Katherine Berjikian
I met Sevana Tchakerian a couple times before I got the opportunity to interview her.
I had been in Armenia for a couple days and out of boredom I went
with a couple friends to a fancy, kind of tourist café. Half way through
the meal, Sevana and a person I never really caught the name of, sat
down. After a little while, kind of out of boredom, I stood up to make
my round of kisses and leave. However, Sevana stopped me before I left,
and insisted on talking to me about my outfit.
It wasn’t till a couple weeks later that I found out that Sevana was
part of a band called Collectif Medz Bazar. A band that I really liked
in the States. Sevana was really a rock star.
It wasn’t till a week later that I found the courage to ask Sevana if
I could interview her. She agreed right away, and we decided to meet up
that afternoon in that same café. During that time, we talked about her
involvement in the Collectif Medz Bazar, and her work in early music
education and music therapy.
Before I go any further, I should quickly describe Collectif Medz
Bazar, and their casual fame in the diaspora. While I wouldn’t describe
Collectif Medz Bazar as famous, they do kind of hold a niche place in
the Armenian hipster world. In the past couple years, they have flown
around the world to perform for college age diasporan Armenians. While
Armenian young people comprise the majority of their fans, the band
itself is quite diverse. Their members come from a variety of
backgrounds, including French, Armenian, Turkish and American all of
whom either grew up in France or moved there to study
According to Sevana, when the members of the band first met, they did
not intend to create Collectif Medz Bazar. The Armenian members were
lifelong friends, from their childhood. So they, at the very least had a
familiar connection. However, the other members met later. Some of the
Armenian members met the Turkish members in their university. From
there, it seems, the creation of Collectif Medz Bazar was kind of one of
life’s coincidences, Sevana told me.
“We decided to do one concert. One little jam session opening for a
special event. We didn’t think that we were going to be a band. We just
decided on one day, in 2012, to do our versions of five six traditional
songs. So everyone one wrote a song that they liked in Armenian,
Turkish, and Arabic, different languages…And we did this event, and it
went very well. So we decided to see each other again and it started to
become bigger and more serious. And it became semi-professional. We did
not have that motivation at first.”
The band frequently focuses on themes regarding the Armenian community, but not always. For example, while the song Our Country relates about Armenians in the diaspora’s kind of blasé attitude when it comes to Armenia, and ‘Ariur Ar ‘Ariur,
a song about Armenian diaspora youth losing their culture, the members
of the group are not all Armenian. The band’s title is a reflection of
this multi-ethnic Middle Eastern band. Medz means large in Armenian, Bazar referencing to Middle Eastern shopping areas, and the Collectif, French word for collective, is a way to combine all three of these cultures.
The band itself, which focuses on exploring its members’ various
identities, is a kind of platform in which each ethnicity has their own
voice. Sevana explained this in the interview.
“I think it was just to find a platform where everyone could bring
their own favorite songs and their own culture because we are all from
different cultures. Take me for example. My mom is from Iran and my dad
is from Lebanon. So I also like Persian and Arabic songs. The Turks are
from different regions. So they have their own traditions and cultural
heritage. And we just wanted to create this platform where everyone
brings their own thing, and we tried to make something global and give a
voice to everyone. To collaborate and arrange the songs together.”
Many of the songs performed by Collectif Medz Bazar are written and
performed in different languages. And some of the songs, like Dolama
for example, a re-imagining of a traditional Turkish song, is sung
entirely in Turkish. This is part of the uniqueness of Medz Bazar -
their desire to incorporate their members’ identities.
By listening to Collectif Medz Bazar’s album you get a brief glimpse
of the Caucuses and the many different cultures that live there. This
can be seen in a story Sevana told during the interview about one of the
band’s Turkish members.
“For instance, we were having a conversation with one of the Turkish
members a few months ago and they told me that before Medz Bazar they
didn’t know anything about Armenian culture. And now, they say that I
know a lot of songs because everyone sings together.”
One of the things you notice when listening to Collectif Medz Bazar’s
songs is that all the members sing regardless of the language. When I
first listened to Medz Bazar, I thought it was because they all knew the
same languages, and that all of their members were Armenian with some
proficiency in Turkish. But in fact, this is not true. Their common
language is French, not Armenian. During the interview, Sevana explained
how this process works while writing and recording songs. “When we
bring a song that’s a traditional song we explain the lyrics then we
teach everyone how to sing it so that everyone can at least sing the
choruses together. Everyone can sing on stage.”
Collectif Medz Bazar, however, appears to be currently focused on the Armenian diasporan community. One of their songs called Our Country
(Notre French), written and performed by Sevana, was released
during the summer and targets the French-Armenian community’s attitude
to present-day Armenia. The song is about the Armenians from the
diaspora coming to Armenia to vacation for the summer and then returning
to their original countries, all while ignoring the corruption in
Armenia.
The songs include lines like ‘Our homeland is the best holiday
resort!’ and ‘Diaspora, Armenia, together we can advance. Our homeland
is worth much more than a holiday resort.’
While the song is for the Armenian community, it is sung in French.
When I asked Sevana why she chose to write a political song about
Armenia in French she responded, “I was kind of revolted living in
France and knowing that no one cares really. The Armenian diaspora in
France are like ‘ohh, the genocide blah blah blah.’ Hating Turks and
just fighting for genocide. And they don’t really know what’s going on
here. They think it’s just and old soviet country. They will go. People
just come here for holidays…So that’s what I wanted to talk about.
Because when I wrote that, I already made up my mind to come and live
here in Armenia. And I’ve been coming back and forth living here. I
wanted to give my point of view. People sometimes have this idea of an
Armenia that is very limited. And why did I write it in French? Maybe
because I wanted it to be for the French Armenian people.”
While the band has existed for many years, and was gaining
considerable fame abroad, one of the things that launched them to their
current notoriety was the 2014 Tsovits Tsov (Sea to Sea) competition. This was an international eventin which contestants from all around the world participated. The Tsovits Tsov competition
had a YouTube channel where they showed music videos of bands
performing songs in Armenian. Medz Bazar performed with their song Ariur
Ar ‘Ariur, which is about the Armenian diaspora losing its culture.
While they did not win, they did get to the finals. This meant that they
performed in Moscow with several other Armenian diasporan bands.
Today, the members of the band are spread out around the world. For
example, Sevana lives in Armenia and another member of the band lives in
Portugal. While the members of the band are spread out, this has not
stopped them from writing and performing songs. Right now the band is
working on its second album which will include their first song written
in Turkish and English. The band will perform in Los Angeles on April 2 [2016]
at USC.
While the band has gained success internationally, and is currently
attracting a broader fan base, Sevana has stayed in Armenia. True to the
criticisms in her song Our Country, Sevana came to Armenia and has tried to make her small but important contribution to the country.
While in France, Sevana was running a music school specialized in pre-school music education.
When she came to Armenia, she discovered that there is very little
focus on music education in the Armenian pre-schools. Thus, she decided
to co-create an NGO that focuses on early development music education.
“I came here two years ago and did some research. I understood that
there is nothing like that. No curriculum, and no schools, and the
teachers don’t know anything about pre-school education and music
therapy. Music therapy is very sporadic here and very vague,” Sevana
told me.
Sevana then contacted the Children of Armenia Fund and started a
pilot program to educate teachers in Armenia about early music education
and therapy. Her goal was to not only work with the children in the
villages, but to also educate teachers on how to teach this specific
curriculum so that they can continue early music education after she
left. To reach this goal, Sevana helped create the Tsap-Tsapik Music
Education foundation, an NGO that is trying to educate teachers on how
teach music education and music therapy.
When I asked her about the condition of the schools and the future of
the school system in Armenia, Sevana said that she was optimistic, but
that support in this regard would mostly come from the diasporan
community, and not from the current Armenian education system. She
stated that NGOs and initiatives like Ayb School could spearhead the
future of the Armenian education system. However, if there is a fault
with the education system in Armenia, it is not the children who are the
problem.
“I really like working here. I think the kids here, compared to
France, are much more focused, and are much more respectful and eager to
learn. So it’s more productive working with kids here.”
"Hetq," March 25, 2016 (http://hetq.am/eng/news/66727/a-conversation-with-collectif-medz-bazars-sevana-tchakerian-music-that-transcends-borders.html/)
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