A shining spirit

"Spirit of Armenia!," a night of dance and music focusing on Armenian culture, will take place Sunday as part of the KCRW World Festival series at the Hollywood Bowl.

The concert will feature 15 performing acts presenting everything from more traditional Armenian music to modern Armenian pop tunes and performances by Armenian vocalists and dance ensembles, said Stepan Partamian, who is producing the event in collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn.

This concert is the first of its kind in both ambition and scope, the Glendale resident said.

"This is the first time ever that we are presenting our own culture to the general Los Angeles public and seeing Armenians collectively contributing to a nonprofit organization that enriches cultural awareness in Los Angeles," Partamian said.

By organizing this concert, he hopes to squash preconceptions that Armenian musicians have to imitate mainstream artists in order to be accepted, and that there is no room for authentic Armenian artists.

"My philosophy is totally different: I can go in and perform my own culture, and people will come and accept me," he said.

In choosing artists to perform at the concert, Partamian had only one requirement.

"I don't want to pick people that want to sound like someone else," he said. "A music note is a music note, but how you use it becomes cultural."

The show will be divided into two contrasting styles, said Laura Connelly, the program manager for jazz and world music at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn.

"We wanted to reflect the breadth of the Armenian culture," Connelly said. "The first half is the more traditional and classical side of the music, and the second half is the more pop and fusion side."

Among the many performers is "Winds of Passion," a local duduk quartet formed in Glendale more than 10 years ago. The duduk is a traditional Armenian woodwind instrument just starting to shed its reputation as nothing more than funeral accompaniment.

"It has a very haunting, very soulful sound to it," said Ruben Harutyunyan, the leader of the quartet, as translated by Partamian.

It is the instrument with a timbre that most closely approximates the human voice, he said.

Out of the 8 million to 10 million Armenians scattered throughout the world, Partamian estimates that there are only about 1,000 duduk players left.