Ambling past apartment buildings on a quiet Beirut street in the winter of 2008, I spotted a music shop displaying electric, acoustic, and classical guitars in a colorful assortment of blue, brown, and maroon hues. Love for playing guitars drew me in. Upon entering, I saw in the corner a pear-shaped wooden instrument with a deep belly, short neck, and no frets. Slanted at an almost perfect ninety-degree angle, the instrument’s lengthy pegbox featured an elegant curved tip. The six strings indicated that it, too, might have been some type of guitar. But upon closer inspection, all but the lowest bass string were doubled, making a total of eleven strings. Unlike the acoustic guitar’s face, which featured one soundhole to project sound, this instrument had three soundholes, a structural quality that emphasized resonance.

The shop clerk told me that the unassuming instrument—built in nearby Aleppo, Syria, by the luthier Ibrahim Sukar—was an oud. The clerk grabbed the oud and performed a few lines of music; his playing emphasized melodic embellishments and odd time signatures. I was intrigued and figured I could tune it like a guitar and start playing. I paid the salesman and took the oud home.

Tuning guitars was a straightforward affair. Tuning an oud, I quickly learned, was hardly comparable. The taut tuning pegs were, like the rest of the instrument, constructed of wood. Rotating the pegs required considerable torque. Tuning upward to a higher pitch seemed unreasonable given the string’s tight tension (the string would likely snap). Tuning downward to a lower pitch would loosen the string, muddling the timbre. I tried to match the oud’s string intervals to a guitar’s, but the tuning pegs kept unwinding. Whatever note or chord I played sounded incoherent and soulless. My assumption that familiarity with the guitar would transfer to the oud was wrong. Instead I could only sense the vastness of my ignorance. I packed the oud away.

It wasn’t until I moved to Armenia in 2012 for a yearlong fellowship that I could summon the pluck to take the instrument out of its case and seek a teacher. I went to the nearby Komitas State Conservatory of Yerevan and walked through the cavernous foyer, the space so silent it inspired listening. Down a dark corridor, I found the folk instrument department in a fog of cigarette smoke and coffee steam. I introduced myself to the workers, who insisted I join them for a coffee while they made a few quick calls.

The next day I stood before my first oud teacher. Mihran Demirchyan was an earnest man in his early sixties whose short and stocky build resembled the instrument to which he had devoted his life. The son of an Armenian Genocide survivor from Constantinople, Mihran was born and raised in Armenia, which was then a Soviet satellite that enjoyed the protection and resources that made an arts education possible. He witnessed his homeland navigate the push and pull of empires with Russia to the north and Turkey to the west. Add to these pressures the 1988 Spitak earthquake, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Azerbaijan’s bid to seize what remained of Armenia during the first Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988-94). And yet Armenia found a path to independence. Through it all Mihran stayed true to the oud, finding through the instrument a voice to reflect and express an Armenian musical tradition he was proud to inherit.

Teaching the oud’s history was part of Mihran’s lesson plan. The origins of the instrument, he told me, stretched back to the first century bc in Bactria, a Central Asian region conquered by the Persians. The short-necked string instrument, then known as a barbat, featured four strings signifying earth, air, fire, and water. Other important instruments of the time included trumpets and lyres used to perform instrumental pieces and poetic verse that delighted nobles and commoners alike. The barbat grew in popularity, spreading to nearby regions with the seventh-century Arab invasion of Persia. Fond of the instrument’s sound, the Arabs absorbed the barbat, calling it al-ud, or oud, which in Arabic refers to a thin piece of wood (i.e., the ribs of the instrument’s rounded back, or the mzrab plectrum).

Portable and pleasant-sounding, the oud continued to grow in popularity. The eighth-century Arab conquest of the Iberian Peninsula (current-day Spain and Portugal) brought the instrument to continental Europe. Iberia became a center of economic production, trade, and innovation where Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East intersected. Refined craftsmanship emerged from local luthiers and musicians—including Ziryab, the exiled ninth-century Iraqi polymath who created the first music school in Cordóba, added a fifth string to the oud, and replaced the wooden mzrab with an eagle’s quill.

El oud, as it was referred to in Spanish, reached French troubadours on the other side of the Pyrenees and gave rise to the lute. One of the signature instruments of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, the lute featured frets that separated all tones by half steps. This even division between notes carried over to the guitar, which developed concurrently and was standardized in Spain by the late eighteenth century.

Mihran described a lineage of oud musicians reaching the modern-day Republic of Armenia, a landlocked nation representing a modest fraction of the indigenous lands where Armenians originated and lived for millennia before the Armenian Genocide (1915–23). Mihran learned from Garo Aristakesyan, who learned from Stepan Mamoian, who learned from Soghomon Altunian, the person credited with bringing the oud to Soviet Armenia by the late 1920s. Altunian had studied under Sarkis Kludjian, a famed Ottoman Armenian composer and oudist, who in turn had been taught by his father, Onnik, and the violinist Kemani Aleksan. Aleksan’s teacher had been Hampartzum Limondjian, who learned to perform the sharagans (sacred chants) of the Armenian church that first rang out long before the eleventh century, when Turks began migrating to the Armenian Highlands and Anatolia.

Most of these musicians were based in Constantinople—a cosmopolitan crossroads like the Iberian peninsula centuries earlier—where Armenians lived alongside Greeks, Turks, Arabs, and others in a perpetual cultural exchange of dance, food, music, and language. Beyond the city, cultural production thrived in the Ottoman hinterland where Armenians lived for millennia on native soil. Musicians integrated their practice into the fabric of daily life, with songs sung while working the field, digesting dinner, or soothing a fussy baby. But how much of that detail could come through in the music and histories taught across generations?

I was grateful for Mihran’s lessons, yet as a student of history I wondered if the oud’s origin story involved a more multicultural lineage of zithers, veenas, and other string instruments from ancient Greece, Egypt, and India. Perhaps Mihran could have gone further to discuss the oud’s regional presence thanks to virtuosos like Munir Bashir in Iraq, Farid al-Atrash in Syria, Yurdal Tokcan in Turkey, and the Greek master Yorgo Bacanos.

To situate the oud as a primarily Armenian art form misrepresented its expansive character, and yet to understate the contributions Armenian musicians made to its music would have reinforced the historical distortions to which Armenians have been subjected for centuries.

Distorting history was familiar territory. As the grandson of Armenian Genocide survivors, I was born into a struggle to preserve the genocide’s facts from the Turkish government’s efforts to erase the crime from historical memory. From bureaucrats in Ankara to supporting academics for hire in America, Turkey’s government has financed revised histories that extol the Ottoman Empire’s legacy without fully accounting for its tragic, violent end.

As the Ottoman Empire’s strength flagged in the late nineteenth century, corrupt authorities led by Sultan Abdülhamid II scapegoated Armenians and fomented mobs of Ottoman loyalists into unleashing waves of anti-Armenian mass violence. The Hamidian massacres of 1894–96 claimed some two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand lives. Any attempt at self-defense, such as the 1904 Sasun resistance, was met with police brutality, property seizures, and excessive taxation. The 1909 Adana massacres resulted in the deaths of twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand Armenians. These growing waves of violence culminated in the Armenian Genocide, which saw as many as 1.5 million Armenians murdered in death marches, public hangings, and gas chambers. Countless others were forced to convert to Islam, change their names, or mutilate their genitalia: all for a genocidal campaign to destroy the Armenian identity. Turkey’s government has always denied the genocide, and the small Armenian community left in Turkey continues to face overt discrimination, harassment, and lynchings.

These dynamics of historical erasure played out in my American middle and high schools. Omission of the Armenian Genocide from school history lessons about World War I compelled me to interrupt lectures to establish the historical record. It was my first encounter with history’s malleability—the notion that powerful interests could rewrite history to satisfy political agendas. With the oud, however, I noted a more complex landscape surrounding the question of how this regionally beloved instrument could fit some of the narrower ethnocentric contours of Armenian identity. One source of tension was the Sovietization of Armenian folk music. Local cultural uniformity was an ideological effort to minimize external influences, suggesting that histories, and the people who inhabit them, could be simplified. In practice, Soviet-era attempts to “purify” Armenian music meant removing elements considered “Turkish,” like microtones. Even with the tremendous contributions of Komitas—the revered ethnomusicologist, clergyman, and genocide survivor who collected and arranged folk songs—this purification project coupled with the devastating aftermath of the genocide led to an existential dilemma. How would the music of Armenia, particularly folk songs preserved by recently uprooted indigenous communities, be maintained and transmitted?

A similar dilemma played out across the Armenian diaspora, where communities had to determine how much their melodies and lyrics would reference a past both glorious and traumatic. Lebanon’s vibrant Armenian community, which expanded after the genocide, chose to look forward, leaning toward the West’s growing appetite for pop and rock. Beloved crooners like Ara Kekedjian, Adiss Harmandian, and Paul Baghdadlian sang of love and nature in Beirut with a soundscape of synthesizers, horns, and guitars—think Rat Pack in Vegas or Charles Aznavour in a Parisian disco. Local Armenian musicians who did engage the community’s complex inheritance also used pop instrumentation; there was no mood for the oud. Further east in Soviet Armenia, folk ensembles spotlighted the duduk, a wind instrument made of apricot wood, while relegating the oud to the back row of concert stages, where the allure of the instrument’s woody timbre was maintained by only its most committed devotees, like my teacher Mihran.

Thousands of miles away in the Americas, the oud often served a broader purpose. Though some scoffed at any reference to the old country and its genocidal Turkish authorities, others, aware that they weren’t speaking Armenian as much as before, promoted the instrument’s performance at Armenian American community functions. The oud was thus emerging as a vessel for cultural preservation.

Like his approach to the instrument’s history, Mihran’s method of playing the oud was streamlined. Step one: hold the mzrab with the long end between the ring finger and pinky. Step two: avoid playing with your middle finger. With the ground rules established, he shared a first set of beautiful Armenian folk pieces. Eventually we collaborated on producing, translating, and publishing in print and online a three-volume textbook, The Armenian School of Oud. Despite progress over nine months of study with Mihran, I still felt limited by my own technical gaps and ignorance of the repertoire.

Maybe it was how my instrument sounded—clunky and out of tune, still lacking soul—or Mihran’s insistence on tradition over innovation. It reminded me of going to Sunday Armenian school in Washington, DC. Though there was much to enjoy in community fellowship, I struggled with the idea of proving my Armenianness by passing tests on language, history, and culture. In Armenian school, my culture became a lesson. In Armenia, my culture blossomed into a lived reality, and learning oud music there helped me grasp the possibilities of defining a cultural heritage on my own terms.

After my fellowship year in Armenia, I returned to America and soon found myself attending a performance at New York City’s Lincoln Center featuring the world-renowned oud performer and composer Ara Dinkjian. I had admired his masterful and soulful performances on the 2006 album An Armenian in America when it first came out. The son of legendary Armenian singer Onnik Dinkjian, Ara grew up in the New York tristate area surrounded by the folk songs, love ballads, and dancehall favorites that Armenians had cherished for generations. He excelled at bringing together the sounds of his Armenian roots and the many musical influences—jazz, bluegrass, funk, and beyond—swirling around the place where he had grown up. After the concert, I approached Ara, and he graciously agreed to provide lessons.

Learning the oud from Ara Dinkjian was like learning basketball from Michael Jordan. My nerves were calmed, though, thanks to his welcoming and generous spirit. With boundless verve, he introduced me to an expansive repertoire of Ottoman Armenian composers and performers—Udi Hrant Kenkulian, Bîmen Şen Dergazaryan, and Boghos Kirechjian among them—and the various song forms they played: folk pieces with five lines of melody colored by the player’s ornamentations; the intricate saz semai featuring verses (hane) in the prevalent 10/8 rhythm; the tamzara in 9/8 rhythm; and the laz in 7/8 rhythm. Ara also discussed some of the great luthiers of Ottoman Constantinople, including Emmanuel Venios (known as Manol) and Onnik Karibyan, who refined the artistry of building ouds with countless considerations of wood type, brace design, bowl shape, and face dimensions. After each lesson, I felt as if the knowledge Ara shared was moving me toward a higher understanding of the instrument, what it represented, and how it could help me evolve.

A few months into our lessons, a heavy snowfall blanketed the region. The fresh coat of white powder gave the city a wondrous quality that reflected my renewed admiration for the oud and anticipation for my next lesson with Ara at his studio. Train delays, slow buses, and slippery sidewalks did little to dim my excitement. The crisp air filled my lungs as I climbed the steps and knocked on Ara’s door. He expressed surprise that I had trekked through the difficult weather. “I would never miss a lesson with you,” I responded.

My enthusiasm for the lesson did not translate to a particularly convincing performance. Attempting one of Ara’s dazzling oud compositions, I stumbled over notes and forgot the ornamental left-handed hammer-ons and pull offs I had heard in a recording. With generosity, Ara identified strengths and observed areas for improvement. “The most important thing you can do,” he insisted, “is to be yourself. Be authentic.”

Ara’s insight felt potent, especially given how my study of the oud began. Whether learning from Mihran or studying the styles of other oud players, I was trying to absorb their ways of thinking about the instrument, repertoire, and cultural significance. Lost in that process, or perhaps lingering in the periphery, was the significance of forging my own identity through the instrument.

Applying Ara’s words to the oud liberated me from a self-imposed pressure to master the canon of oud. Instead I could enjoy the process of learning these ancient and contemporary forms and discover how those forms inspired my own compositions and arrangements. History, culture, and the mechanics of music-making were finally helping me amplify, rather than silence, an authentic, individual voice. This dynamic reframed my appetite and appreciation for how Armenians brought the oud to America and helped the instrument flourish.

Seeking safety from the violence of the late Ottoman era, Armenians migrated around the world, favoring the U.S., a new empire, where international missionary organizations with Ottoman outposts were headquartered. Immigrating to America, oudists like Marko Melkon Alemsherian and Roupen Altiparmakian shared their artistry in dance clubs, community gatherings, and music lessons. Demand for these musicians grew alongside America’s burgeoning population of Armenians and other Ottoman minority groups, such as the Greeks and Assyrians. Recording companies took note. Columbia Records, Victor, and Pharos released oud recordings in the early twentieth century. In more recent decades, those efforts have been sustained by independent labels like Canary Records in Baltimore, Traditional Crossroads in New York, and American Recording Productions in Michigan. Institutions including the Library of Congress, the Armenian Museum of America in Boston, and Houshamadyan in Berlin have likewise preserved the sound of the oud in Armenian music.

This initial wave of Armenian oud players from “the old country” advanced a tradition that inspired Armenian American musicians. A new generation came of age as the aftermath of World War II foregrounded American demons of racism, sexism, and economic marginalization that pushed major cultural and political transformations in the 1960s. Decades earlier, the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide left many Armenians in America relating to similar shadows of injustice. In the face of such struggle, music served as a balm of healing, reflection, and dignity to move from a dark past toward a beautiful future. The oud once again became a vessel for Armenians in America to hear that beautiful future.

On his 1969 album Middle Eastern Rock, John Berberian led the Rock East Ensemble to merge psychedelic rock with Armenian folk, demonstrating how oud players could place themselves in musical conversation with popular Western idioms. John Bilezikjian’s 1993 album Music from the Armenian Diaspora presented tender Armenian folk songs recorded with two ouds, one playing melody and the other infusing classical counterpoint and chordal accompaniment. On his 1996 album The Now Sounds of the Middle East, George Mgrdichian’s cover of Paul Desmond’s “Take Five” showcased the oud’s versatility and his own virtuosity. Richard Hagopian played and sang folk songs in Armenian and Turkish with such precision and soul it seemed as though migrations from the old country had never happened.

These Armenian American oud masters mentored and inspired another generation of players. After learning from Berberian and other local oud players, Ara formally studied the oud at the Hartt School in Connecticut before performing in groundbreaking groups like Night Ark and the Secret Trio. Mal Barsamian—who was born into a family of oud players, including his father, Leo, and uncle Dick—plays oud, guitar, clarinet, saxophone, and other string and woodwind instruments with stunning fluency and serves on the faculties of the New England Conservatory, where he studied, and Tufts University. These names are just a fraction of the numerous Armenian musicians, in America and beyond, worthy of consideration who have preserved and innovated the sonic, spiritual, and cultural possibilities of the oud.

Each time I dove into the history of the oud generally or among Armenian Americans specifically, I discovered there was more I didn’t know. Every search yielded a new name; every name a new song; every song a new tradition. The oud was history incarnate and a vessel to chart my own passage through this inheritance.