Armenian Fantasies at personal cage

First time I’ve heard of Djivan Gasparian was the time when Peter Gabriel “revealed” Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Joussou N’Dor, and whole new Real World behind the egocentric curtains. The Last Temptation of Christ amazed me, as a movie, as a message, but the soundtrack literary hit me, and I still refer to it as The Bible.

I was already a huge fan of Peter Gabriel, dating back from his Genesis years, and due to this soundtrack, over the time, I’ve collected numerous Real World issues, and continued to discover the rest of the world outside. But I’ve never came across Djivan Gasparian.

Than I ran into pirate CD store in Mostar (BA) where I found his CD named “Armenian Fantasies”. I’ve piled it into car CD changer and, since there were 9 other CD’s, it took some time till I listened to it.

It happened during one night ride to Zagreb, at the very entrance of Vrbas canyon (between Jajce and Banja Luka). It was autumn, late evening, and my spirits were rather low, when Djivan started with his Douduk.

playing douduk I can not describe the feeling I’ve experienced, as I was transported to another dimension. The combination of the canyon everlasting sorrow and Armenian absolute sadness went directly into my head and I felt it all: the eternal love cry, Turkish genocide, Stalin’s madness, New World Order, and all love songs of the world piled up together in one concentrated – pure melancholy, The Grief.

That was it, music so sad that it made me happy.

listen to: Romance

I’ve added here one song from the Armenian Fantasies CD, named “Armenian Romance”, the same one Gabriel used for the opening of Passion. It is rather large file (33 MB) but I am sure you’d rate it worthwhile. Although I am not affiliated with and I do not know the quality of compression (and credit card protection), You can download album very cheap at mp3sugar.com, for only 0,65 US$, Real World music site seems to be absolute crap and useless. Also you could find nice Djivan’s tunes on Gladiator Soundtrack.