Bedouine: ‘A Solitary Daughter’

“There were a lot of beautiful, lilting melodies back then,” Korkejian says of that era. She particularly loves the warmth and texture those songs had, a rarity in the age of slick digital production. “You do have to ask yourself if you’re being derivative when your music evokes a lot of ’60s and ’70s music, but I think the tone has a lot to do with it, and that’s just something I prefer; the sound of tape and the sound of the equipment from that era.”

Korkejian’s origin story is a fitting tale for a rambling folk singer. Especially one named after the nomadic tribes of the Middle East. Born in Aleppo, Syria, to Armenian parents, she grew up in an American compound (where her father worked as an electrician) in Saudi Arabia before her family upped stumps to the US by way of a green card lottery. She passed through Boston, Houston, Austin and Savannah before settling in the hip Los Angeles neighborhood Echo Park — for now, anyway.

“It’s definitely the longest I’ve been anywhere in my adult life,” she says from her LA apartment on a sunny winter’s day. “This is a great place, I think, to put down roots. But it has its challenges. The neighborhood has changed so rapidly. It’s become so expensive so quickly … sometimes I fantasize about getting out of the city and going into the desert. Though I’m not really sure how I would do, if that would feel isolating after being somewhere like LA.”

Korkejian’s music is transportive. The idea of passage — across time and place — seeps into each song: the call of someone for whom home is everywhere and nowhere. Her newest song, Louise, released on the deluxe edition of her debut album, is about her family’s decision about whether or not to stay in or flee war-torn Syria. It’s sung entirely in Armenian.

“It’s funny, I couldn’t even tell you,” she says of her motivation to sing in her parent tongue. “Maybe I was listening to a lot of bossa nova and Astrid Gilberto … thinking, ‘I could probably take advantage of knowing a second language.’

“That subject had been weighing on my mind as well,” she says of the song’s lyrical inspiration. “I have family in Syria still who were there throughout the war. Thankfully, everything has settled down since, but there was a time that I didn’t quite understand why they were staying in harm’s way. I stayed with that long enough to sympathize and empathize that you can’t just pick up everything and expect to be able to get back on your feet. Some of my family did leave, but some of them didn’t feel as comfortable doing that.”