Greater Syrian Diaspora at 78RPM: Wadeeh Bagdady

posted on: Oct 21, 2020

By: Richard Breaux/Arab America Contributing Writer

What do you do when you find several dozen 78 rpm records all in Arabic and you can neither read, nor speak the language? You research the musicians and record labels and write about them.…at least that’s what Arab America contributing writer, Richard Breaux did. The result is bound to teach you something about Arab American history and heritage in the first half of the 20th Century. Arab America highlights some of the well-known and lesser-known Arab American musicians profiled in this series. This week’s article features Arab American music legend, Wadeeh Bagdady.

In 1920 New York, as the Victor Talking Machine Company and Columbia Phonograph Company moved out of the Arabic-language record market, long-time phonograph dealer turned record producer A.J. Macksoud and composer and music teacher Alexander Maloof created their respective namesake record labels that all but cornered the market on Syrian/Lebanese phonograph records for the next ten to fifteen years.

Both Abraham J. Macksoud and Alexander Maloof operated their businesses in New York’s Little Syria, which centered around Washington Street from Battery Park to Rector Street.

Singer and oudist Louis Wardiny and vocalist Salim Doumani cut a majority’s share of the known songs on both the Macksoud and Maloof labels. Both companies employed violin virtuoso Naim Karacand in their labels’ ensembles and Karacand figured prominently on a number of both companies’ hits. As for vocalists, only one other Near Eastern singer seems to have recorded on both Macksoud and Maloof– Wadeeh Bagdady.

Wadeeh Bagdady or Wadih Bagdady or William Bagdady was born in Zahlé, Greater Syria (now Lebanon) Oct. 15, 1895 or 1900, depending on whether one uses his social security application or his World War II draft card and his naturalization records. Wadeeh worked as a tinsmith before he immigrated to the US. The outward migration of people from Greater Syria resulted from numerous causes.

Consistent with much of the literature, historian Sara M.A. Gualtieri argues Ottoman Syrian emigration grew from an internal rural to urban migration, then extended beyond the region to the United States, Mexico, and Brazil beginning in 1885. Some emigrants claimed to have fled religious persecution or political unrest under the Ottoman Empire. The narrative about religious persecution continued to be one Christian immigrants to the United States told the press and their descendants, still, others hoped to improve themselves economically in the face of agricultural shortages, especially in the silk industry.

A significant number of men left Ottoman-controlled Greater Syria to escape conscription into the Turkish Army. Most had no intention of remaining in the United States for an extended period.

As was the case with other first-wave Arab immigrant musicians (1880-1944), documenting the life of Wadeeh Bagdady poses several challenges. His exact arrival date in the United States remains unclear, the only document that lists a year of immigration with any certainty is the 1930 U.S. Census which notes Bagdady arrived in the country around 1920, although family lore suggests he may come earlier.

In 1921, he co-owned United Dry Goods Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut along with Wanis Ganim. A Syrian American business man by the name of Anton Kaidy sued Bagdady and Ganim for an alleged debt of $1,492, although the details of the case are lost to history. By 1922, Bagdady lived in the heart of New York’s Little Syria at 69 Washington Street. At the time he worked for the European Lace Co. a major manufacturer of linens and laces that sold samples and offcuts to Lebanese and Syrian peddlers who hawked their wares across the city’s boroughs and into New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

Literally, Bagdady lived within doors of A.J. Macksoud’s phonograph record store which operated at 89 Washington Street. Without question, Bagdady met one of the Macksoud Brothers but did not record on the Macksoud label immediately.

In December 1924, Wadeeh Bagdady recorded five songs on six sides, not on Macksoud’s label, but with Maloof Phonograph Company including #6833 Wilnabi Youma & #6834 Inta Sultanil Milah, #6835-6836 Ya Ladan – Parts 1 & 2, # 6937 Koukh Ya Naim & 6838 In Kunta Tashani. One month later, in January 1925, he was back in the studio again, and again he recorded five songs on six sides.

By 1925 also, Wadeeh met and married New York-born, Syrian-American Isabelle Sharr, who was twelve years younger. Wadeeh was 29 and Isabelle 18 when the wedding took place 25 July 1925 in Danbury, Connecticut. The Sharr family came to the United States around 1906 from Greater Syria and first settled in Brooklyn, home to another large Arab immigrant and Arab American neighborhood. Both the Sharr and Bagdady families had relatives who lived in Brooklyn, New York and Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Convinced of Bagdady’s singing talents, A.J. Macksoud finally agreed to a deal similar to that Maloof had negotiated previously. Five songs on six sides: #403 and 404 Alrozanna, #413 Ya Kawkaban & #414 Lazeiz el Sherb; and #400 Ah Ala Baly & #401 Ya Ter Yalli. Interestingly, none of the Macksoud recordings appeared in Dick Spottswood’s original Ethnic Music on Records discography.

Almost nine months to the day of their wedding, Wadeeh and Isabelle welcomed their first child, Robert G. Bagdady to the world. They moved from Brooklyn to Danbury, Connecticut just before Robert’s birth. Danbury, too, had a small Syrian and Lebanese community. According to Amy Fallas-Kerr, most Syrian-Lebanese immigrants to Danbury came from Al-Suwaydiya, Beirut, and the Mount Lebanon region of contemporary Lebanon.

Some forty-five to fifty Syrian-Lebanese families settled on Beaver, Spring, Elm, and New Streets. Danbury’s Lebanese and Syrian American community grew big enough to establish St. Ann’s Melkite Church in 1922 and Saint George’s Orthodox Church in 1920. As Catholics, Wadeeh and Isabelle attended Saint Ann’s Melkite Church which in 1931, had recently gotten a new priest Father Philip Salmone (a former priest of Our Lady of Lourdes Melkite Church in La Crosse, Wisconsin).

In June 1931 Canadian border officials prohibited Wadeeh from visiting his aunt in Montreal when his uncle Theophile Bagdady died. Border agents, concerned with US residents fleeing depressive economic times, feared a mass influx of migrants from the United States. In fact, Canada passed immigration restrictions in 1931 that limited immigration to US or British citizens only. Additional restraints mandated that only agricultural workers could enter Canada and these people had to possess enough capital to operate a farm to be permitted into Canada.

Although Bagdady had not intended to remain in Canada, border control took no chances with his admittance. The border-crossing rejection form shows that Wadeeh was Roman Catholic, from Syria (now Lebanon), and had $40 in his pocket. The immigration law required agricultural workers to have enough money and resources to farm, it didn’t matter that Wadeeh’s stay would have been relatively short.

In Danbury, the family lived at 110 Elm Street and then relocated to 24 Highland Avenue in Bethel, Connecticut – a Danbury suburb. Margaret, a second child, made the Bagdady’s a quartet in 1931, and Wadeeh began to use the more anglicized William. By 1934, the family moved back to Danbury proper and lived in the heart of the Lebanese/Syrian community at 37 Beaver. Sometimes gigs pulled Wadeeh away from home, as was the case in August, 1935 when he sang at the Modern Phoenician Club annual picnic in Binghamton, New York.

Wadeeh worked as a full-time curator at the Yameen Fur factory and sometimes played at sahrah and hafla in and around Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island. On 4 February 1938, members of Brooklyn’s Syrian American Federation honored Bagdady with dance and reception to celebrate his achievement as a musician. Moreover, the hafla and mahrajan circuit began to pay well enough that by 1940, William Bagdady listed his profession as a singer. Beyond music, on 12 October 1941, Wadeeh finally became a naturalized United States citizen.

The outbreak of World War II meant the Bagdady’s lives had to be uprooted when Robert enlisted the U.S. Army, and Wadeeh moved to Detroit in search of more lucrative work. Detroit, now the city with the largest concentration of Arabic-speaking people in the country, was home to the automobile industry and there was rumored to be more job opportunities available than people to fill the vacancies. Indeed, Wadeeh found work at the Continental Motor Corporation.

The Bagdady family lived at 1652 Pennsylvania Ave at first but then moved to 3402 Crane in Detroit. In his free-time, Wadeeh occasionally appeared on radio and sang at charity events in the Arab American community with other Lebanese and Syrian American musicians. For example, he joined Toufic Barham, George Berbari, and other musicians for the eighteenth-anniversary celebration of the Syrian-Lebanese Ladies of Charity at the Lady of Redemption Hall in January 1944. Some 500 people attended the festivities.

The family seemed to live between Danbury and Detroit during the late 1940s and then in Detroit in the early 1950s. The couple also had another child named Betty. Wadeeh and Isabella visited family in Bridgeport, Connecticut and New York City well into the 1950s. Then in 1957, the Caravan, an Arab American newspaper published in New York, noted that “Mr. & Mrs. Wadeh [sic] Bagdady, formerly of Detroit, Mich. Have moved back to Brooklyn. They are residing at 557 8^th Street.” Although Wadeeh’s grandchildren never saw him perform or sing professionally, one of his grandsons vividly recalls meeting many of his grandfather’s neighborhood friends in Brooklyn.

In the 1950s, George N. Gorayeb’s Arabphon Records (sometimes spelled Arabphone) released 12 songs by “Wadih Bagdady.” These appear to be the last commercial performances by Bagdady. Arabphon, like Orient Records, released a plethora of Arabic-language soundtrack recordings from overseas films but also recorded artist in its studio.

Sources do not indicate whether Wadeeh continued to perform into the 1960s or the extent to which he remained in contact with singers like George Berbari or Toufic Barham. Many of the recording artists from his day had retired or limited their public performances to special events.

Wadeeh “William” Bagdady died in May 1976 and Isabelle in November 1982. They remained in Brooklyn after moving back to the East Coast in the late 1950s. Wadeeh’s son Robert, now deceased, worked as a graphic artist for the Ford Motor Company. Betty, his youngest child, still lives on the East Coast, and Margaret Bagdady Ahee, well-known Detroit soprano who now lives in Texas, inherited her father’s singing ability and sang classical music and musical theater.

Special thanks to William Albert Ansara for the Arabphon document, Ahmed Abdel, Bryan Bagdady, Steven Luke Ahee, and Laura Bagdady.

Richard M. Breaux is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse from Oakland, California. His courses and research explore the social and cultural histories of African Americans and Arab Americans in the 20th Century.

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