The backbone of Armenia is her women. The Armenian woman must be one of the most industrious creatures on Earth. As I go from meeting to meeting, I am very happy when I find a member of the meeting group to be female. The reason for this is that with a woman present, things will get done.

Now, before all the Armenian men swear me off, I am not saying there are no capable men in Armenia. There are many capable men but what I have found is that the true key to the future is the Armenian woman. Armenian Women are very capable and they work from sun up to well after sun down. They help their family, friends and even strangers when ever asked. They are tireless and educated.

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Quick post to inform you guys that the lyrics for Armenia’s Eurovision entry have been released, and I’m quite dissappointed that no one has even checked the grammar before this song goes onto a world stage:
CHORUS:
What I say, what I hide
Without your love?
What I have in my mind
Without your love?

Leaving out the word “will” makes the sentences senseless. Nevertheless, lets hope the music makes up for this. Find out more HERE.

The Armenian Navy band won second place in their category in the BBC’s world music awards today. The winners have just been announced. Although they are also nominated for the audience choice award, not released until April.

Hi everyone. After numerous computer issues and no internet connection i’ve managed to get online from here in Sweden and I’m going to try and give you guys an update of whats been happening in the world of Armenian showbiz lately…

So it looks like we’re definitely in the Eurovision song contest this year..and Andre ( who was voted best male singer of 2005 ) will be representing us with a song called “Without Your Love” sung in English, and written by Armen Martirosian - a well known composer and conductor of Jazz orchestra if I’m not mistaken.

This is a huge step for Armenia, as not only has it’s tv network fulfilled broadcasting rules implied by the EBU , it has also, along with Georgia, redefined the broadcasting area of “Europe” which used to exclude Armenia and Georgia, classing them as Asia. Now they are European, or so it seems! The EBU says it has no further plans for expansion, so , we did good!

The song is premiered on H1 on the 15th of March. The world is talking about it too here.

H1 also has an official website. HERE

In other news: I complained a few months ago about a lack of the commercial talent shows in Armenia..Well it seems Shant TV company has surprised everyone again and bought rights to the to the british show “Pop Idol” and renamed it “Hay Superstar”. The producer is Erik Antaranyan, who used to host Armenia’s first ever music show “Rubikon” with Iza in 1999, obviously he’s got a bit more cash now….He claims it wont be corrupt and all will be fair..but doenst everyone.

I’m hoping it’ll also be shown on the public tv h1 via satellite, as last time Shant bought “Millionaire” H1 also used to show it. I’ll update when I’ve had confirmation from the TV.

This past month has also seen a trend in artists throwing “launch parties” for their new CD’s. Arsen Safaryan, and Hasmik Karapetian(a greatest hits cd) both had them this week, sponsored by a newly formed “Armenian Music Centre” which is specialising in producing high quality CD’s which are really nice to own. This may not sound like a big deal, but until now, CD’s produced in Armenia were very amateur in terms of packaging and design etc. According to a friend who was at Hasmik’s party, lots of “stars” had turned up, she was giving out free posters, but the fans were mainly 15-16 year old girls.

Thats all for now! I really hope to be up and running again when I return to London. For those of you who are waiting for the report from the music awards: rest assured its ready, and has been for a while, I will probably link to it rather than post on here.

An update on last week’s blog about T.J., a transgendered Armenian attending graduate school in the U.S.

An organization, Eats4Education has set up a scholarship fund for T.J. to get through the rest of the school year financially. (Ironically, this organization happened to start at my high school hang out diner, oddly enough!)

If you’re interested in making a donation to T.J.’s education, please click here. They’ve raised enough to cover T.J.’s fall semester, but he still has to finish up the winter term.

It isn’t just us talking about Andre.

Check out the Eurovision blog!

A new documentary has been broadcasted in the US covering four university students all of whom are are transgendered. (Please skim the Wikipedia article if you don’t have any background on this subject.) It is called TransGeneration. It is on the Sundance and Logo channels (available on most digital cable and sat.)

It is a really great show. There are 8 parts, each of which features all of the four students: two of whom are transitioning female to male and two are transitioning male to female. These young adults are very interesting. Their stories are extremely compelling.

One of the students is T.J., who is Armenian from Cyprus (although he was born in Beiruit.) T.J. went to Melkonian in the 1990s as Tamar and won a Fullbright Scholarship to come to the US.

[T.J.] has embraced college as a place for intellectual, political and personal self-discovery. After graduating at the top of his high school class in Cyprus, T.J. received a Fulbright scholarship to study in the U.S. At Michigan State University in East Lansing, T.J. is part of the campus’ tight-knit transgender community, and openly expresses the male identity he sensed as a very young child. Bright and politically engaged, he has chosen to continue towards a graduate degree in Student Affairs Administration at Michigan State University. But T.J.’s gender expression is irrevocably at odds with his family and community in Cyprus, where he is expected to return after completing graduate work. His mother refuses to talk to him about the subject, and it is no secret that he is expected to sublimate his personal desires to the will of his community. As T.J. plans to a visit home in May, he realizes that he will have to confront his mother and sister about his desire to transition. And T.J. knows that if he is to become the man he deeply feels himself to be, he may never be able to go home.

When T.J. calls his mom in one of the episodes, you can hear the pain in his voice telling his mom that he only wants to visit for a week in the summer. In Armenian it is more painful than the English subtitles, certainly.

If T.J. goes to Cyprus, he will be forced to live as a woman again, something that he is not comfortable with.

Armenian GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered) people have a world of issues to deal with related to their families. T.J.’s story is not unique. Watching this show highlights a number of these issues. I can’t express in words what it is like to see this pain.

(I hate to make it sounds like this show is so upsetting - there are lots of positive moments as well.)

Armenian GLBT links

More information about T.J., including an interview.
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I love hip-hop. I love Armenian-stuff.

But I never thought that those two worlds would collide. Until now.

Sam, one of our readers, has a new blog: Who Knew Armenians Could Rap?

She does reviews of Armenian hip-hop artists and some great commentary.

The reason why I am making this blog is because when I was listening to couple of songs by Armenian rappers it was evident that it is very tough to get information about any of them online. So now, doing my research I’ll be able to get up to date information on the rappers that most of you love to hate because “Shat en sevakani nman iranc pahum.”

I would also like to add that Sam is a female Armenian rapper! Go Sam!

So here it is, according to Armenian Public TV company, Andre will be representing Armenia at Eurovision.

I’m not happy about this for a number of reasons :
1. There was meant to be an internet contest, where the winner would be voted by Armenia itself.
2. Andre’s english is poor, and I don’t think we stand much chance.

Nevertheless, we must support!

Family Guy is a cartoon for adults. I don’t watch it regularly, but it seems to be quite funny and popular both in the US and the UK.

Today I read on a blog that Armenia banned it. Wikipedia confirmed it.

Due to the controversies within the show many nations have banned Family Guy, including Armenia, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Iran, Thailand, Belarus, South Africa, Egypt, Philippines, Serbia and Montenegro, Vietnam, Taiwan, People’s Republic of China (PRC), Albania, and South Korea. From blog.

This is because of certain insults or jokes against the countries listed that Family Guy has made. But the show nowadays is leaked in the Philippines on cable and some viewers there loved the show even though they aren’t aware of the show’s “insults” to the country, which appears to be frequented in the series. Though the cable program there doesn’t broadcast from the Philippines, but broadcasts from Hong Kong which the area itself didn’t ban the series. A similar leakage on cable networks have been shown in Egypt, Vietnam, and Thailand. From Wikipedia.

Anyone have any more info on this? I did a google search but couldn’t find anything.

The Fullbright Drama Scholar blog has a great post about children’s presentations/poetry/singing for guests in Armenia. Very sweet photos included. Click here.

Armenianow.com posted a little later than usual yesterday, so in case you haven’t looked at it yet, it has a number of stories on NGOs that are doing really good work. Even better — they aren’t all in Yerevan!

One especially interesting case is of an NK NGO that has trouble getting funding as NK isn’t recognized as a state. (Or maybe this was especially interesting to me because I am writing a paper on the statehood question for my international law class right now!)

Please check out ArmeniaNow for some really great stories of NGOs doing positive things.

On a related topic, I shared with a crowd at Onnik’s presentation in London, an excellent survey of NGOs in Armenia done by a wonderful scholar at the LSE, Dr. Armine Ishkanian. Here’s a publically free work of hers that may interest you if you’re curious about NGOs in Armenia. If you have access to a university’s library online database you can surely fine her longer works.

Earlier this week it was announced that the Armenian Meri Voskanian was picked for the Eurovision Song Contest. This young woman was a contestant on Germany’s Pop Idol program, as I understand it.

But as they put it in the original article, “German tabloid Bild… The newspaper, not always noted for its accuracy, reported…”

Today, a follow up came up that the story was untrue. Another story followed from another source.

The Public Television Company of Armenia has been forced to rush through an announcement about how it will select its song after the German tabloid Bild reported that the job of singing for the country had already gone to talent show reject Meri Voskanian.

So, hopefully there will be a fair contest to decide who will represent Armenia at this, its first year, at Eurovision.

Just came across this and thought I’d share…

Liz lives in Los Angeles. She goes to grad school, goes to work, goes to concerts, and goes to Amoeba Records. In between she writes stories for magazines like Razorcake and Punk Planet. To LA clubgoers she’s DJ Liz O., beatmatcher extraordinaire; to NYC internet-readers she’s the brains behind the People’s Dance Party. She eats poseurs for breakfast, washing them down with icy-cold vodka tonics.

You are Armenian and proud. What are some things I should know about Armenian history and tradition?
Armenia is both a very old and very new nation. Technically, it has only been a country for fifteen years or so, but the history of the people extends back to Biblical ages, or something like that. I’m no authority and I’ve never been to Armenia, but I can tell you that the food is some of the best you’ll ever taste. Food varies by region and I suggest the Turkish Armenian cuisine, which my family makes. It’s really similar to Greek food. I don’t suggest drinking Tahn, which is a yogurt drink, because it is nasty. You should also note that yogurt is a traditional Armenian food, as is the fruit roll. I really wish my grandma still made fruit roll, but the apricot rolls at Armenian stores in LA are mighty tasty. Also, Mounds and Almond Joy were invented by an Armenian. Alvin and the Chipmunks was created by an Armenian and even Captain Kangaroo was, you guessed it, an Armenian. We’re really awesome people, even if there are some who will make cracks at the expense of yours truly for not speaking the language properly. Whatever, aberjon.

Just wanted to share, Christianity Today has an explaination of System of a Down:

The guys in System of a Down might have good reason not to trust governments. All four are from Armenian-American families. The nation of Armenia has seen its share of corruption and attempted genocide. That helps us to understand, in part, why they’re so furiously anti-war, including the one America is currently fighting. So while I don’t know if they’re anti-American, they do angrily speak against those who send others off to fight. In fact, the band seems to be against any authority or institution that would tell them what to do, including governments and churches. That may account for the imagery in the “BYOB” video.

They also get angry about some stuff I wish Christians got more steamed about, including “Violent Pornography” and brain-sapping TV watching. On top of that, their lyrics encourage both forgiveness and helping those who are suffering. But System of a Down is a mixed bag when it comes to their messages. There’s good and bad. I’d encourage you to steer clear, especially if listening to angry music makes it tough for you to avoid anger. They also drop plenty of f-bombs and curses when ranting about things they detest.

This is just so weird, I wanted to share it.

[source]

Seriously, how long have I been talking about Linux in Armenia?

Since the mid-1990s?

No one ever listened to me.

Spitux aside, there isn’t much going on with Linux in Armenia, to be sure.

And look what smart Azerbaijan did:

President of Azerbaijan recently signed an order titled “ICT Implementation Programme in Azerbaijan High Schools (2005-2007)”. According to the document $20M in total is provisioned for this project. Project involves installation of new computers in 4521 high schools countrywide. Thus, by the end of the project one computer will be available for each 33 school students.

The Azerbaijan Internet Forum presented these reason for using Linux:

*Software cost saving - Lin.az is Free:
- Roughly 300$ saving on each workstation
- Saved funds can be spent for education of teachers, staff problems and inter-school infrastructure
* More Secure and Reliable:
- Almost virus free and better protected against viruses
- No need for regular critical updates
* More Flexible:
- Easily can be adopted for special needs of Ministry of Education.
- Local vendors will be given the chance to support their schools.
- In the future integrated infrastructure can be easily implemented among schools in order to manage and share resources.
* Azeri User Interface:
- Today, Lin.az/Linux is the only OS with the fully translated Azeri UI.
- 95% of applications (OpenOffice, Mozilla Firefox, etc.) also translated into Azeri
- Minorities can translate and use OS in their native languages in the future.
* Other Advantages:
- Distributive includes wide range of educational programs for mathematics, chemistry, geography, programming and foreign languages education.
- Existing Windows compatible application could be used from emulators if required.
- User interface can be switched into other languages in few seconds, which is very important for multilingual schools.
* International Practice:
- Nowadays, more and more schools all over the world are moving to OSS.
- All workstations in IOI’2006 (International Olympics of Informatics) will run Linux.
- 100$ (a.k.a. green) laptop is running Linux.

EXACTLY!!!!! ARGH!!!

Don’t blame me when Azeri kids have significantly better technology skills than their counterparts in Armenia. It isn’t just ArmenTel. It isn’t just the oil money. It is the fact that the MoE LISTENED to the experts and made a SMART decision.

I am SO frustrated now.

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Via Global Voices Online, Into the Wind, a Jordanian blog, posts about the World Youth Peace Conference to be held in Jordan this fall.

From September 11 to 15, 2006, youth leaders from all the nations of the world will assemble at the Dead Sea in Jordan for the World Youth Peace Summit. The Historic gathering - under the patronage of His Majesty King Abdullah II – will recognize the importance of this date, and in partnership with Chat the Planet will include a live link between ‘ground zero’ in New York City and the Summit in Jordan. Chat the Planet is a new vision of how television, the Internet, and a network of global partnerships can create compelling television programming, and a vibrant global community of youth conversation and a culture of civic engagement.

At the Summit young leaders will assess global challenges, working amongst themselves and with international mentors to develop new and innovative solutions that ensure a just and peaceful global future. Delegates will be young leaders representing all regions of the world and a wide range of professional sectors, in an effort to produce a broad-based network of youth working for positive change.

More from the WYPS Official Website

Any Armenians interested?

We’ve discussed Republic of Armenia apathy quite a bit, but Glendale Chick is talking about something else: Diaspora Apathy.

She has some interesting posts. I commented on her post as well with my thoughts, but for some reason my comments aren’t showing up.

She says that: “My point is that young Armenians call themselves Armenian — but they’re not. They don’t care.” My impression is that she says this because she doesn’t see many young Armenian Californians having an interesting in the more political aspects of being Armenian.

Whereas I think that it isn’t a requirement to be at all interested in or involved in “political” things - while I don’t particularly like the negative behaviors that she describes people partaking in, I also don’t think that it is possible to label someone as being Armenian or not or rating someone as a good or bad Armenian.

I have a close friend who was not very “Armenian” for most of his life, but in his 30s he got really involved and has made a HUGE impact on Armenianess since the 1990s.

Anyway, interesting post - be sure to click over there if you’re interested.

Interested? Check it out here.

Just a quick reminder that the National Music Awards are being broadcast live on H 1 tonight at : 18:00 GMT ( 22:00 Yerevan )
It promises to be a glitzy ceremony. Last year there was a red carpet and celebrities arrived in Limos. Interesting. Watch and find out who scoops the awards this year!

UPDATE: I couldn’t resist adding that Christine Pepelyan/Hrach Qeshishyans Mayrik won best video: featuring kids from a Yerevan orphanage. The kids came up on stage and it was really upsetting to see how scared they were, nevertheless they took the prize and by the end they were starting to smile. Two of the kids have also been taken back by their mother following the release of the video.

I’ll report on the rest of the awards next week.

This week sees a sensation in Armenian show business. The first publicly declared celebrity wedding.Traditionally Armenian stars have tended to keep their personal lives very seperate, however it seems Michael Kotanjyan ( son of actor Rafel ) and Lilit Karapetyan, ( well known for her scantily clad style to say the least) have decided to tie the knot. The reason I mention this is because the whole event is going to be broadcast on armenia tv over Christmas - whatever next.

This week also sees the ceremony of the Armenian “National Music Awards 2005″ run by h1.Although the jury ( controversially ) gets the ultimate decision, its nice to see that some less “favoured” acts of the Public TV have been nominated. Rap Duo haytxegh are up for best act, and Suzi Melikyan who’s video you may have downloaded a couple of weeks ago, is up for the future of Armenian pop. I urge you to vote in the hope that we can make the votes more balanced! Such contests have often been scrutinised as being corrupt and people pulling strings for awards, but this year at least the nominations are a little more balanced.

In other news, for those of you living in London, Harout Pamboukjian is having a concert here on new years eve at the London Royal Lancaster hotel in Hyde Park. Tickets start at £85, ( $160), its a shame that this costs so much. Had Harout picked a larger a venue, he would surely have packed it full had the tickets been of a normal price. This is just too expensive. I personally have always wanted to see Harout, but I guess it’ll have to wait. Its also interesting that the average ticket price for an artist direct from Armenia is usually much less at £15.

My computer has some problems: so here are all the links for you guys to cut and paste:

Lilit Karapetyans website: www.lilitkarapetyan.com
National Music Awards online voting : http://www.armtv.com/award/eng/

Tonight I went to the film mentioned below. It was a film on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict directed by Georgian journalists. The film itself was very nice. Normal people affected by the conflict all over Armenia, Azerbaijan and NK were interviewed. It was very real and allowed anyone to feel bad about the situations in which people now live.

The only interesting quote that I can remember was an Armenian gentleman saying that the NK army is “the most modern in the world.” This got a lot of laughs from the Azerbaijani crowd, but I have to admit that I laughed as well.

But then it was Q&A time.

The crowd was mixed, but there was a large group of Azerbaijani students sitting in the middle - nearly all young men, from what I could tell. The Armenians were generally adults, with a few students and mixed (i.e., not sitting together.)

The first few questions were about the film and general questions about the situation in NK. But then it started getting ugly. Most of the Armenians were pretty subtle about their negative comments, but the Azerbaijani students were really bold in their statements. I don’t want to get into all that they were saying, but it wasn’t nice. The Armenians weren’t exactly saying kind things either, but were significantly more polite in their delivery. The Azerbaijanis wouldn’t listen to what the filmmakers or the moderators had to say often. I coughed to get their attention to shut up more than a few times.

Two young female students from Armenia spoke then… and both discussed their personal and professional efforts at making peace. Both got a lot of praise, and even some tears, from the crowd.

These articulate young women made the young Azerbaijani men look like a$#h0!3z. The women were articulate, polite, and geared toward peace. The young men were not.

At the end the moderator, a Brit, actually lectured the young men (and women) from both countries, who are fortunate to have the opportunity to be in the UK to study, to really examine themselves and their attitudes and what impact that they could have in the future. I felt the same way.

But, it was really interesting being in this room with all of this going on!

I hope that others can see the film. It is showing in Moscow this weekend. I hope to get a copy of it at some point.

IMG_0525

Originally uploaded by katypearce.

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Originally uploaded by katypearce.