Music of the Russian Middle East

Collection of field recordings of traditional music from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan.

The album was released on Folkways Records at the dawn of its existence in 1951, when the label was mainly focused on recording and publishing American folklore. And although music releases from other parts of the world also happened, the label itself, judging by the available information, did not organize expeditions and recordings—especially in such hard-to-reach places as the Soviet Union during Stalin's time.

Contrary to the title "music Russian Near East," neither Armenia, Azerbaijan, nor Uzbekistan were part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1951. It would have been better to name the record "music Soviet Near East" to avoid misleading the listener.

Moreover, the appendix to the album contains a very detailed analysis of the music, apparently done by American composer Henry Cowell, who closely collaborated with Folkways Records, but it does not provide any information about the sound recording and the years of the expedition, so it cannot be definitively stated that the recording took place in the Soviet Union.

All this suggests that the record may have been released by the label as a pre-revolutionary recording from the Russian Empire. If this is the case, then we have before us a rather unique monument of traditional music from the Near East at the beginning of the 20th century.

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