Mike's Oud Forums

ara dinkjian

Monty88 - 5-22-2005 at 03:44 AM

hi,
if any one has any recordings of ara dinkjian they could post, that would be much appreciated.

Mav, did you still have those recordings of ara playing cumbus? I'm dying to hear him play.

mavrothis - 5-23-2005 at 04:02 PM

CD info

Try this out. It's only $9.

Take care,

mavrothis

maran - 5-26-2005 at 03:54 PM

This is the stuff of his I'm familiar with:

Possibly my favorite CD of all is one of the albums Ara Dinkjian did with the Greek singer Eleftheria Arvanitaki, called Ta Kormia Kai Ta Maxairia, on Polydor (1994). I bought it in Greece so I don't know how easy it is to get outside. The songs are all either written or arranged by him, and he plays oud and cumbus on many of the tracks. Her voice is gorgeous on this one, as always, and its the kind of stuff that goes into your bones.

Several of Arvanitaki's most popular songs were written by Dinkjian. The original versions of some of these songs he recorded with his group Night Ark, whose CD called Treasures I think you can get through Traditional Crossroads, it's a compilation of earlier albums. It has the original version of Arvanitaki's hit Dinata Dinata, which is the song Homecoming on this CD.

Dinkjian also plays on some Sezen Aksu albums (Turkish singer). The one I like the most is Deliveren, which has two of his songs, Yine Mi Cicek and Hos Geldin, both very haunting and beautiful. The oud playing on this is the kind that really grabs you. But these are the only two songs I like on the album.

Lastly, and this is also one of my favorite CDs, is an album of Armenian songs called The Many Sides of Onnik (Onnik is his father, a very popular singer in the Armenian community). Every Armenian I know who's listened to this CD has instantly fallen in love with it. Great songs, great spirit, and great musicianship throughout.