BY LORI A. SINANIAN
The drive to Troodos felt familiar, almost like I’ve been here before, only because I applied past knowledge (AYF Camp, Big Pines) to a new destination. The higher we drove up, the quicker the temperature dropped, from 32 Celsius, to 15 Celsius. I remember feeling nervous, the kind of nervousness one feels when they are going to meet someone for the first time.
On August 20, 2017, I met over 150 Cypriot Armenians. They were curious to know who I was, where I came from, and why. We found ourselves asking each other the same questions since I was just as curious as them. The answers I gave were different from the answers they gave, but one thing we had in common was that we were in the largest mountain range in Cyprus for the same reason.
Revolutionary songs are our tongues’ rhythms, poetry, lullabies, harmonious tonalities, and inner teachings. Revolutionary songs are of a pure symbolism, and an encapsulation of a particular time and place of our past, but also a vision of our contemporary world… and simultaneously of the near and far future.
Not long ago I found an old cassette tape, and on the back of its disintegrating cover I read a message from the Armenian Youth Federation—Youth Organization of Armenian Revolutionary Federation (AYF-YOARF) of Western America: “We are convinced that these revolutionary songs transmit a spirit of militancy and enthusiasm to the people and to the youth in particular, thus becoming an effective medium in the politicization and revolutionization processes of the masses. Therefore, their songs are more than mere memento from the past; rather they represent potent factors in the present stage of our liberation struggle.â€
