Wanna blow my clarinet?

Ah, Gagik. I have actually talked to his daughter on the phone once but I’ll get to that in a minute.

The man blows his clarinet so vigorously that if you hooked him up to a windmill he could generate enough electricity to power a small Armenian village. This is high octane music with no-prisoners-taken attitude.

The front cover is as lousy as the backside. But the message is clear. Gagik Hovsepian is at ease in both the suit-and-tie and traditional Armenian getup. This theme is extremely important at posh Armenian weddings in Los Angeles where Gagik is a fixture.

The back also lists fourteen tracks in Armenian. I have no idea what the songs are called but it hardly matters. All are nearly identical consisting of a clarinet coupled with canned beats from a drum machine. They are so similar that I suspected the audio engineer somehow plastered one song all over the disc. But it doesn’t matter. The music rocks and you can listen to any of the songs and get the same good vibe.

Now, how did I get to talk to his daughter? I saw a commercial for Gagik on a local TV station. Not a spot for a particular CD or anything like that but a commercial advertising Gagik’s services. I called the number at the bottom of the screen and got patched straight through to his home. I asked for Gagik, explaining to the person on the phone that I was an instant fan. The girl identified herself as his daughter. She was clearly embarrassed although I tried to convince her that her dad was a musical giant. Gagik was not at home so she gave me an address of a store that carried his stuff (the store was also a music recording studio). I love interacting directly with artists and their daughters without a middle man!

You can purchase this and other CDs here. Listen to Gagik here.