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Lebanese-Newfoundland Musicians

Black and white portrait of three men. The men all have dark hair and are all wearing dark suits and singing into a microphone. The one on the right holds a saxophone. In the background behind the man on the right is another man wearing a white dress shirt and dark tie.

Photo: Musicians Mickey and Leo Michael performing onstage. Source: Lorraine Michael. Circa 1940s-1950s.

Recorded audio interview with Wyatt Hirschfeld Shibley completed by Natalie Dignam for Heritage NL.

TRANSCRIPT:
Another thing that is really interesting I guess in the St. John’s community is that, well outside of St. John’s as well but I mean tons of musicians in the Lebanese community. Now I mean some of that might be being in Newfoundland maybe as well but I guess what has been interesting to me is that a lot of Lebanese musicians I have discovered in this research they don’t play or didn’t play what we think of as Newfoundland music being this kind of Irish or English derived folk music and they didn’t really play Lebanese traditional music they played kind of whatever the popular music was at the time and what’s really interesting is that a big bands, there were two big bands in St. John’s that were kind of two Lebanese families, the Michael’s and the Andrews’ family bands. You know playing big band stuff, jazz stuff right at a time when I mean I don’t know for a fact but you know probably only a few bands doing that at the time. So anyway I mention that because we have focused in our discussion about the Lebanese community and how the Lebanese things it does I guess but it has been interesting also just to discover these other things. And you know when you are talking to someone who is say half Lebanese or a quarter Lebanese it might be a big part of their identity but it isn’t all of it you know. Yeah so that’s been interesting as well.