A marriage of faith and music

For Maestro Mekanejian, Music Enlightens the Soul

While Armenia was under Soviet control, Khoren Mekanejian's family moved from Syria to Armenia. It was a challenging time for all Armenians, but especially for a man who was compelled to express his deep Christian faith through music.

"Difficult is too small a word to describe those times," said Khoren, who today serves as the director of music ministry for the Diocese. "It was not difficult; it was terrible."

KGB agents would follow him and advise that if he didn't quit going to church, they would arrest him or get him fired from his job. It was while he was facing the dark prospects of living under an atheistic totalitarian regime that the power of faith and music literally saved him.

"A policeman came to arrest me. He came to do an evil, bad job, to take me to jail," Khoren said. "But when he heard the music of the badarak, he forgot why he came. The music pushed him. Our faith pushed him to forget what goal he had in coming, to take me to jail. Music can bring people to faith and clear their heart and bring them to prayer, even if they're atheists."

Khoren was born in 1937 in Aleppo, Syria, to a mother who would sing every minute of every day. His family moved to Armenia in 1946, and Khoren began studying at the seminary of Holy Etchmiadzin in 1956, under the eye of Catholicos Vasken I, who later sent Khoren to study at Armenia's Komitas Conservatory.

"From the time I was three years old, going to church in Syria, I felt God. He's always been with me," Khoren said. "That faith, nobody can pull out from my heart."

It is a faith he has tried to spread to others. While in Armenia he was watched by communist officials because he would have dozens of his young students singing during church services. Today he helps spread his Christian faith by strengthening and organizing choirs and junior choirs in parishes around the Eastern Diocese.

Since moving to New York in 1993, Khoren had not been back to Armenia until this fall, when he spent several weeks there conducting the Komitas Chamber Choir in a recording of the complete Yekmalian setting of the badarak. Featuring every aspect of the Divine Liturgy, the two-CD set will be available this fall by the Eastern Diocese in order to help people gain a better understanding of the Divine Liturgy.

And miraculously, when he returned to Armenia, Khoren found his beloved faith and music had taken root.

"The younger generation was praying," he said with a smile. "They have a big faith now. And the singers on the recording--when you listen to this badarak it is not just singing or just sound. It is a prayer to God."