Kef Music – the Jazz of Armenian People

The last attribute that distinguishes jazz from other forms of music is improvisation. And oh, has kef music got improvisation! This is another aspect that distinguishes it from most other forms of Armenian music (again, duduk music also frequently uses improvisation, as does Eastern Armenian clarinet playing). Those who are the true devoted fans of kef music will wait and listen for an oud solo or a clarinet “ride,” and everyone remembers how the crowd would gather around the stage to watch the late Roger Krikorian take a dumbeg solo. Completely freestanding solos are considered an art form by the oud players, known by the Arabic term “taksim,” and the greatest master of taksim playing, Udi Hrant Kenkulian (1901-1978) is considered the greatest Armenian oud player who ever lived. Otherwise solos are played in the middle of the song, as a part of it, after the singer has completed the lyrics, just as in the classic, pre-WWII forms of jazz. The plucking of the oud strings in a soulful and rhythmic solo immediately incites the feet and arms to dance in the tak bar, and the high soaring improvisation of the clarinet fills the shourch bar dancers with euphoria as they move along their line. This type of soloing is generally something we don’t hear any more in American music. Guitar solos in rock are usually not improvised, but are the same every time, unless the band is named the Grateful Dead, and solos don’t even exist in electronic music. (Interestingly, the improvisatory desire of musicians today is now reflected in freestyle rapping, but contrary to freestyle lyrics being a new idea, in historic Armenia singers freestyled lyrics to common folk melodies. This is something that has been captured on a few very early recordings in the US, and is still practiced by a few traditionalists in Armenia.) But unlike in the American rock or electronic music scene, we still have this amazing skill of improvisation being practiced in the Armenian community, yet very few people seem to take any notice of it or consider it an art form, even when it comes to the often-praised music of the duduk.

Jazz improvisation, on the other hand, was and is considered the central feature of jazz as a great American art form, and the idea was glorified in the jazz biopics of the otherwise conformist 1950s, like “Young Man With a Horn” starring Kirk Douglas and Doris Day, where Kirk Douglas’ character, based on jazz trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke, describes his kind of music as “playing from the heart” and asks a bandleader “do you really want us to play it the same way every time?” This playing from the heart was what excited people in the era when jazz was the most popular music in the country, and just as in the Big Band era, the jitterbug dancers were egged on by Benny Goodman’s improvised clarinet solos, Armenian dancers to this day are egged on by the heartfelt improvised solos of Hachig Kazarian and other clarinetists. When it comes to oudists, Johnny Berberian puts so much soul into his oud playing that you feel like you are on top of a mountain in Armenia, and Richard Hagopian’s insistent rhythmic and intricate-yet-driving playing makes it impossible not to dance. Their solos are just as much a work of improvisatory art as any jazz musician’s.

Most jazz fans today prefer the post-WWII sound, which was originally called “modern jazz,” but they wouldn’t deny the artistry of Louis Armstrong and his contemporaries whose heyday was before the war. There are some artists in Armenia who attempt to mix the post-war jazz with Armenian classical music, and refer to their creations as “Armenian Jazz.” We even have Ara Dinkjian and Arto Tuncboyaciyan, who having sprung out of kef music, have created their own wonderful forms of Armenian Jazz with a more Western Armenian slant. But these styles are actually “modern” Armenian jazz, and just as modern jazz, are not really intended as dance party music. What isn’t recognized is that kef music itself is a living Armenian equivalent to the classic jazz of Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman, which in our community (see my previous article on ACYOA Sports Weekend) still has the ability to both move people on the dance floor and at the same time to be a highly cultivated, expressive, and soulful, art form. So, let’s celebrate our master musicians, such as those named above, and especially, especially, encourage our young up-and-coming musicians, keep them playing, hire them for dances, get them involved and recognized for their artistry, and finally recognize kef music for what it is, the Great Armenian-American Art Form.