Greater Syrian Diaspora at 78RPM: The Arabian Nights Radio Program

posted on: Nov 11, 2020

Prior to the Great Depression, 78 RPM record sales boomed and a handful of Arab American musicians such as Alexander Maloof, Fedora Kurban, and others appeared on radio for special one-night programs. In October 1929, the combination of inflated stock values, over-speculation, and the resultant stock market crash sent the U.S. economy and global markets tumbling to unforeseen depths. Wealthy people lost millions, eventually, 1 in 4 US citizens could not find gainful employment. Among the industries hit hardest was the phonograph record industry.

Record companies sold over one hundred million records in 1925, but within seven years, they sold only six million and several record companies went belly-up. Companies like Paramount Records in Grafton, Wisconsin, went bankrupt and laid all its employees off. Rumor has it that disgruntled employees threw records and masters into the nearby river in a fit of rage, anger, disgust, and distrust. Others used 78 rpm shellac for fuel to keep warm during the brutal winter months. For a time, the Victor Talking Machine Company halted record production, tried its hand at cheaper, dime store-competitive labels like Blue Bird Records, and invested its resources in radio manufacturing and radio programming.

Arab American record label owner, Alexander Maloof, similarly watched as sales of records on his Maloof Phonograph label plummeted. Singer Fedora “Fadwa” Kurban recorded the last songs, seven double-side records on the label in March, and at least three double-sided songs in June 1932. The June recordings, according to music researcher and discographer Dick Spottswood, were “marked ‘chapel’ in the Gennett files, and may have been used for a special funeral parlor series.” No located documents marked and noted the demise of Macksoud Records, but Macksoud, too, went out of business as it disappeared from the New York City directory by 1933.

The decline in demand for all records did not squelch the insistent plea for Arab American music. While some Arab Americans made return visits to Beirut, Damascus, Cairo, Jerusalem, and smaller cities and towns. Record recording, manufacturing, and distribution took an equally hard hit in Europe and the Middle East as well. Mainstream record companies jumped into radio production and programming to fill audience requests. Radio existed as a much less expensive form of entertainment than phonographs, phonograph records, or live theater.

One should not confuse Orientalist programs featuring Arab kitsch as Arab American radio. Cincinnati’s WLW hosted a short-lived program “Arabian Nights” in 1924. As did Chicago’s WGN Radio from 1926 to 1928, this program, however, was not Arab American, but featured “English dances, Chinese melody, and songs of Old Spain.” In the US, a wealthy Syrian immigrant to America and a businessman named S. N. Ayoub floated the idea of a radio program targeted at the Arab American population. The program would “keep the Arab population of New York City abreast of news, music, social events, and general happenings of interest to them.”

Salim N. Ayoub was born Jan. 1, 1878 in Damascus, Syria. By the age of 20, he worked as a steamship and travel agent. Ayoub became the U.S. naturalized citizen on 30 October 1905. When Arab immigrants in Boston established Saint John of Damascus Syrian Orthodox Church, Ayoub helped organize the first Orthodox Church Society and served as the group’s president and treasurer. Ayoub first tried his hand at linen sales both wholesale and retail, then he had a business where he manufactured dresses, aprons, and bathrobes. As a pilot for the broadcast, Ayoub bought six radio spots for Arab-language programming.

The show’s pilot aired from WCNW studios, but the program still needed on-air hosts/announcers. Audience members who tuned in for the pilot series, when asked to select an announcer/ Master of Ceremony for the program, chose community organizer and activist, Joe Beilouny, and publisher Sabri Andria. Both announcers immigrated to the United States from Syria. Beilouny from Aleppo in 1909 and Andria from either Damascus or Aleppo in 1907.

Joseph Beilouny was born on Sept. 7, 1892.  In Aleppo, Beilouny studied music and languages (Arabic, English and Turkish). Fearful he’d be drafted into the Turkish Army, his mother and father (an international antique and art dealer) sent him to the United States in 1909. Two of the largest concentrations of Arab immigrants in the United States were lower Manhattan’s Little Syria around Washington Street and the Syrian community in Brooklyn, along the Atlantic Avenue corridor in the Boerum Hill and Brooklyn Heights neighborhoods. Joe first resided with his uncle and aunt at 171 Court Street and worked as a peddler. In the summer of 1912, he moved with his parents and three younger siblings at 139 Pacific.

In 1913, police arrested him for selling lace and other articles without a peddler’s license. A year later, a judge ordered Beilouny to pay a $250 fine for a third-degree assault. Initially, Beilouny was jailed and the judge set bail at $1,500.  Life took a turn for the better for Beilouny’s after 1915, when Gabriel Beilouny established Beilouny & Sons Antiques. As Joe turned his life around, he served on the Aleppo Relief Committee and booked Naim Karacand and Constantine Souss for a relief charity concert in January 1919. The family business thrived for the next 14 years, then the Beilouny’s sold their gallery and Joe entered at hotel and Broadcast business when he became one of two hosts for the Arabian Nights Radio Program.

The prospective audience selected Sabri Andria to work alongside Beilouny on the Arabian Nights Radio Program. Sabri Andria was born in Damascus or Aleppo, Syria to Andria Andria and Sada Helal on 24 December 1883. He reportedly studied to become a Syrian Orthodox priest but eventually chose a different path. Sabri arrived in Boston on 12 December 1909, lived at 369 Elm Street, and took up work as a mill operator.  He managed a store for a fellow Arab immigrant until 1918. He then sold gramophones after World War I for the Columbia Graphophone Company and worked as a publisher before the pilot program audience chose him to accompany Joe Beilouny on the radio.

The pilot proved to be an enormous success and maintained a basic format that offered political news, social affairs, and music. Called “Arabian Nights,” after the English translation of the One Thousand and One Nights collection of Arabic folktales, the program aired every Tuesday and included segments on “local and world news, engagements and marriage notices, and accounts of social events, generously interwoven with Arabic music, both folk and popular.” Around 1945, the show moved from WCNW in Brooklyn to WWRL in Queens but remained in the same time slot. They broadcasted the show from WWRL’s Studio B.

Often Arab American musicians starting their careers or Arab musicians on tour in the United States appeared on the broadcast. Listeners in most of New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island, and, of course, New York’s five boroughs. Successful appearance here could lead to bookings at maharajas, haflas, or after World War II, recording dates on Alamphon, Orient Records, or Arabphon Records which resumed production of 78s after the War (although technically Alamphon contracted with the US Department of State to provide music for the Voices of American Radio Program in North Africa).

Other performers like Leila Mazloom and Najeeba Morad had their own record labels. Most often the program used music recordings, but it employed an ensemble consisting of Naim Karacand on violin, George and Mike Hamway on tambourine and derbakke, and Emile Kassis on oud. In 1955, the regular soloist who accompanied the ensemble was Jeanette “Hanan” Hayek Harouni.

Word has it that by the 1940s, listeners tuned in from as far away as Detroit, Chicago, and Kansas City, but the show’s early popularity gave birth to regional programs with similar formats but more local hosts and entertainers. For example, in Boston Charles Shagoury founded a radio program of basically the same name, “The Arabian Nights Program of Boston” in October 1937. By 1961, Shagoury’s daughter, Nancy Shagoury, produced and directed the show. Detroit, too, in 1949 created the Middle East Melodies Radio Hour directed and produced by Joseph and Josephine Faddol.

Although born in Lebanon, Josephine’s parents did not teach her Arabic. She reportedly learned the language in order to co-host the show in Detroit with her husband on WLBJ. For a short time, another young Lebanese American radio announcer named Kemal “Cassie” Kasem worked across town at WJBK. Toledo’s 1560 WTOD hired Joseph K. Younes to direct its “Arabic Hour Music and News.”
By the 1940s, 78 RPM recordings took the place of live musicians, especially as radio studios modernized.

We don’t have any indication whether the American Federation of Musicians strikes of 1942-1944 had any great impact on Arab American record labels or Arab American musicians and consequently the Arabian Nights Radio Programs in New York or Boston. Most Arab American musicians already played on smaller novelty labels rather than the giant commercial labels.

Alamphon was definitely up and running in 1943 and promoting musicians like George Berbari,  but it was contracted with State Department. Karawand, an even smaller label, also recorded a few artists with ensembles. Documentary evidence makes it unclear whether George N. Gorayeb’s Sunset Film Corporation had started pressing Arabphon Records, but most of these were dubs from Lebanon and Egypt anyway.

When WWRL’s New York Arabian Nights Radio Program celebrated its 20^th Anniversary on 21 June 1953, over 1000 people turned out to the Knights of Columbus Hall in Brooklyn to join in the festivities. Performers that night included Naim Karacand,  Amer and Sana Kadaj, Russell Bunai, Joe Budway, Philip Solomon, Fathalla Abyad, and Eddie Kochack and his Orchestra. Over the years, too, these performers in addition to Anton Abdelahad, Karawan, Hanan, and Kahraman appeared on the program. The 25th Anniversary celebration on 11 May 1958 drew 1300 people.

As time progressed, 78 RPM records gave way to 45 RPM and 33 1/3 LP records. Most programs went off the air between 1963 and 1983 as their various hosts died or retired. Sadly, Sabri Andria died in July 1956 and his sudden illness and subsequent death shocked and saddened Brooklyn’s Arab American community and listeners of the original Arabian Nights Radio Program in New York. The program aired on 1600 WWRL through 1963. Joe G. Beilouny passed in October 1964. Josephine Elias Faddol hosted and directed Detroit’s “Middle East Melodies” until 1981 which even had a brief stint on WXON television in the early 1970s.

Long after 78s had passed from the scene, cassette tapes peaked and compact discs (CDs) brought us a step closer to the rise of MP3 files and streaming, Boston’s “Arabian Nights” faced an uncertain future when its WDLW-AM went off the air and became WRCA-AM in November 1989. Nancy Shagoury still produced the program. Most other programs had been long gone, but Nancy Shagoury Aaraja moved the show to Boston’s AABA (American Arabic Benevolent Association) in 1991.

After all these years and different hosts, including Tom Jabaily, the AABA continues to support the “Arabian Nights Radio Program.” It airs on Saturday mornings from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM on 1550 WNTN – https://aabausa.org/aaba-radio/.

Check out Arab America’s blog here!