WORLD

We warmly recommend you to visit Framer Framed on 5 November 2024 for Her Voice: Behind Armenian Lullabies, a research project by artist and sound researcher Lucia Kagramanyan. Curated by League of Tenders ( the duo Elena Ishchenko  and Maria Sarycheva were the wonderful respondents to DAI's Kitchen presentations in Middelburg Spring 2024) as part of Vleeshal’s International Nomadic Program, Her Voice is presented as a show on NTS Radio (find the link here) and an in-person listening session at Framer Framed. The project explores the rich tradition of Armenian lullabies, showing how women’s voices are a powerful tool for knowledge production and its intergenerational transmission.

Her Voice: Behind Armenian Lullabies @Tomasso Andorlini

| tag: Amsterdam

The world’s earliest archives or libraries were the memories of women. Patiently transmitted from mouth to ear, body to body, hand to hand. (Trinh T. Minh-Ha. Woman, Native, Other)

When it comes to the institutionalisation of the oral tradition of lullabies, the composers and singers are predominantly male, while the voices that initially performed them are mainly female. Typically sung by mothers to soothe their children, lullabies represent the first intimate musical experience in a person’s life. For the project Her Voice: Behind Armenian Lulllabies, Lucia Kagramanyan collected Armenian lullabies that reflect the complexity of the tradition, which combines melodic chants and simple rhymes with myths, legends and tellings of personal and collective grief. These songs not only help to establish emotional bonds through sound, words and touch, but also form an integral part of oral history and cultural memory of the people — mostly produced by women in a non-didactic and healing way.

Artist and sound researcher Kagramanyan focused on field research and explored archives of Armenian record labels. She collected lullabies from all over Armenia, including those sung in her friends’ families and asked her mother, musician Anna Vardazaryan, to perform a lullaby written by her grandmother Ivetta Aznaurova. Kagramanyan also refers to various sources of classical and popular Armenian music.

Women’s role in history, in resistance to oppression — as well as in the history of music — is often obscure. Nevertheless, the everyday work of raising children and transmitting collective memory, culture and language is not only fundamental for the political struggles but also for the healing process. Lullabies that are nowadays sung by Armenian mothers enable the interweaving of people’s struggles, sorrows, and joys across generations and national boundaries. In her project, Kagramanyan seeks to return the legacy of the women who created such an abundant and complex tradition — the legacy, which is an integral part of history, unlike their names.