The ancient city of Aleppo in Syria was one of the cultural centers of the Middle East until the Syrian conflict displaced thousands of its inhabitants. Forty Martyrs: Armenian Chants from Aleppo is a recording of solo chants by Armenian priest Yeznig Zegchanian. The recording was carried out by an American drummer and musicologist named Jason Hamacher at the Forty Martyrs Armenian Orthodox Church.

Yeznig Zegchanian sings liturgical music that spans more than a millennium. He sings in Western Armenian, an endangered language that was once spoken in Eastern Turkey. Unfortunately, the Syrian war has dispersed the Armenian community and Jason Hamacher has been unable to locate Yeznig Zegchanian.

Elyse Semerdjian of Whitman College, a leading expert on the history of Aleppo’s Armenians the liner notes, providing the cultural and historical context. “Jason has captured the sounds of Aleppo’s Armenian community at an important moment in its history,” says Semerdjian. “The album will be remembered as an artifact of a way of life that will no longer exist when Syria’s war, replete with ethnic cleansing, is over. In this sense, 40 Martyrs is appropriately titled for our time for it is a precious archive of the sounds of one of Syria’s ancient communities on the eve of its extinction.”

Forty Martyrs: Armenian Chants from Aleppo is an ethnomusicological recording of significant historical value.