Armenian Mountain Girl Disco…By Way Of Lebanon’s Ihsan Munzer

Ihsan Munzer – Sari Aghtchik

Speaking of musical discoveries, I dug this record out of a wasteland of 1,000s of LPs at a house sale last year for $1. A record titled “Orientalissimo” by a group labeled “Ihsan Al-Munzer and his Oriental Group,” is precisely the kind of record that I never would have looked twice at way back in my 20s. But, as I’ve grown older, I’ve grown more adventurous in my selections, partially because I’ve built up some decent knowledge of a lot of things, but also because I find myself more interested in tracking down interesting things that I’ve never ever heard of. When I saw this record and flipped it over and saw Munzer chilling with his multiple keyboards and then saw the album was released in 1980, I figured there was a good chance something on this album would be either a bit funky or a bit disco. “Sari Aghtchik” was the first song I dropped the needle on and my instincts were, as you can hear above, dead on. Now, there’s a whole new world opened up, Lebanese disco based on “Armenian Keif Time Melodies”…and all it cost was a bit of time and $1.