He survived simply because he did not antagonize the regime. After all, he waa justa composer and an artist, not a political activist just as Charents, Sevak and Sylva were, poets, not revolutionaries.
We may not know this, and neither did those comissars in Moscow that his music was heavily influenced by Armenian folklore.
Listen to his Gayane, in particular to the passage of Ayisha’s’ Dance and tell us if it is not a teke-off on the Armenian tune “Che-----m, chem krna khaghal“?
AK is not unique. Charents, Sevak and even Sylva, that old fat communist cow, in her own way, remember “Khosk Im Vordun”. Communist cow? Who never forgot her native heritage/language? Among those who defied Soviet oppression, each in their own way.
Please. Let us not dismiss these giants of Armenian culture, Not to forget Petros, Baronian, Varuzhan, Siamanto….. et al..
Yes AK was labeled as “Soviet Composer” until 1991 when suddenly, one morning, on NPR he was identified as “ARMENIAN”, no more qualifiers as “Soviet…”.
Can we do better than NPR?
i agree that there was some sort of nationalistic feeling among these writers, but it was still not enough to build a proper armenian identity, and the soviet regime precisely tried to dissuade each of its soviet from developing such nationalistic feelings and building identities, they even banned some religious activites, and Christianity wasn't very welcomed...we cannot simply say that oh charents or sevak or i dono who else were able to write about armenians therefore it wasnt that bad, i mean charents fell victim of stalin's purges, and it's just that others were more moderate in their expression or totally pro-communist (kaputikian) and were able to get away with it
as for AK, i recognize very well that his work has alot of armenian influence, especially since ive played many of his works myself, however, i am just saying that the soviet influence has been so entangled in armenian culture and history that foreigners often do not distinguish between what is armenian, sovietic or russian...that's where the problem is, because we have not adn are not developing a proper identity of our own whether it be cultural, social, etc. to enable foreigners to distinguish us from the rest...
returning to the subject, even though i recognize and admire AK's majestic work, i simply cannot accept to impose a soviet anthem on independent armenia, especially when the point of changing the anthem (which i still don't find valid) was to be original and reflect today's armenia and everything