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Pre-Order: April 26, 2022
Release Date: May 01, 2022
CATALOG FAS #86
There is an opinion that the song “Qele Lao” (Let’s go my son), was created after the Armenian Genocide and expresses a lamenting conversation of a grandfather with his grandson, who has lost homeland and describes his longing for it. However, we think that this is wanderers’ song and comes from earlier times.
In the VII century, Armenia fell under the yoke of Arab caliphate, which was replaced by the reign of Seljuk Turks, and after the fall of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine empire (1453), Ottoman Turks settled in the region. During all this time, Armenian peasants were in poor state, they paid very high taxes and the goods they created were snatched or bought with very low price.
That’s why they were often in debt and in order to pay it they had to leave for foreign countries to earn money. But in other countries they were aliens, didn’t feel well, the people and culture there were different, they were not understood, were exploited, alone.
This song is a an appeal of such a peasant who with sorrowful heart turns to his son to go to homeland to see their native village, their mountains. The alien Armenian fancies tetraxes playing with one another, swallows flying in the sky, then mountains and rocks on their slopes as if being rock tears, shed for the peasants who have left their homeland. He sees in his mind his parents who, despite being poor, live better in the homeland.
The last stanza was added probably later because different Armenian cities are mentioned, Moush, Van, Sassoun. And in answer to his father’s “Let’s go my son, let’s go to homeland,” the son answers, “Let’s go father, let’s go to homeland
This state of Armenian peasants aggravated during the years of Armenian Genocide, driving them away with more intensity from their millennial cradle. This is the reason that this song is most sung after genocide when Armenians again left for foreign countries, where they are deprived of warm and careful treatment on the part of their relatives and countrymen and undergo whimsical treatment on the part of foreigners. And the realization of the loss of homeland makes their state more miserable. Having grown old in foreign countries they dream of going back to their homeland with their grandsons and introduce them the wonderful beauty, water and soil, and magnificent buildings in the native country.