The Crazy Dog, a suite of new music composed and arranged by tenor saxophonist Raffi Garabedian, is both a departure and homecoming for the Bay Area musician. Writing for voice for the first time, Garabedian has sourced the project’s lyrics from his father and grandmother’s writings about their lives in Turkish Armenia and the United States. These now-lyricized writings tell the family’s story of love, despair, displacement, survival, and resilience as they are violently uprooted from their home during the 1915 Armenian Genocide, and forced to emigrate to America, a journey that extended into 1921.

"The Armenian Question"
(Instrumental introduction to the suite.)

A term which was coined during The Congress of Berlin in 1878 — The Armenian Question was a response from the U.S. and European nations about the ongoing oppression towards Armenians living under Ottoman Turkish rule.

"A Mother’s Letter"
(Adapted from my grandmother Yevnige’s poem, “A Mother’s Letter”.)

“The elderly mother, wearing winter on her head, and her feet placed at the edge of the grave, lying on her creaky armchair ...Do you remember my son, the crazy days of your youth? ...I was tearfully screaming with my sleepless eyes, as to who can take me close to my son who has lost his way...”

"Escape to Erzurum"
(Adapted from my father’s story, “Escape to Erzurum,” which tells of his family’s journey as they sought safety while fleeing Turkish Armenia.)

“The sky was painted with dark blue ink and sprinkled generously with bright stars when Bedros, Altoun and Yevnige arrived at the Euphrates River...They waited in silence.”

“Yevnige looked at the throngs of people in the streets of the ancient walled city of Erzurum...the streets were dusty and noisy and hot...The mountain air was crisp, not balmy like the June evenings on the plain where Mezireh and Parchanj were located...the late October sun filtered through the jagged cliffs of Kharpert mountains and cast long black shadows on the ground...He raised his head toward the fading sun, squinted his eyes and looked beyond...The days were getting shorter and the fall began to set in...She collapsed onto the baked black earth of Erzurum...”

"The Closet Playwright"
(Adapted from my father’s story about his mother, “My Mother, The Closet Playwright”.)

“Writing was my mother’s life. It was like the air she breathed, necessary to live, a way of finding her place in a world that had been torn apart by war and genocide.”

“My father [Yetvart] did his best to keep my mother under his thumb...I can see her sitting on the floor of her bedroom, her legs crossed, the skirt of her dress serving as a desk...The words and sentences flowed through her pen like a stream of melted snow created by the warmth of the April sun...an Armenian phrase which literally translates as, ‘Your mother is pulling you along.’ I hear her say, ‘Take them my son, they’re yours.’”

"Three Gold Liras"
(Adapted from my father’s stories, “Daughter of Misfortune” and “Yev & Garo in Balik Goli”.)

“Daughter of Misfortune” was written about Hripsimeh Simonian, my father’s maternal grandmother: “She was the daughter of misfortune, her entire being said so...The forward slope of her shoulders, her sagging cheeks giving a dour appearance to her mouth, and a resignation of misfortune lodged in her dark eyes, gave her the appearance of impending doom...Her dark face was lined like a newly plowed field, each row of grief narrowing as it merged into the horizon of her sunken sockets containing eyes of despair and hopelessness...All the warmth and brightness of the mid-day sun could not dry the tears of misery and sadness that flowed.”

“Yev & Garo in Balik Goli” is my father’s fictional retelling of Yevnige, his mother, and Garabed, his father’s brother whom Yevnige was supposed to marry before his death: “She had never before experienced love, how it made her feel warm inside, happy, and excited. It made her want to sing, and write poetry. Love made her mouth broaden into a smile that revealed teeth, pearly and even, like a row of pomegranate seeds...My mother’s high cheeks and almond-shaped eyes...It was like the air she breathed...Stars flickered through the drooping arms of willow trees surrounding Balik Goli...Nightingales began their evening symphony in rhythm with the sound of the rippling waters...In the evening moonlight, it became a strand of silver and white, like strands of priceless pearls endlessly floating toward an unknown destination.”

"Ten Acres"
(Adapted from my father’s “Ten Acres,” a fictional story set in Sanger, CA, to which my father’s paternal grandparents and some of the extended family eventually immigrated.)

“It’s close to dawn when I get up out of bed. In my woolen nightgown I wander through the kitchen and out onto the back porch to take a peek at the weather. Winter mornings in the valley are almost always foggy. This morning is no exception...The air is silent...The fog’s stillness is suffocating...Trying to keep him alive...Makrouhi had a round face, shiny thick, black hair. Most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen. A tiny white silk bow was attached to a tuft of hair just in front of her left ear...My hear skipped a beat whenever I looked at it. But she had circles around her eyes. Big dark circles. Like the hollow eyes I couldn’t forget. Of skeletons, half alive. Wailing. Hands outstretched. In the Syrian desert. Begging for water. And mercy. Makrouhi was one of them. She had the same hollow stare in her eyes. And I thought to myself, she’d lost her soul.”

"First Trip to Fresno (1931)"
(Adapted from my father’s story, “First Trip to Fresno (1931),” written from his childhood memory of driving across the country with his family to visit his paternal grandparents in Fresno.)

“The first trip we took together as a family to Fresno to visit my father’s parents was in July 1931. I was 4 years old...The five of us rode in my father’s new Studebaker. It must have taken at least 10 days...on a southern route that went through Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona. I remember the red mud in Oklahoma in a rainstorm...We would stop at the ripe grapevines to pick large leaves for my mother to make dolmas...All five of us slept in the same room...I lay rigid, hardly breathing...I refused sleep.”

"March 17, 1927"
(Adapted from the first chapter of my father’s memoir, "In My Beginning — Somerville, Massachusetts, March 17, 1927".)

“I arrive in the world, kicking and screaming, midway through Prohibition, during the final years of the roaring twenties, girls with bobbed hair dancing the Charleston in jammed speakeasies of the North End—an era of carefree economic growth and cultural expansion...But on Hancock Street, in Somerville, where I live with my parents and two sisters, families aren’t prosperous and definitely not culturally avant-garde...I never know that my first name is Peter until I enlist in the Navy in 1944...My mother called me her “brown boy”...I hate the laughter of the students who make fun of my last name and think it’s funny whenever the teacher mispronounces it. I feel a deep rage. I would experience this rage sixty years later when I learn that my seven-year-old son’s Irish P.E. teacher had made fun of his last name, the tragedy repeating itself in 1992. I cry softly for my beloved son...”

"March 18, 2020"
(Solo saxophone improvisation.)

"Contrapuntal Bewilderment"
(Adapted from my father’s short story, “Contrapuntal Bewilderment”.)

“I hobble, stark naked, on my way to the men’s shower room. My legs are long, my stride is slow. The rubber tip of my metal cane strikes the tiled floor. In syncopation with my right foot. Ta tah . . . ta tah. My brain picks up the simple rhythm. I like it. Seems my brain converts sounds into beats. Drumming. My tongue clucks in sync with foot and cane. A cold dude in rhythm with his cool stride. My body sways. James gains ground from behind. His legs, short, stride quick. Flip-flops on his feet. A counterpoint to the melody of my syncopated beat. ‘You’re quite the contrapuntist with those fancy flip-flops,’ I tell him with a grin that exposes my gold teeth. James looks at me, bewildered.”