Forty Martyrs: Armenian Chants From Aleppo

Last year Jason Hamacher, a punk drummer from Washington DC, released NAWA: Ancient Sufi Invocations & Forgotten Songs from Aleppo, a field recording of some of the world's oldest liturgical music made in strife-torn Syria. It was billed as the first release in a series titled Sacred Voices of Syria. Now comes the second volume. Recorded in the Forty Martyrs Armenian Orthodox Church in Aleppo in 2010, just before travel to Syria became impossible, the unaccompanied solo singing of the church's head priest Yeznig Zegchanian resonates with a profound spirituality on eight chants that reflect the liturgical calendar. The earliest of them, ‘Great and Wondrous Mystery’, dates from the fifth century and is sung in western Armenian, once spoken in eastern Turkey but now facing extinction. Aleppo has remained one of the few strongholds of the dialect – until now.

As a result of Syria's civil war, the city's Armenian community has scattered and Hamacher has been unable to find out what has happened to Zegchanian. To add further significance to this release, it coincides with the centenary of the start of the Armenian Genocide, the bloody Ottoman campaign that killed an estimated one million Armenians and drove many of those who escaped – including Zegchanian's forebears – into exile in Aleppo.