Remembering Boghos Shahmelikian

Vahe H. Apelian

LtoR: Vahe H. Apelian, Boghos Shahmelikian, Jack Chelebian M.D.

August 7, 2019.  Vahig Vartabedian, Boghos Shahmelikian's bosom friend, broke the news of his passing away. Boghos is another friend I also lost putting a closure to another chapter of the ever  unfolding book of my life as well.

My visit to to the Abril Bookstore in Glendale, paved the way for my friendship with Boghos. Whenever I visited Los Angeles I also visited the famed Abril bookstore. I resigned from work in 2011 and moved to LA to attend to my mother who could no longer attend to her chores but refused to leave her house. Right after settling in my mother’s condominium  I visited the bookstore. While browsing for a few books in Western Armenian, Arno, the owner of the bookstore presented me Boghos Shamelikian’s book. It was titled “Memories and Bygone Days – Heshadagner Yev Antsats Orer”.

I had not heard of the book before, even though this was its second edition. The cover of the book attracted me. It depicted many of the popular Armenian singers growing up in Lebanon. I purchased a copy and read its 220 pages literary in one breath.

Boghos Shahmelilian’s narration is also no less a primary source of information of that period that changed the popular Armenian music and ushered it away from its Ottoman influences. Boghos Shahmelikian is a musican and had collaborates with many of the singers and played in many of the bands, especially in the famed Five Fingers band. In fact, his knowledgeable narration of the era depicted the Diaspora Armenian Popular Music Spring.

It is fair, I thought, that the book is available in English as well. I contacted him and invited him to discuss the matter. He happened to live in the same city, Reseda, my mother lived.  The moment I welcomed him he looked at me and said that he was sure that we have met before. It turned out that in fact, we had. Both of us are contemporaries and had done our mandatory military training in Lebanon at the same time and had a picture with the rest of the Armenian students doing the three weeks long training that summer. Looking back, it does not surprise me that he remembered me. He had a phenomenal memory as attested by the Index of his book I prepared when I translated it to English. The index is 5 pages long, comprising of two columns on each page. Each column lists some 40 names of musicians and musical bands he had made reference to from memory in his book . 

I offered Boghos to translate his book primarily for the benefit of the children and grandchildren of these musicians. Unlike their fathers, they are mostly born and raised on the western shores and hence have not had the opportunity to learn reading and writing in Armenian. He agreed to my offer letting me know that it will be my responsibility to have the book published.  Upon translation, I dedicated the book with the following notation: “This translation is dedicated to the children and grandchildren of the men and women who dared to push the boundaries of the Diaspora Armenian popular music.”

The English translation presented a unique challenge because the intended readers, mostly born in the West, could not relate to the places and events described in the book. Hence I expanded the scope of the book by presenting the events and the places. The other challenge was Boghos’s insistence that the pictures be harmonized with the description on each page.

Fortunately, my cousin, Jack Chelebian M.D. extended his assistance to me by editing the book. He painstakingly compared my translation to the original text sentence by sentence. It was Jack who proposed that we change the title of the book and call it “The Dawn of Armenian Pop Music”. By then I had published my three volumes sequel titled “The Way We Were-The Way We Are” through the Armenian Cultural endeavor, Hratch Kalsahakian from the United Arab Emirates has pioneered self-publishing making the publication of a book much affordable and freeing the author of amassing copies for distribution. Having collaborated before, Hrach made the publication of the book monetarily feasible for me enabling me  to also gift Boghos fifty copies of the book for his gifting to friends and institutions. As to the pictures in the book, it was Boghos who undertook the challenge of harmonizing the pictorial presentation with the text with the help of Vahig Vartabedian. The book was published in 2018 and is available for purchase on Amazon.com.   

"Dawn of Armenian Pop Music"
By Boghos Shahmelikian.
Translated by Vahe H. Apelian