Coalition of Armenian Diaspora United

07/10/2026

Paul Baghdadlian. The Beloved Armenian Singer Whose Voice Became the Soundtrack of the Armenian Diaspora. 🇦🇲
➖➖➖
73 years ago today, on July 10, 1953, the Aleppo-born singer whose voice would carry the longing of an entire diaspora was born. Paul Baghdadlian sang in Western Armenian, sang of love and exile and homeland, and became the voice every Armenian community from Beirut to Glendale to Paris turned on when they wanted to remember who they were. His songs are still played in every Armenian household. They are still sung at every Armenian wedding. The voice endures. The soundtrack carries on.

From Aleppo To The World
Paul Baghdadlian was born Krikor Baghdadlian in Aleppo, Syria, into a family of Armenian Genocide survivors who had built a new life in the great Armenian community of Aleppo. Struggling to make ends meet as a teenager, he began performing to support himself, and released his first album, “Antzrev E Kalis,” in 1976, on the eve of the Lebanese Civil War. In 1977, he moved to Los Angeles to launch an international career, and his family eventually settled in Pasadena, California.

Within a few years, his voice would travel with the Armenian diaspora as it scattered across the world, becoming a fixed point of cultural identity in every community it reached. He recorded more than 25 studio albums, 7 live albums, and dozens of collaborations across his career, performing in concert halls and community centers from Beirut to Damascus to Aleppo to Australia to Amsterdam to Los Angeles, and earned the affection of multiple generations of Armenians for whom his songs became the language of their longing.

Paul The Prince
Before he was Paul Baghdadlian, he was Paul the Prince. In the early 1970s in Beirut, the cultural capital of the Armenian Middle Eastern diaspora at the time, he performed entirely in English under that stage name. Then he heard the music of fellow Armenian diaspora singer Harout Pamboukjian, and made the decision that would define the rest of his life: he would sing in Armenian. The love songs that followed would become the foundation of his global success and the soundtrack of an entire diaspora.

The Voice Of Western Armenian
In a diaspora where Western Armenian is increasingly endangered, Baghdadlian sang almost exclusively in it. His lyrics carried the dialect of the Armenian Genocide survivors, the Armenians of Cilicia, the Armenians of Lebanon and Syria, and the Armenian quarters of Istanbul. He was, in effect, the last great popular musical voice of a language that UNESCO has now classified as endangered.

His songs spoke of the homeland in the present tense, even when his audience had never seen it. Love songs, exile songs, songs about Armenia as a place that existed in the body even when it could not be reached. For the diasporan Armenian, his music was not just entertainment. It was continuity.

A Soundtrack Of The Diaspora
There are songs every Armenian knows by heart without ever having been taught. "Mayrig Jan," his tribute to his mother, has become a cultural artifact, played at every diaspora gathering where mothers are honored. "Siretzi Yes Megin," "Sev Acher," "Sirem," "Naz Aghchig," and dozens of others carry the same weight.

His voice has played at engagements, weddings, baptisms, and funerals from Beirut to Buenos Aires to Boston for nearly five decades. It is impossible to grow up Armenian in the diaspora and not know him.

A Voice That Carries Forward
Paul Baghdadlian passed away on June 28, 2011, in Glendale, California, at the age of 57, after a long battle with lung cancer, just 12 days short of his 58th birthday. He died in the heart of the Armenian-American community he had called home for 34 years, and was survived by his wife, his children, and a global diaspora that had taken his songs as its own.

Today, on what would have been his 73rd birthday, his music is still pressed into every Armenian wedding playlist. Still played in every Armenian household kitchen. Still sung by Armenian grandmothers teaching their grandchildren the words of a homeland they have never seen.

The man was born 73 years ago today. The voice still carries.

07/10/2026

Now available of all platforms!

Listen to Gharabaghtsin by Hovik Krikorian on YouTube Music - a dedicated music app with official songs, music videos, remixes, covers, and more.

07/04/2026

Mary Vartanian, One of the Last Survivors of the Armenian Genocide, Passes Away at 112 🇦🇲
➖➖➖
Mary Vartanian, one of the last living survivors of the Armenian Genocide, has passed away at the age of 112, according to her granddaughter, Natalie Vartanian, who shared the news of her passing over the weekend on Facebook.

Born Mary Ouzkoushian in Aintab, in historic Cilicia, on August 17, 1914, she came into the world just before the 1915 Armenian Genocide, the Ottoman Empire's campaign against its Armenian population that killed an estimated 1.5 million people. She survived its opening years as a small child and carried the memory of that survival across a life that stretched more than a century and four generations.

Her family was spared deportation in part through the protection of a paternal cousin, Dr. Garabed Yesayan, whose family helped the Ouzkoushians escape to Aleppo in the early 1920s, leaving behind their home and nearly all they owned. Her father had been a miller who produced cracked wheat. Too young to remember much of Aintab, she nonetheless recalled her years at the Grtasirats Armenian School there as the happiest of her life. She grew up speaking Armenian, Turkish, and later Arabic, and learned to crochet, sew, and weave Aintab-style rugs, a craft that would later help her earn a living in Aleppo. Decades on, samples of her handiwork were displayed at the museum of the Catholicosate of Cilicia in Antelias, Lebanon.

In 1935 she married Hovhannes Vartanian, a fellow Aintab native, a violinist and composer who performed for the Armenian Radio of Aleppo and was awarded the Syrian National Medal of Recognition for his musical talent. Together they raised four sons and two daughters. In 1965 the family moved to Beirut to spare their sons compulsory service in the Syrian army, and four years later, in 1969, Hovhannes died, leaving Mary widowed at 55. She never remarried. One of her sons, Zaven, emigrated to the United States and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts, and Mary followed with another son in 1972. She would call Watertown home for 45 years.

In the United States she built a quiet life grounded in faith, family, and work. She worked briefly assembling parts at an electrical company, became an active member of the Ladies Guild at St. James Armenian Church in Watertown, and cooked for its luncheons and annual bazaar, honored in 1997 as the guild's Mother of the Year. She crocheted pieces bearing a cross and the words urging Armenians never to forget April 24, and donated them to churches. Remarkably active well into her later years, she traveled through Europe on a group tour in her 90s, journeyed to Beirut at the age of 100, and lived independently until she was 101, moving into the Armenian Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Jamaica Plain only after a fall.

For generations of Armenians, Vartanian stood as a direct and living link to a history that too many have sought to deny. She attended genocide commemorations year after year, and in April 2024 she was honored at the Massachusetts State House, where lawmakers and visitors rose in a standing ovation to recognize her contributions to the Armenian-American community and her lifelong work to keep its memory alive. Speaking in Armenian, she told those gathered that her joy and her pride were with the Armenian people. She often said the one thing she never wanted forgotten was April 24, and she credited her long life to two simple constants: hard work and daily prayer.

In her message, Natalie Vartanian described a grandmother whose own survival made possible the lives of everyone who came after her, and a woman who taught those around her to treasure life in equal measure through its joys and its sorrows. She asked that her grandmother rest in peace and watch over the family from beyond.

She is survived by a large family spread across the diaspora, including children, more than a dozen grandchildren, and numerous great-grandchildren, a living continuation of the family line that the genocide had once tried to erase.

Her passing marks the loss of one of the dwindling few who remembered, however faintly, the world before the catastrophe, and who lived long enough to become a witness for those who did not survive it. May her soul find rest, and may the memory of her life endure among those who knew her and those who will only ever know her story.

07/03/2026

Beyond Survival: Reparative Education and Civil Society Work as Pathways to Healing, Resilience, and Community Recovery after the 2014 Yezidi Genocide (Webinar)

Thursday, July 16, 2026, 1:00–2:30 PM EDT

This International Center for MultiGenerational Legacies of Trauma Webinar is held in advance of the 12th anniversary of the ISIS genocide against the Yazidis (August 3, 2014). Yazidi survivors, educational, civil society and community leaders will share and reflect upon their post-genocide experiences and their ongoing efforts to nurture healing and foster the resilience of their people.

Register Here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_n4qmJSUCSxWYcR4f3AXtkQ

06/18/2026

06/13/2026

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who joined us for a special evening in Los Angeles in support of Aurora.

The evening featured Aurora Luminary Pashtana Durrani, founder of LEARN Afghan, who spoke about her efforts to ensure Afghan girls and young women can continue learning despite significant barriers.

We are grateful to our community of supporters who make it possible to champion courageous humanitarians around the world.