From underground beats to national pride: The story of Armenian jazz
- The Summit
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
By Audrey Sears
Stonehill senior Audrey Sears traveled to Armenia as part of the TAP Armenia Project’s International Journalism Internship with Stonehill Professor Anna Ohanyan. This is an article she wrote as part of the internship.
“I remember my friends and many other famous Armenian jazz musicians were listening to Voice of America on their little radios,” recalls Arthur Ispiryan, one of Armenia’s most prominent jazz musicians, who began his music career in the Soviet years.
Jazz as an art form and a way of life has been interwoven in the culture of Armenia for the past century. While the country’s relationship with the genre has evolved over time, the blues had taken over the underground music scene, giving way to the Jazz Age. As jazz spread internationally, Armenia was still under the iron fist of the Soviet Union. Under the Stalin regime, any western ideals were seen as immoral and unacceptable, pushing the consumption of jazz completely underground and filtering any information about the art form through a soviet lens. Many Armenians had to turn to illicit radios and tune into American broadcasts to listen to the music. Now, Yerevan is filled with famous jazz bars and musicians can be seen lining the streets, performing their own versions of the American-born music.
In the 1940s, the western style of music was slowly introduced publicly, mainly through the creation of the Armenian State Jazz Orchestra in 1938, as one of the leading jazz orchestras of the USSR, combining the bluesy roots of American jazz and Soviet themes, ultimately creating a new branch of the genre. Up until this point, jazz was mostly played theatrically or in a satirical sense, as a way to mock American ideals of democracy and capitalism. Now, it was being used to entertain the Red Army in hospitals and military bases throughout the second World War.
Following the war, a complete ban was imposed on jazz throughout the Soviet states. For musicians and authentic jazz fans, they felt they needed to hide their passion by translating the names of the songs and other associative language into the local tongue, while incorporating elements of Armenian folk music to make the genre more digestible to the public. Among many of the musicians who kept the genre alive were Konstantin Orbelyan, famous pianist/composer of the State Estrada Orchestra of Armenia, and Chico Tutunjyan, jazzman drummer of ‘Chico and Friends’.
It took until the death of Stalin and the Khrushchev Thaw in the 1960s for jazz to be destigmatized and widely taught. Still, recordings of popular jazz music weren’t readily available, making physical copies of the songs being studied difficult to obtain. Many musicians found themselves flying from Yerevan to Moscow in order to get their hands on jazz recordings.
Jazz artists such as Datevik Hovanesian, known as ‘The First Lady of Jazz of the Soviet Union,’ contributed to the integration of Armenian folk music and jazz into mainstream listening. Her mother, Ophelia Hambartsumian, known as the “Queen of Armenian Folk Song” influenced her style greatly. Her impact can be seen until the early 90s.
Arto Tunçboyacıyan, an Armenian-American multi-instrumentalist, fronted the famous Armenian Navy Band. Born in Istanbul, his relationship with music began at the age of 11, playing traditional Anatolian music. Through the ‘80s, Arto lived in New York and established himself internationally. It was upon his return to Yerevan in 1998 that the Armenian Navy Band was born. The band’s mixing of avant-garde folk and free-spirited jazz under Arto’s leadership helped establish ethno-jazz in the country, ultimately influencing the next generation of Armenian jazz players. Fast forward to the ‘90s and the turn of the century, jazz became an auditory symbol of freedom to Armenians and more and more jazz clubs were opened across the country.
The city welcomes artists, with many of its clubs having a night every week dedicated to ‘jam sessions’, or times when anyone can bring an instrument and participate in the creation of music. On Mondays at Ulikhanyan Jazz Club, their doors are open to all musicians, inviting them to exclusively play jazz. Musicians as young as thirteen can be seen playing alongside masters of the craft.
Now, the jazz scene has not only been integrated into the streets of the country through its countless jazz clubs and street musicians, but also through materialization in the educational institutions. The Yerevan State Conservatory offers a curriculum in jazz, so that young students carry on the tradition of music.
The history of Armenian jazz is also being preserved through the digitizing of archives by Armenian Public Radio. Decades of music, photographs, and biographies are being preserved by the station’s director of archives, Arthur Ispiryan.
“I’m digitizing the tapes, we have about 127,000,” explained Ispiryan. “Let’s say 60 percent is classical music. About 20 percent is folk music and the other 20 percent is jazz music. I’m planning on hopefully finishing the archives when ArmRadio reaches 100 years.”
ArmRadio will celebrate a century of broadcasting in 2026, giving Ispiryan two more years to finish the digitization process. He has been working on the archive for seven years so far, helping to preserve and make it accessible to all.
By digitizing the media, ArmRadio has made the music and photographs publicly available on their website and app. Anyone can enjoy the music that has become an influential aspect of Armenian culture.
Armenian jazz has attracted global attention, also meriting the creation of the Yerevan Jazz Festival, held every Spring in the country capital since 1998. It has become an event for large band names and local talent, as well as a tourist attraction for music lovers from all walks of life.
“Jazz for me is freedom… It’s medicine, I don’t know how to explain,” says Ispirian.
Audrey Sears, a major in Political Science and International Studies and Communication, is minoring in journalism at Stonehill College.
Applications for TAP Armenia Project internships for the spring, summer, and fall of 2026 are now open for undergraduates, graduate students, and recent graduates and are available at armeniaproject.org. Additionally, Professor Anna Ohanyan will lead a group of students to Armenia as part of POL 348: Peace and Conflict Studies, a travel course scheduled for March 5–14.