Hooshere- Hooshere (Self Produced)

*** (Three Stars)

Like Zulal, Hooshere Bezdikian’s self titled/produced CD has been percolating for several years now in the New York/New Jersey Armenian scene. After a long and multi-tiered process of recording in both New York and Armenia, Hooshere is finally here-ready for mass consumption. A gifted musician since her youth, Hooshere has had classical and jazz vocal training especially throughout here collegiate years. On this disc, she sticks to popular Armenian folk songs and a few original mixed language (English/Armenian) original compositions. While the originals don’t work on this album, the Armenian folk songs do. And very much so. Hooshere made an artistic tactical gamble by taking her amped up trance/new age/R&B sounding finished album and taking it to Armenia to add some more earthy Armenian sounds such as the duduk, kemantcha, blul, and dhol to the mix. The result is a near perfect contemporary world music album that represents the Armenian song to a potentially wide ranging audience. Today’s general world music buying public will fawn over this album as I did the first time I heard it. Hooshere’s voice is strong and versatile with a diva’s attitude that is required for this type of musical material. There are several moments when this album is crackling with the type of raw energy that is rare in today’s Armenian music scene. They occur in “Eem Anush Davigh” and “ Zeenvoree Mor Yerkuh”. Other sublime moments occur in the opening drug hazed track of “Kele Lao” and the classical “Cilicia”. Hooshere possesses that rare combination of deep feeling and understanding for her musical heritage while bringing some serious skill to the table. Kudos to the smart keyboard programming and bass playing on this eye-opening album.