvians and Lithuanian dance troupes, and regional Midwest and West Coast festivals. Throughout the year local community centres stage traditional music performances to commemorate anniversaries of political and cultural significance. Estonian and Lithuanian international festivals attended by Baltic émigrés from all over the western world have also been held in the USA.

The ethnic identity of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians was heightened in the late 1980s by appeals to restore the Baltic nations as autonomous states and by the protests emanating from folklore ensembles in Latvia, a movement known as the Singing Revolution. Connections to the homeland were strengthened by Baltic Americans who repatriated and by the large number who participated in song festivals, notably the dramatic 1990 song festival in Riga, which took place in the violent year preceding the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As a result of glasnost in the 1980s, newly immigrated ethnic Lithuanians who arrived in North America included folk musicians who found a sense of belonging by joining folk music groups.

The popular ‘post-folklore’ movement in the Baltic – an innovative fusion of ‘new wave’, jazz, minimalist, Celtic and other styles – has also influenced American groups both old and new. The founders of Kolibri, Martins Aldins and Peteris Aldins, apply expertise in early music to Latvian source materials and develop the content of folk music in ‘high art’ fashion. Jūrmalnieki, from Denver, formed by brothers who are half Amerindian, is a lauku kapelle (country band) consisting of violin, autoharp, accordion, drums and trideksnis (a sistrum). This group reacted against standardized Latvian dance music on recordings and drew instead on tunes from the eastern province of Latgale and on their experience in playing rock and Irish music. Begun in 1992 by Zinta Pone, formerly of Teiksma, the female group Lini (‘flax’, a symbol of womanhood) prefers a larger variety of instruments than the earlier kokle and voice ensembles – fiddle, recorder (stabule), clarinet, kokle and g’iga or bowed monochord – developing the Latvian material in non-traditional ways. Similar Estonian groups have also appeared: in Seattle a folk band accompanies the Murakaruo (‘rowdy bears’) folk-dance group on the kannel, violin, guitar, accordion, and bass. These recent offshoots of traditional Baltic folk-music performance, directly inspired by the cultural events of a newly independent homeland, signify the vital creative growth of this genre among second- and third-generation Baltic Americans.

USA, §II, 1(iii): Traditional music: European American: Eastern