Note: This is a summary of a presentation given at the Ottoman Diasporas of New England symposium at Brandeis University on December 8, 2023
“(the nightclub)...is really a spin off of the old coffee houses where musicians gathered and men sat and smoked their water pipes. It is a different ambiance, a different setting, but it really is an old musical tradition. ” — Ibrahim "Bobby" Farrah
Introduction
The first Middle-Eastern nightclub in Boston opened in 1952. The 1950s through the 80s would become the "Nightclub Era" of Boston belly dance and music. At its peak in the late 60s and early 70s, there were over 100 nightclubs and restaurants operating in the greater Boston area alone. Patrons could find live music and belly dance shows seven nights a week.
The earliest nightclubs - Club Zara, Club Khiam, and the El Morocco - formed a cluster at the edge of Boston’s South End neighborhood. These were the trailblazers. They provided audiences with a taste of the “Orient”; in addition to live music and belly dance shows, they were introduced to Middle-Eastern food (something they probably weren’t familiar with). Dancers would teach patrons how to perform Armenian, Greek, and Arabic line dances. It wasn’t just a night out - it was a night away. And the majority of the people they attracted were non-Middle Eastern Americans.
These nightclubs didn't just pop out of the ground fully formed, despite obtaining their business licenses all within five years of one another. I believe that there is a relationship between the growth of so-called Middle-Eastern nightclubs and the gathering spaces of the diasporic communities whose music and dance traditions were celebrated by the clubs. These communities included Armenian, Greek, Syrian (and later, Lebanese), and Turkish people, who settled in Boston and in surrounding communities such as Lowell (Greek), Watertown (Armenian) and Norwood (Lebanese).
This relationship has been described both in literature and anecdotally, but at what I think is a somewhat superficial level. It warrants an in-depth look that examines the importance of these gathering spaces in their respective communities and what they provide, and how this extends eventually to the nightclubs.
Containers of culture
In thinking about how and where these diasporic communities nurtured their music and dance traditions in a new home and a new country, I developed a model to show what these spaces provided individually and how they overlapped.
Figure 1: Container model
I think of these gathering spaces, private or public, as containers. Each container has characteristics that define it. These characteristics can be both specifically cultural (participatory or line dancing) and general (gambling).
I’ve identified the containers, which can be applied across all of the diasporic communities under discussion, below:
Home
The family home is where you first experience the traditions of your family, community, and culture of origin. Leon Janikian, professor emeritus at Northeastern University and a musician, has described what happened in his home after church and Sunday dinner (Janikian). After the table was cleared, people would pull up chairs in the living room and take out instruments and spend the rest of the day singing and playing music. There might even be some dancing.
The photo in the “home” circle of the diagram depicts exactly this. Shared with me by John Berberian, an acclaimed oudist (Berberian), it shows his father playing the oud and a very young John playing the violin.
Church
The three diasporic communities that contributed to the “Nightclub Era” - Armenians, Greeks, and Syrian/Lebanese - were all primarily Christian. The churches that served these communities were and are public spaces that play a large part in keeping traditions alive. Annual church dances and picnics featured live music, line dancing, and traditional foods, and are almost always fundraisers for the church.
Church festivals most likely have been happening for as long as there have been churches. For example, the Armenian Apostolic Church at Hye Pointe in Haverhill has been hosting picnics since the 1800s. (Edelstein, eagletribune.com)
Armenian churches (primarily Armenian Apostolic Church) hold both summer picnics and often kefs throughout the rest of the year. A kef is an Armenian dance party and was developed here in the United States by musicians Richard Hagopian and Buddy Sarkissian (Kazarian 224) The primary difference between the two is that you will see liturgical celebrations at the picnics, such as the Blessing of the Grapes, whereas kefs are purley dance parties.
Greek churches (Eastern Orthodox or Greek Orthodox) hold summer picnics with music, food, and dancing. They often feature performances by semi-professional or professional folk dance troupes that perform a variety of folkloric dances in authentic costume.
Syrian and Lebanese churches (Maronite Catholic Church) host mahrajans (Arabic for festival), which can be multi-day events. In addition to food and participatory dancing, mahrajans often feature belly dance performances. The dancers are tipped just as they would be in a nightclub performance, only the tips are donated to the church.
In true New England tradition, Our Lady of the Cedars Church in Manchester, NH asserts that mahrajan is Arabic for “a wicked good time”.
Restaurants
The first reference to a Greek restaurant in Massachusetts was in the Lowell Sun of 9/12/1890, which mentioned a restaurant on Market Street. (Auffrey, The Passionate Foodie) Interestingly, the Athenian Corner Restaurant, a long-running mainstay of the “Nightclub Era” is also located on Market St.
Of the 1,816 restaurants and cafes listed in the 1916 annual report of the Boston Licensing Board, Greek owners came in third place with 211 restaurants and cafes (Auffrey, The Passionate Foodie). Many of these were located in what was then considered Boston’s Greek town, around Kneeland and Commercial Streets.
Early restaurants run by Ottoman immigrants tended to cater to their communities and not necessarily to Americans. The social aspect of the restaurant was important. "...the mecca of the Greek is his restaurant, and he will not eat at a place where he cannot smoke and play games."(Auffrey, The Passionate Foodie)
Early restaurants might feature live entertainment, such as a bouzouki player, as well as games and even gambling. Gambling was legal in Greece in the early 20th century, and unfortunately, immigrants who chose to continue offering it in their businesses often came up against the law, either because they assumed it was legal here or possibly didn’t care.
Aid societies
As implied by the names, these organizations provided support and assistance to their communities, and were located in the hearts of the communities they served. Two such examples are:
The Lebanese Syrian Ladies Aid Society, founded in 1917. Their stated mission is “to preserve and protect their heritage and to see that no one of their fellow Lebanese or Syrian brethren is ever without their basic needs”(About us, Lebanese Syrian Ladies Aid Society). Its first location, at 44 West Newton Street in Boston’s South End, was a meeting house and central gathering place for the Arabic community.
The Hellenic Women’s Club, Inc., founded in 1936. Their mission is to promote fellowship and philanthropy, and is believed to be the oldest Greek American organization of its kind in the United States. (History, Hellenic Women’s Club).
Nightclubs
The early nightclubs were places to enjoy live music, belly dance shows, and participatory dancing. Anecdotal evidence provided by musicians and dancers sugget that the early nightclubs were often run by businesses associated with organized crime; however, people of the cultures were put in charge of day-to-day operations, including the hiring of musicians and dancers. For example, Club Zara was run by a Lebanese couple, Joe Teebagy and his wife, Laurice Rizk, who was also most likely one of the earliest professional belly dancers.
Social clubs/coffee houses
The coffee house is a great Ottoman tradition. Coffeehouses first appeared in the Ottoman empire in 1555 in Aleppo and Damascus (Alajaji 145) and were important male-oriented social spaces. Patrons could linger for hours, playing games, sipping coffee, playing or listening to music, and perhaps gambling.
The cafe aman tradition emerged in Greece and Ottoman port cities in the 19th century. Because of their location and the patrons and travellers that frequented them, cafe amans featured a variety of Ottoman popular music, as well as Armenian, Sephardic, Turkish, and Greek music. This style or offering was often referred to as "a la Turka”. Cafe amans were distinguished from cafe chantants, which were coffee houses that featured Western popular music ( Morris.
Ottoman diasporic communities brought their coffeehouse culture with them to their new home (Christowe, . And while each community had its own version of a coffeehouse, this was also something they all had in common. Armenian surjurans, Greek cafe amans and kafenions, and Syrian coffeehouses started appearing in urban areas in the United States as early as 1910, once settlements reached a critical size (Frangos, The Greek American). They had fairly low start-up costs and a ready customer base. And, the majority of immigrants were single men, coffee houses were male-oriented places.
Social clubs and coffee houses provided social support networks, where new citizens learned how to navigate life in America. For later generations, they were a way to connect to an unfamiliar homeland. One could hear news of family and friends back home, or possibly locate friends and family who have recently arrived (Chianis 169).
Socializing at these places was much like anywhere else; patrons could meet to have coffee, play games, and gamble. Music was one of the most popular types of entertainment - most had musicians who would play, especially the cafe amans. But if there were no musicians, patrons could listen to records.
Coffee houses sometimes functioned as speakeasies during Prohibition (Avcı 123). In her presentation, Harrington discussed the Syrian coffehouses, located on Hudson St. in Boston, which participated in bootlegging and provided alcohol on the sly to patrons.
Bridge to the nightclubs
An interesting question, and one that can definitely benefit from additional research, is whether there was any form of belly dance performances in café amans. Cristowe (Outlook and Independent) describes what he calls belly dancing in a midwest coffee house. He refers to it as kyotchek dance, and kyotchek troupes were immensely popular among Ottoman immigrants. I have yet to find references of such dance performances in Boston gathering spaces.
I believe that social clubs and coffeehouses - especially the cafe amans - are probably where musicians from the various diasporas learned musical repertoires outside their own culture. If your family is from the Marash region of Armenia, but you don't know many people from Marash here in Boston, you start to learn music not only from other regions of Armenia, but from other countries. Nightclub bands, for the most part, were a mixture of Armenian, Greek, and Arab musicians, and I believe that the reason it was fairly easy to hire these diverse bands is because the musicians all had experience with a diverse musical repertoire.
The same is true with line dancing. Practically every village in Greece has its own folk dance, but over time, Greek restaurants and clubs tend to play music for the same set of dances that were known to most people: hasipiko, zeibekiko, kalamatiano, and tsamiko. Again, if there aren't many people from your village to socialize with in your new home, then you learn the dances from the people with whom you do.
Containers in time and space
Early in my project, I consulted the Boston City Archives for information on nightclub business license and owner information. I also looked for information about businesses located near or at nightclub locations. In the Assessors’ Street
Fig. 2. Photo of a page from the 1941 Boston Assessors’ Street Record
Record for 1941 (see figure 2), I discovered that there was a Club Crescent located at 475 Tremont St., the original location of Club Zara. In a conversation with musician Mal Barsamian (M. Barsamian, personal communication, Nov. 11, 2019), he indicated that it had most likely been a cafe aman.
I wondered if there was a relationship between other nightclubs and the locations of early social clubs, restaurants, and cafe amans. I started maintaining a Google map of Boston (see figure 3) with two layers: one to pinpoint the locations of pre-Nightclub Era gathering spaces, symbolized by blue stars; and one to pinpoint the locations of early nightclubs, symbolized by the purple martini glasses. The figure below shows the overlap of the two layers.
I have not yet discovered another case of a nightclub sharing the same location of a former coffee house or restaurant, but thus far, there are several instances where a club has opened very near such a business.
Fig. 3: Locations of former coffee houses, restaurants, and early nightclubs
Conclusion
There is a somewhat jarring disconnect, in terms of management and oversight, between the nightclubs and the social clubs/coffee houses. As described earlier, anecdotal evidence provided by musicians and dancers who performed in the early nightclubs suggests that they were owned by businesses with links to organized crime, but managed by people of the culture, who were probably entrusted to provide the “Oriental” experience for American audiences. For example, Club Khiam was owned by Caber Associates and managed by Harry Zagouras, a Greek-American.
Similar anecdotal evidence, both apocryphal and direct, suggests that activities associated with organized crime, such as gambling and drug trafficking, went on in most nightclubs. Gambling also occurred in coffee houses and restaurants, but as described earlier, immigrants may have had the experience of it being legal in their countries of origin. The connection to organized crime running Boston nightclubs bears further investigation.
A related line of inquiry is the link between the “boom” increase in the number of Middle-Eastern clubs and restaurants in the late 60s and 70s, and the power shift in Boston organized crime from the Mafia to Irish families. While Italian organized crime had a large interest in restaurants and the businesses that supported them (laundry, tipping and carting), Irish organized crime families tended to specialize in gun running and drugs, instead of restaurants. Without this “oversight”, businessmen, especially people of the cultures, were free to open and run their own nightclubs and restaurants.
Works Cited
Alajaji, Sylvia Angelique. 2015. Music and the Armenian Diaspora: Searching for Home in Exile. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianopolis.
Auffrey, Richard. “Early History of Greek Restaurants in Boston.” The Passionate Foodie, 10 Nov. 2020, https://passionatefoodie.blogspot.com/.
Avcı, Mustafa. 2021. “Amerika Osmanlı Diasporasında Müzik ve Kahvehaneler (1890 -1930’lu Yıllar).” Conservatorium / Konservatoryum 0 (0): 1–28. https://doi.org/10.26650/CONS2021-998288.
Berberian, John. Interview. Conducted by Amy Smith. 24 November 2019.
Bucuvalas, Tina. Greek Music in America. First ed., Jackson, MI, Univ. Press of Mississippi, Nov. 2018.
Chianis, Sotirios. “Survival of Greek Folk Music in New York.” Bucuvalas, pp. 169-170.
Morris, Roderick Conway. “Greek Cafe Music.” Bucuvalas, pp. 72-73.
Christowe, Stoyan. “Kyotchek.” Outlook and Independent, 14 May 1930.
Edelstein, B. “Tradition continues at Armenian Church picnic.”, Lawrence Eagle Tribune, 26 August 26 2019, online.
Frangos, Steve. “Café Amans: The Global Circuit.” The Greek American, April 27, 1991, p. 11
Harrington, Lydia. “Boston’s Little Syria: Doing Public/Digital History.” Ottoman Diasporas in New England Workshop, 8 December 2023, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. Presentation.
Hellenic Women’s Club, The Hellenic Women’s Club, https://www.hellenicwomensclub.org/history
Kazarian, Hachig. Western Armenian Music: From Asia Minor to the United States. First ed., Fresno, CA, The Press at California State University, 2023.
Janikian, Leon. Interview. Conducted by Amy Smith. 24 January 2018.
Lebanese Syrian Ladies Aid Society, Ladies Aid Society, https://ladiesaidsociety.net/
Rasmussen, Anne K. Individuality and Social Change in the Music of Arab Americans. 1991. University of California at Los Angeles, PhD dissertation.
