InternationalThe wholeness and holiness of singing a children’s song
Taline connects kids to their Armenian language
Published: Saturday May 05, 2007
Night after night, Armenian children across the United States go to sleep hearing a mother’s lullaby. Chances are good that mother is Taline, and her CD Oror is on again.
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preface
Mothers have sung their children to sleep as far back as human memory can recall. It's something human, natural, almost effortless.
Mothers have sung to express their love, teach words and numbers, entertain. They have sung, sing, and will sing as play, to distract, to make infants laugh, to soothe a hurt, to connect and bond, and to nurture a growing, impressionable mind.
Songs have communicated culture to younger generations for centuries, impressed upon them the cadences of a language, the myths and metaphors of a people, the stories of heroes, legends, and the fairy tales brewed by generations past.
Mothers. Songs. Culture. A trinity that seems to go beyond countries of origin, native tongues, histories of civil wars, eastern or western dialects, genocide and earthquake, beyond wealth and poverty, and independent of failure or success in academic, social, political, or business environments.
A mother's song are words of wisdom. They are simple yet complex messages, seeds and viruses passed through musical notes in simple progression. Children's songs are highfalutin corporate speaking points fused in effective marketing campaigns. They are the elements of what is communicated in the vibration of a mother's vocal chords and the vibration's of a child's ear drum. They are lyrics of words, understood or not, sounds, emotions, truths traveling through space and time. They are almost divine. Whole.
verse 1: a young bride singing
The heroine of this story is a young bride. The year is 1993, and she has just married a computer programmer. She has graduated with a degree in early childhood education, and she is employed by a pre-school, where listening and singing along to Canadian children's singer Raffi are part of the curriculum. During the day she sings "Apples and Bananas" and "Five Little Ducks," and soon her new husband hears her singing those same songs around the house.
"And I hadn't realized she had a pretty good voice," he says. "She really sounded very good, and I have worked with a lot of singers." And he had. In earlier incarnations as a musician, Alex Bessos had garnered fame in the community with his band and their one-hit wonder "Gookan LA." A bits and bytes guy by day, Bessos was a musician, producer, and recording artist at nights and weekends, outsourcing his musical muses to fuel other musicians' careers.
After hearing his bride sing, a zero turned into a one in the mind of this computer programmer. "We thought it would be a really good idea to produce a really high-quality Armenian album for kids," he says.
Bride and groom rented a small studio for ten dollars an hour and recorded their first collection of children's songs in Armenian. A few were traditional Armenian songs that they had heard their parents sing when they were kids. Others were translations of traditional songs that the bride sang to her preschoolers. A few were translated from French. Others were from a book of children's songs published by the Armenian Church.
Thus was born . . . Taline. Dzenkele Menkele Jeev Jeev Taline. The Gats! Taline, whose voice and image mesmerize infants and children across the seas. "Let's Sing and Count" Taline. Hink Pokrig Patigner Taline. The peaceful, almost-generic, almost-angelic Armenian mother whose sound rings on speakers, whose image comes to life on television screens in tens of thousands of Armenian homes around the world.
That Taline. Her.
verse 2: taline speaks
Fourteen years have passed since her first recording. Taline's first cassette, "Five Little Ducks," contained eighteen songs and cost the couple about $500. Since its debut, it has sold more than 15 thousand copies and continues to be a favorite.
"I used to sing ‘Five Little Ducks' to my preschoolers, so we translated it and picked songs like ‘Shokehgark,' ‘Bzdig Kouyr,' and ‘Nabasdag,'?" says Taline. "We picked songs we liked the most, and then recorded those. These are all songs that even my mother and father used to sing when they were in kindergarten."
"We wanted a really good quality, very simple recording," says Alex. "We wanted something comfortable to the ear, something that was appropriate for kids. Taline did all the singing. We produced a cassette. And then when that was successful, and we made a little money from that, we invested that money into the next album called, ‘It's a Small World.'?"
Taline's second cassette contained thirteen songs, and it included original songs penned by a talented songwriter from Armenia named Mari Sarkissian. The music was composed and performed by Alex, who professes their second album in 1994 had better arrangements than the first.
"But then after that," says Alex, "the whole thing stopped." The year was 1995, and the couple, who had joined diasporan children's music gurus Ara Kekejian, Yorgantz, and Vako in making beautiful music, stopped making music when they made their first baby.
"We had our first daughter, and that's when it stopped," says Alex. "But those two albums kept selling, and every year, they sell a little bit more. We still produce them, and parents love them. They're still available, and they still sell, even today."
verse 3: happy day (ourakh ohr)
Taline and Alex's first daughter is about to turn 12; their younger daughter is 8. Time flies when you're raising kids, and the years passed quickly. When both their daughters went off to school, Taline decided she wanted to go back to work. She says she wanted to be productive outside the home, but she wanted to focus on music.
"I was very busy traveling for work at the time," says Alex. "So, we hired another producer, Dickran Sahagian, to do all the arrangements." Raising two daughters had been an educational experience for the couple. Previously, they had recorded songs with simple arrangements, lots of repetition, without much percussion and very few instruments.
