"Tes printemps
fleuriront encore
Tes beaux jours
renaîtront encore
Apres l'hiver
Apres l'enfer
Poussera l'arbre de vie
Pour toi Armenie..."

Charlez Aznavour - Pour Toi Armenie

80's were an extremely turbulent time for the whole Socialist world. Especially difficult it was for our nation. 80's marked the "Clean air to Armenia!" movement which quickly turned into Karabakh movement. Following the footsteps of Baltic republics, Armenia soon became the place of a turmoil and unrest. Public meeting and demonstrations on town squares reunited Armenians like never before. But at the same time this marked Armenia as a rebel state. Gorbachev's government opposing to the Karabakh movement tried sending in military troops, imposing martial law. No citizen was allowed to be on the streets after 10pm. Nobody was allowed to gather outside in large groups. Then the Sumgait disaster took place. The neighboring Azerbaijan republic did not hesitate to show their true nature by literally slaughtering thousands of Armenians living in Azerbaijan. Armenians who lived all their lives in Baku or Sumgait were either murdered or forced to exile. Cities were flooded by refugee camps.

Photo: Vladimir Ilyich watches as Armenians bury their families after the earthquake
Then as the last drop, December 7 of 1988 arrived. Earthquake. Two big cities, Leninakan and Spitak were flattened to the ground in a matter of minutes. Hundreds of thousands people dead... Children orphaned, families buried underneath the devastated buildings. Howl of grief over the country. Soon thereafter the war with Azerbaijan started followed with a long horrible blockade from the neighboring states. The war from which Armenia would eventually emerge victorious had a huge impact on the physical and mental state of the nation.

Those turbulent times couldn't have left the mentality and culture of Armenia unaffected. Musicians and bands took a new role: they became the voice of the people. As Armenians from all over the world, shocked with the grief of their motherland were doing everything they could, the nation overall was coming into grips with harsh reality. Charles Aznavour, the prominent French-Armenian musician gathered all stars of French pop scene and recorded the unforgettable "Pour toi Armenie" which became the hymn of many years to come. French pop stars, some of them of Armenian descend such as Rosy Armen, Shushana, Serge Avedikian, others world-famous like Vanessa Paradis, Patricia Kaas, Mirelle Mathieu, Nana Mouskouri, Marina Vlady, Michel Sardou, etc., participated in the release of this remarkable song. Aznavour was always adored both inside Armenia and in the Europe.

Le monde s'est levé Le monde est avec toi Pour toi peuple oublié Il a ouvert son coeur Il a tendu ses bras Et même si tu maudis ton sort Dans tes yeux je veux voir Arménie Une lueur d'espoir Une flamme, une envie De prendre ton destin Entre tes mains A bras le corps Arménie Hayastann Charles Aznavour "Por toi Armenie" ("For You Armenia")

listen to midi Photo: Stars of French pop singing for Armenia

In Yerevan patriotic anthems, songs of historical nature were very common at those times. The nation, shocked and confused was turning into music in order to relieve their stress at least for a while. Concerts on the streets, extemporaneous performances grew in popularity. Especially popular were "Candlelight concerts" ("Hamerg momi luysi tak") where you could hear "bard" singers like Meschian, Ararat, Edward Zorikian, Artsruni and Forsh. Each of them had their own unique talent and style. Vahan Artsruni and Gurgen Melikian were primarily singing patriotic tunes mixed with old Armenian folklore. They adapted poems of Mushegh Ishkhan (his poems were also used by "Apostles") and recorded a number of demo-tapes. Ararat's repertoire consisted of primarily joke rock'n'roll tunes. Zorikian, on the other hand, used much sadder and melancholic songs mainly written by him. Especially popular was his "Where's the snow of the old days" ("Ur e dzyune hin oreri?") based on Francoise Villon's "Where's the snow we watched last fall?". The music of Forsh appealed to a much wider audience. We will talk more about Forsh and other solo songwriters later on. Now about the rock bands.

As mentioned, the first behemots of Armenian rock'n'roll appeared in late 80's. Armed with hard-to-get guitars, percussion sets and old recording equipment, they made live concerts a few times a year exciting fans of rock'n'roll. Although Yerevan is a city of some 1,000,000+ people, seemed like everyone in this city knew each other. Needless to say, with only a handfull of rock fans, Armenians bands and musicians used to hang out together, constantly collaborating on different projects, changing band members, switching and permutating among each other. It was a very common experience for any musician to play in more than one band. Enthusiasm and love for music was the keyword for all of them as the profit from any concert was extremely low (if any). Usually all of the musicians had a separate workplace, making music some kind of a hobby. One of the first bands to grow popularity outside Armenia was "Asparez". In early 90's Melodia record company released their album called "Anathema". The album featuring heavy guitar riffs and aggressive music became somewhat popular both in Armenia and Russia. Unfortunately, the band dispersed soon thereafter. One of the founding members of the band, Armen Toroyan continued the legacy of his band with a recording studio named... "Asparez". The studio rose in early 90's and soon thereafter became the model of producing quality records. The bass player of "Asparez" reverted to working with rabiz singer Tata Simonyan. Thanks to Mikayel for this valuable info. Another brave band was "Breeze" with their signature hit single "The witch night" ("Koldunya noch"). Again, they were able to burst into the Russian market and disappear as quickly.

Other bands like "Vostan Hayots", "Ayas", "Ro De U" and "Aspet" preferred to concentrate on the Armenian market and gained a huge popularity. It was actually "Ro De U" together with "Nato" that issued the first vinyl record in the United States! "Vostan Hayots" was one of the unique survival bands that despite everything was going strong for many years. Even though they did not work on a regular basis, but rather (like most Armenian bands) performed in a periodic fashion, their name remains to be one the loudest. Considered today as one of the original bands in Armenian rock music, "Vostan" changed their lineup many dozen times with the core members of Areg Nazaryan and David Musheghyan. Not only that did not affect their popularity, on the contrary... With each new member they added something new and fresh. It is worthy mentioning their first official studio release entitled "Awake, child!" (1989) followed by a more successful "Chimeras" with hit songs "Red and black", "Love prayer" and the title song "Chimeras".

"Vostan Hayots": Chimeras (CD), 2000  Listen to the music of "Vostan Hayots": Gatsek-tesek Chimeras Red & black Love prayer

"Aspet" and "Ayas" were among the heavier bands that introduced trash metal elements to the Armenian rock music. They appealed primarily to those who were capable of digesting glittering rock of 80's without closing their ears. A band called "Blastwave" played trash metal akin to "Metallica" and "Slayer". Heavy metal was a pretty new word in the country, and Armenian bands were quick to adopt it. "Aspet" participated in a well-known concert in the Communist Youth Union Central Committee in the fall of 1991. They did not persevere for too long, and currently their guitarist plays in a Big Jazz band, others either immigrated overseas or quit from the musican arena. "Eden" was another hard-rock band with a very unorthodox lineup of hard-core musicians and a mellow vocalist.

Surely being a rock band did not imply that all of them had to play heavy music. Punk-rock as such was widely introduced in form of a band called "NATO" in early 90's. They liked to shock the audience with their loud sound, definite lack of a structural melody and explicit lyrics. After the only album entitled "Here is not there for you" ("Tut vam ne tam"), the band screamed "Hail Mary" and disappeared. The same studio that released "NATO"'s album also helped to fix the creative work of "Accident" - a hard-rock group with elements of satyrical satanism and "Motel Blues" who played... you guessed it: blues.

Such was the stage of Armenian rock music in late 80's early 90's. Then something unthinkable (but quite well expected) takes place. The great communist empire cracks wide open and collapses like a status of Collos. With its final broadcast speech on New Year's eve of 1992, Mikhail Gorbachev declares the end to the 70+ years. The end was imminent years ahead. Death of Communist Party, dethroned statues of Lenin and socialist ideologists all over the country showed that the change is near. The musical scene was greatly influenced by the political adjustments. The west was no longer evil. British rock was no longer a menace to our society. Tapes and LP's became completely legal, and finally the first alernative studio companies sprung onboard, hence creating competition to the monopoly of Melodia Records. Finally hungry Armenian rock fans were in a position to buy the music they always craved for. Out came Deep Purple's studio albums, Black Sabbath's and Ozzy's records, even new kids on the block like Bon Jovi and Def Leppard deserved the faith of being released to the former Soviet public.

But most importantly, the imminent fall of Soviet Union brought in legendary bands and performers from abroad. Who would remember these days the infamous sister of Paul McCartney who came with a concert tour to the USSR and was sold out? Anybody ever heard of Ruth McCartney before? Or a reggae ska band called "Imagination"? Anyone know who the heck they are? or that black-haired former sex idol from Modern Talking.. What was his name... Thomas Anders? Anyone cared in early 90's about him? That's how hungry we were for foreign pop stars. And then something unbelievable happened. Someone idolized arrived to Armenia with four concert shows.