Remembering the ‘Arabic Woodstock’

posted on: Aug 15, 2015

By MARGARET FORD
Family Editor

Deeb
CAREY — While large crowds still return to the Basilica and National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Carey every August to celebrate a novena to Our Lady of Consolation, leading up to the Feast of the Assumption of Mary on Aug. 15, a Michigan man is mourning the loss of one particular group of visitors, and working on bringing them back.
Ed Deeb, 78, of Bloomfield Hills, remembers visiting Carey every August with his family as a child. The Deeb family was one of hundreds of families of Arabic ethnicity who came to the Carey shrine, coming to pray and ask to “be healed from various sins, illnesses and handicaps,” he said.
For Roman Catholics, Aug. 15 is the day that celebrates the Virgin Mary’s assumption into heaven. Since about the 1940s, the Carey shrine, called “seidee” in Arabic, Deeb said, has attracted Americans of Arabic heritage, both Christians and Muslims, including Syrian, Lebanese and Jordanian.
Thousands of people from many ethnic heritages still return to the Carey church each year, but it is the large group of musicians who used to set up in the park that Deeb said are missing.
Following church services, Deeb recalled that the park would be jammed with visitors and entertainers.
“The entertainment (went) on all night and sometimes into the next morning,” he said. Stands were set up selling all kinds of ethnic foods, Deeb recalled.
Many of the musicians were from the Toledo area, Deeb said, including Sammy Jacobs, who was the brother of entertainer Danny Thomas.
Deeb learned to play the clarinet as a youngster and his father, who emigrated from Homs, Syria in 1918 when he heard Henry Ford was paying workers $5 a day in Detroit, taught him to play all the old Arabic songs.
Deeb would eventually go to Michigan State University on a full music scholarship as the school was getting its marching band off the ground, but he remembers “jamming” in the Carey park with other Arabic musicians for many summers.
Deeb described the scene in the park, from the early 1940s through the 1970s, as an “Arabic Woodstock.”
Deeb said when he has returned to the Carey park the last several years he has noticed fewer and fewer of the musicians in the park.
Not long ago he heard from Derwood Anter, 84, who now resides in Arizona. Anter was one of the prominent musicians who regularly came to Carey. Deeb hadn’t heard from Anter for many, many years, but said Anter tracked him down to talk about the old days in the Shrine Park.
Anter, too, had noticed the numbers of Arabic musicians dropping off. The two men began reminiscing and decided to try and resurrect the tradition.
After the annual celebration wraps up this weekend in Carey, Deeb said he and Anter will be conducting a full-scale campaign to bring the Arabic musicians back to Carey in 2016.
Anter, who jotted down his memories of the park to Deeb, said he was baptized in Carey at the age of 10, when he started to play the mijweez, which he described as a short bamboo or double flute, and the clarinet. Deeb and Anter were among a group of regulars who “jammed” while Arabic dancers danced around the park. Many of the musicians were quite famous in the Arabic community.
Families put up tents in the park and stayed there all week, cooking and eating outside.
Anter recalled that a woman named Fareedy operated a concession stand every year.
“On the last day after a few drinks, even she would dance,” he wrote.
Anter returned to Carey last year, hoping to “relive those wonderful days of entertainment.” He said there were about 20 people gathered around a stage, where Anter was one of three musicians playing Arabic music. Anter played mijweez and clarinet and there was also an accordion player and drummer. It was a far cry from the old days when the musicians played day and night.
Deeb said he and his wife visited the shrine earlier this summer after a vacation in Ohio. He said he also came to the shrine about five years ago during the Feast of the Assumption, with his wife and grown children, and his clarinet.
“It was a good crowd, but not like it used to be,” Deeb said.
He recalled the days when families came from all over the country to hear the music.
“It really had an impact on Arabic culture,” he said.
Deeb went on to a career with a food industry newspaper, eventually being inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame. He is co-founder and chairman of the Michigan Youth Appreciation Foundation, a nonprofit organization established to improve the quality of life for young people in Michigan. He is also the chairman of the Metro Detroit Youth Day and also founded the Michigan Food and Beverage Association.

Source: thecourier.com