Anton "Tony" Abdelahad was born in Boston on July 25, 1915, a child of immigrants from Damascus, Syria. Despite being American-born, he quickly developed a passion and a gift for Arabic music. As a young child, he could recall his father paying to import 78 r.p.m. recordings from the old country. Records he was responsible for cranking on the family's Victrola.*
At the age of fifteen, he embarked on his professional career. During the sixty years that followed, Tony performed throughout the United States and Canada, entertaining his countless fans including such notables as King Saud of Saudi Arabia, for whom he performed privately on a number of occasions. From Boston to New York, Detroit to Montreal and beyond, Tony would travel nearly every weekend to perform at haflat (concerts) and mahrajanat (two and three-day music festivals), often accompanied by such legendary violinists as Philip Solomon or Fred Elias, as well as the great Ronnie Kirby on the darbakka (drum).
Described by his fellow musicians as a "singer's singer," Tony was also an accomplished musician, composer and recording star, having recorded such iconic songs as Miserlou and Back to Sorento, as well as his very popular album Middle East Fantasy. As a disciple of the late, great professor Mohammed Abdul Wahab, however, Anton never hid the fact that he derived more pleasure from performing the Professor's compositions then he did performing some of his own.
What hafli would have been complete had he not sung for his fans such Wahab classics as Sahirtoo, Ifrah Ya Alby, Gufnahoo or Inta Umry?
As he recalled in a 1987 interview with Anne K. Rasmussen, Professor of Ethnomusicology at William & Mary University:
“In my day, the emphasis was on the singer. Say I perform for two or three hundred people: we use the light [music] and intermingle some of the heavier stuff during the course of the evening (the classical and semi-classical music of Abdul Wahab, or Farid al-Atrash, for example). Then, when it comes close to quitting time, there will be about fifty remaining who want to hear the real heavy stuff. They make a half moon around the stage and they’d be hitting me with one request after another. ‘Please don’t stop,’ [the audience would say] ‘now we enjoy it, the others are gone.’ So now I enjoy it because I can do what I like to do."*
In addition to his own albums, Tony's music was featured on The Music of Arab-Americans: A Retrospective Collection, released in 1997 on Rounder Records. In 1994, Tony was recognized by the Folk Arts Center of New York and the Mahrajan al-Fan Committee for a lifetime of service to Arabic music and culture.
Tony's other passion in life was his family. He was married to his beloved wife, Mary, for over 50 years. Together, they had four children: Janice, Camille, Arthur, and Sharon, all of whom carry on his legacy to this day.
Tony passed away on December 25, 1995 at the age of 80. His music, however, will live on forever.
*As retold to Professor Anne K. Rasmussen in "The Music of Arab Americans Aesthetics and Performance in a New Land." Originally published in the Pacific Review of Ethnomusicology, vol. 5 1989.