Death of Jacques Douvalian (March 26, 2008)

“The name Jacques Douvalian suffices to bring before your eyes the Yerevan of the late 1950s and early 1960s, a beautiful, joyful, and multicolor city with new and broad streets and parks … And the songs of the singer were in an amazing harmony with the romantic Yerevan of those years,” musicologist Margarit Rukhkyan recently said.

Douvalian had a meteoric career. He was born in Aleppo on January 1, 1920. His family had survived the genocide. They moved to Paris in 1925. Jacques, who was very interested in mathematics and exact sciences, was forced to leave middle school and work to help his family. Then he became interested in music, started to sing and compose songs. He was a singer in cafés, and in the 1940s he befriended Charles Aznavour and other singers. After World War II, he gave several concerts.

In 1954 he migrated to Soviet Armenia with his mother. His aim was to study astrophysics, but he changed his mind and continued singing.

Two years later, in 1956, Douvalian became the main singer of the State Jazz Orchestra, which would be directed by Konstantin Orbelian until its dissolution in 1992. The word “jazz” did not refer specifically to American jazz, but to a combination of Armenian and Western light music called estradayin in Armenian (from the Italian word strada “street”). Douvalian toured many cities of the Soviet Union and enjoyed a very warm reception. In 1959 he became the soloist of Yuri Sulsky’s instrumental ensemble in Moscow, and his songs in Armenian, Russian, and French became a hit. He was the author of some of the lyrics. His voice had a certain French quality to it that bridged Yerevan and Paris at a time when French cinema and songs started entering the Soviet world. 

 

It is unclear what happened later. Margarit Rukhkyan recalls that “when I went to their home to arrange for a TV program, I heard from the singer himself the news that he was leaving for France. His mother looked at me with silent reprimand when I lamented her son’s decision to leave Armenia.” After the visit of French Foreign Minister Christian Pineau to Armenia in 1956, many French Armenians who had migrated to Armenia in 1946-1948 later petitioned for help to re-enter France due to social and political constraints. Perhaps Douvalian’s return to France, when he was a popular name in and out of Armenia, was related to this phenomenon.

 

In any case, after settling back in France, the singer disappeared from the artistic scene and never returned to the stage. He passed away in Versailles on March 26, 2008. Rukhkyan released a CD of his best recordings in 2015 on the 95th anniversary of Douvalian’s birth.