Historical Portrait
Bedros Haroutunian playing qanun, portrait, photograph
Archive record
Forms part of a group of field materials documenting Bedros Haroutunian performing Armenian and Armeno-Turkish music on the kamanche and the qanun on April 22, 1939, collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell in Fresno, California.
About this photograph
This photograph was made during a field recording session on April 22, 1939, in Fresno, California. Sidney Robertson Cowell documented Bedros Haroutunian performing Armenian and Armeno-Turkish music on multiple instruments that day, capturing him here with the qanun, a plucked string instrument.
Cowell directed the W.P.A. California Folk Music Project between 1938 and 1940, recording and photographing traditional musicians across Northern California. She worked deliberately across immigrant communities rather than focusing on a single tradition. The project's materials are held by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
The session captured Haroutunian playing both qanun and kamanche, preserving a record of his repertoire and technique in a period when such documentation was rare.
Compiled from the catalogue record and reference notes on the formats and events involved. The archive record above is the primary source.
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