Search - Djivan Gasparian :: Salute

3000 years

02/12/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"When I was in Moscow, I became close friends with a very warm-hearted Armenian expatriate musician. Once, over at his house, I picked up a duduk he had on his table and blew into it, making an awful, ducklike sound. "Vot ujas!" I exclaimed, and my friend's (non-Armenian) wife laughed and agreed. In polite response, my friend smiled, went to his stereo, and put on this album. As we listened to the opening strains of Djivan Gasparyan's weird cadences, he explained: "This music is deep in my heart," he said, pounding his chest. "This is the ancient music of the most ancient culture, and when they begin to play," - he puffed up his slight frame - "they breathe in all of those three thousand years, and -- uuuuoooooaawwwww".As a going away present, he gave me this album - no small gift from a family as poor as they were. The more I listen to it, the less I understand, and the more enchanted I am by the duduk, that such a small, simple instrument can contain - and express - all those thousands of years."