Rabiz: History and Key Facts

Rabiz or rabis (Armenian: ռաբիզ or Armenian: ռաբիս) is a genre of Armenian popular music, distinguished by its lyrics and dance-oriented synthesized melodies in 68 time signature with elements of Armenian folk music. Rabiz first emerged in Yerevan in the 1970-80s and was often associated with Armenian migrants from rural regions of Armenia. Rabiz singers are with few exceptions male. More recently, rabiz songs have been augmented with heavier arrangements and electronic dance music elements in their instrumentation. This music genre could be compared with famous Balkan genres. Among others Romanian manele, Bulgarian chalga, Albanian tavalla and Greek laiko.

Though the singers and their audience primarily refer to rabiz as a music genre, the term is also used broadly to refer to a certain type of subculture with its particular fashion, Russian-derived slang, and lifestyle. The genre has received criticism from various music critics due to its perceived similarities to Middle Eastern music. Prominent performers of the genre include Aram Asatryan, Tatul Avoyan (known by the mononym Tatul), and Hayk Ghevondyan (known as Spitakci Hayko or more commonly by the mononym Hayko).

The musical language of the rabiz, being a blend of several musical traditions (primarily Armenian national music, called ashug. [Bardic-style] and Eastern in the style of the makam [classical court music]), it is marked by delicate Eastern harmony and an abundance of melisinas, which allow the musician to achieve the desired effect by purely musical means.

Some performances of rabiz music are characterized by code-switching in which rabiz performers such as Mingichauri Samo (Samvel Avanesyan) and Spitakci Hayko (Hayk Ghevondyan) – reminiscent of similarly multilingual pieces by ashughs such as Sayat-Nova – improvise simultaneously in different languages such as Armenian, Kurdish or Russian.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Rabiz by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.