(https://www.qeenatha.com/artists/AbboudZeitoune/11996)

Q1. Who is Abboud Zeitoune, a short introduction?

I was born in 1970 in Beth-Nahrin (Syria) and started my early education in the Assyrian T.M.S. school in Beirut. After Immigrating with my family in 1984 to Germany I studied Economics and received my Diploma degree.

I was also the editor of the German language part of the "Shemsho" (Netherlands) and "Shrogo" (Germany) magazines, and wrote several social-critical articles. In 1991 became a member of the Assyrian democratic organisation (ADO). From 1999 to 2000 I was the chairman of the Beth-Nahrin Association in Wiesbaden Germany.

The region where I live in Germany is known for it mixture of Assyrians from all parts of Beth-Nahrin and we get all verities of new Assyrian music works available for sale here in different associations. I as a keen music collector always bought new cassettes and cds that arrived.

After collecting some hundreds of albums I decided to catalogue them in a database on my personal computer. There my first album database in Microsoft Access was born. That was my first step then after seeing the database expanding larger and larger I got the idea to make this detailed work available to the public.

The first version of the mentioned database was created or programmed in 2003. Since then and after deciding to publish it as a book I worked extensively and contacted as many people as I could and gather as much information as I could on Assyrian Music and albums, I contacted Artists, Songwriter, composer and collectors as well, worldwide.

The book is Hardcover with 571 pages, is divided into several chapters of which the catalogue constitutes the main part. The catalogue documents around 1300 Assyrian music albums (most of them with a colour picture of the album cover), which were released since the 1978, it includes everything from 45 and 33.3 RPM gramophone record format, Cassettes and CDs.

About 12.000 Assyrian song titles (including Church Hymns) are presented along with some 500 singers (west- and east-Assyrians).

You find each artist under the initial letter of his/her first name. One can even see in which order the artist has released his/her albums, which years they were released and the names of the albums etc. The book is in English, German and Syriac.

There are also some biographies of known Singers, Songwriter and Composer. In one of the chapters there are 22 books about Assyrian music (with front cover) introduced for the reader.

Q5. Would this be the first book on cataloguing (modern) Assyrian Music?

Yes, as far as I know.

Q6. You have a web-site dedicated to selling the book, would you be distributing it in any other methods?

At the moment the main way for distributing the book is by having a book-tour with lectures on Modern Assyrian music. This has been the main method of introducing and selling the book. Beside that I created a website (www.musicpearls.net) to make this book available for all readers abroad. I would be glad to distribute it in Assyrian shops worldwide any one interested can contact me.

This is a difficult question. The collection of Assyrian Music was as you know very disorganized due to the global dispersal of Assyrian peoples, resulting in a lack of documentation of released musical works. Therefore there is no 100% guarantee about the definitive number of official records worldwide. In my (up-to the 2008) database I have now 1357 Albums. In my opinion we collected in my book maybe 90-95% of all records.

Q8. Do we know officially what is the earliest recorded album or song?

For now the records of Murassa Urshan Daniels are counted as the earliest. She released 12 songs (incl. 2 in azeri/Turkish) in the year 1929 in USA.

Q9. Who if any has helped you with tracking and collecting all this information on Assyrian Music albums?

There were many helpers who assisted me. I contacted over 80 people worldwide. If I could mention few people like Hanibal Romanus and Aslan Akbas from Sweden, Yilmaz Beth-Saroke from Holland. Those also had large collections.

Also some users of Qeenatha.com who supported this project (John Khano, "Naramsin", "Resha d-nashutha"). Of course there was a need to contact many singers too, so I had contacts with singers like Linda George, Lazar Malko, Evin Aghassi, Ninib A. Lahdo and many others.

In my personal archive I have over 450 original tapes, cds and some vinyls. Beside that I collected (borrowed) many tapes from friends and digitalize them. I have now 14326 music pieces (around 1350 Albums) in my database.

This is a lack in conserving our culture. There is a great need, not only for music we miss such institutions. But we need for example also for Books, Movies/Drama such libraries. The collections that I found during my research were all private. Of course there is an important need for such Library!

Q12. While working on this book did you find any Rare unknown Assyrian songs or albums?

Still after having collected well over 1000 albums I was surprised to find new singers all the time that were not known to me. And I am sure the readers of my book will not know all of them too.
Now, I wouldn’t be able to say which of my discovered albums are rare! But important (original) records that I found were by Jamil Bashir, recorded albums for singers like (Oshana Youel, Biba).

At the beginning I thought to add only official studio albums. This meant I wouldn’t list Live albums. But after starting the book-file I added or mentioned all albums (including live albums).
The only criteria for the listing in the book was the language, I didn’t add Arabic, Turkish or English albums by Assyrian artists. Only pure Assyrian Music is listed.
In conclusion, I would like to thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to give some information about my book. I hope all readers will enjoy it. I as a user or member of Qeenatha.com thank you as a team for your great job in preserving our music. Keep on with this good job!