All language subtitles for Music to Madness (Komitas)

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It's not safe here.

They want to be rid of us.

- His life itself is a metaphor

of the Armenian history.

It's like a personification
of our history of centuries.

Were we as a talented people,

given the way we have
been geographically

vulnerable to all
invasions from the East

coming to the west.

You know, given our history,

it's a miracle of
miracles that we have

survived as a people.

We are still Armenians.

An ancient people of
culture and dreams.

- When I was a little
girl, in San Francisco

with my grandma
Mary, grandma and I,

I would always hear
grandma singing songs

and she would sing
these old Armenian songs

and I didn't
understand the language

and I didn't know who wrote it

but those songs
unconsciously went in me

and they stayed there
and they ruminated

and it helped me become who
I am now as an Armenian.

Komitas, his music
taught me who I am.

- My mother learned all
this beautiful songs

direct from Komitas Vardapet

and many years later in 50s,

in grammar school, our principal
taught us Komitas songs

and through Komitas songs, we
appreciate Armenian heritage

culture and Armenian life.

- His contribution is so
broad and comprehensive.

You have the spiritual,
the religious.

You also have the secular.

You know, he's secular
music is just as fascinating

as his religious
music and for him

to bring these two
together in a way

encompasses and embraces
the wealth of our culture.

While it is
predominately religious

and yet at the same time there
is this secular side of it.

- had many loses as a child.

He lost his mother during
the first year of his life

and then during the
first decade of his life,

he had many losses.

He lost his father
and then he lost

his rapprochement for education.

His grief was so immense

that he started to
use the dissociation,

meaning like he put
himself in his own

where one doesn't feel any pain.

He used to wander the
streets of Kutahya .

Despite all this, he still
had his passion for singing

and his beautiful voice and
not only the church appreciated

his singing but also his
friends on the street.

They would ask him to
sing, he will sing,

they'll give him food.

They shared his food with him.

So that helped him
to make friends.

So in Komitas' life,
it's very interesting

how always, trauma was
juxtaposed with his immense

musical talent
which empowered him.

The two together
always balanced out

and this is why in his childhood

as long as he was able
to use his creativity,

his music, his singing, that
connected him to people.

- And so Komitas in
effect in his very person

personifies Armenian history.

Which in effect was a
series of genocides.

What happened to us
as a people in 1915

is the last straw that
broke the camels back

so to speak.

- Consider a
million people dying

or six million people dying,

we can't identify with that.

I mean it's a statistics.

But when you see how it
impacts on one person,

that you can identify with.

- His whole life had been
surrounded with Armenian

and Turkish music and he
grew such a great love

for the folk music of the
Armenians and the Turks

which I think
contributed to his genius

in his later life.

One day, he's just singing
a nice old Turkish song

and this priest is
passing by his house

and he hears this beautiful
strong lovely voice

and he tells his aunt and uncle

that he wants to
take him Etchmiadzin

and he wants him to sing
in front of the Catholicos

and they agree and they
taken him to Etchmiadzin

to the mother church
and he has him sing

for the Catholicos
and the Catholicos

is just amazed what a
wonderful, beautiful,

strong voice this young boy has

and he says to him, Listen,

you're going to be
in the church choir,

we're gonna train you.

So they decide to send
him to Tiflis, Georgia

to the famous Armenian
composer of sacred music,

Armenian circuit
music, Yekmalyan

and Yekmalyan realizes
the genius quality.

So the Catholicos decides
to send him to Berlin

to the university to
now start studying

classical music and
learning about Bach,

about Brahms, about Beethoven,

all the classical composers,
he starts learning about

and at the same time, he
starts formally learning

the folk idiom.

Arabic music, Turkish
music, Greek music,

Jewish music, he starts
learning in a very formal way.

So now, he comes
back to Istanbul

and he puts together
this 300 boy's chorus.

- Komitas' composition
of the divine literature

really stands out among others

in that he has really captured

the very mystical essence
of the diving literature.

One could interpret
the divine literature

a variety of ways

but there is always this
mystical element in it.

In that it is a
journey to heaven

and as worshipers, we
follow the celibate priest

in this journey to heaven.

It's like heaven also comes
down to meet us halfway

in between and to capture
this spiritual encounter

between us worshipers,
humans, and the divine,

putting these two
elements together.

Komitas has done it
so remarkable well.

- I was astonished,
I was surprised

that when the
Turks were planning

to annihilate our nation,

not only Komitas,
or other intellectuals

but the whole nation,
Komitas part of it

was thinking of
opening a conservatory

for the Turks in Constantinople.

Sensitive heart

and the thinking mind
of the Turkish nation,

I wish this for
you Turkish people.

- The Turkish language was
imposed on him as a child.

Was imposed on Armenians

but despite of that fact, he
did not feel any animosity

neither towards the
Turks or the critics.

Actually, his mother
created songs and in Turkish

and when later on Komitas
returned to Kutahya

he collected still
people of Kutahya

were singing his mother's song

and he collected them

and he used to sing them.

So for him, music that
was the global language.

It was not Turkish,
it was not Kurdish,

it was not Armenian,
music was global for him.

I tried to get closer to see

what the place they
wouldn't let me.

What has he done
to deserve this?

- They're geographically
all from this area.

They live together, they
talk with each other,

they laugh together, the
children play together

and then all of
a sudden one day,

but it's not like that.

It seems that way but
there's growing unrest

all the time, growing unrest.

- In the case of the Armenians,

certainly Hamidian
Massacres of the 1890s

and the massacres
of 1908 and 1909

were signs that things
were deteriorating

and the fact that Turkey was,

the Ottoman Empire was losing

all of its European possessions.

- Conditions radically
changed with World War I.

As Turkey enters the
war in November of 1914,

as a ally of Germany and
the Austro-Hungarian Empire,

it is catapulted into
a new sociological,

cultural, political moment

and part of that moment,
of course, means that

there is now national
militarization.

During times of war
and as historians

have come to quote this,

total war, societies
become militarized

and obsessed with
national security

and it becomes much
easier to carry out acts

of violence inside the
country during war time

than it ever would
be during peace time.

So the war provided
the young Turk regime,

the CUP, especially
with Talaat Pasha

as the Administer
of the Interior,

with an opportunity
to solve it's

perceived domestic
security crisis

with it's largest Christian
minority, the Armenians.

- It just didn't happen one day.

It was happening and
happening and happening

and then all of a
sudden, it was huge.

- Whole sale massacre
and deportation,

forced marches, rape,
torture, and destruction

of whole cultural entities.

Cities, towns, villages,
libraries, churches,

could be carried out without
anybody on the outside

having too much visible
notion of what was going on

because the war create chaos,
distraction for everybody

and so the war is
important in context

for this event.

It's arguable that the
Young Turk government

could not have carried
out genocide as it did

without the screen of
World War I as its cover

and its total militarizing
social enterprise.

Dearest Margret,

I wish to be with
you in Paris instead

of this oppressive environment

of what now is Constantinople.

- Margret Popian came from
a highly educated family,

she came from Georgia
and then her family

moved to Paris.

Margret befriended Komitas,

Komitas befriended Margret.

Their relationship
was very multilayered,

sophisticated, subtle,
and it's difficult

to put it in any certain mold.

Just to give you
the understanding

of what their relationship was,

when Komitas came from Egypt,

all he had conquered Egypt,

he had given two
concert in Cairo

and in Alexandria

and the people there,
they felt that Komitas

brought with him piece of
Armenia to this foreign lands

and he came and they
showered him with gifts

so his self esteem
was very strong

and he felt so
good about himself

and this was in 19
somewhat, of 1911,

he came to Paris.

He knocks on the
door of Margret.

Margret says,
"Well here you are.

I'm going on vacation
of Isle of White,

why don't you come with me?

You look exhausted."

And here they go together
to Isle of White.

They stay in this little inn.

He plays the music,
they go on the beach,

to for taking long walks

and here was this celibate
priest with this celibate woman

not married musician.

Sophisticated culturally,
embedded in the musical world

of France, of Paris at the time.

They went on vacation together

and they had the courage to
be together at that time.

Their friendship told them
that we need each other.

I'm in God's hands

but surely I will be rested.

- The priest of Atraban,
Grigoris Balakian,

who was arrested on the night

of April 24th in
Constantinople and survived.

The next four years in the
killing fields of Turkey

to write an
extraordinary memoir,

called Armenian Golgotha.

In Armenian Golgotha,
the explicit impression

that is conveyed is one
of shock and bewilderment.

One of confusion and disbelief.

Balakian is a high ranking

inside the patriarch
cave in Constantinople

and is a kind of
emissary ambassador

from the patriarch cave
to Europe and to Russia.

He's a very worldly guy.

In disbelief to this
storm, this bloody storm

as he calls it, that
has been brewing,

the impression is this
can't be happening.

We have had close
relations with the Ottoman

ruling leadership.

We know Talaat in particular.

We are in communication with
the Sublime Porte regularly.

How could this plan be
evolving in front of our eyes?

A policeman who felt

that his job was to arrest me.

- How one day they
just came along

and pulled all the academics.

It sounds like they just
one day they did this.

You don't just one day
decide that you're gonna

get rid of somebody.

It's an actual plan,
it's a political plan,

it's a governmental
bureaucratic kind of plan,

and then they call
on the preparator.

The one who's at the
trough doing the work

and say gather those people up.

It was just a precaution,

I imagine, perhaps because
of the bombardment.

- There were rumors that the
police was gathering names

in cafes where Armenian
intellectuals gathered

and they were started to

take up the papers, news papers

and look at the signatures
and found out the names

of the people who
wrote the editorials.

And no it did not stop them

in 1895 or even just
six years ago in Aldana.

But those were the
days of the sultan.

We now have a constitution
that guarantees us.

- Greeks, the
Armenians, the Arabs,

and others supported the
Great Revolution of 1908.

The somewhat velvet revolution,

called the Young Turk revolution

which deposed the
sultan Abdul Hamid II

from political power.

So July, 1908,
the Ottoman Empire

is no longer a theocracy.

It was perceived as a very
hopeful exciting moment.

A moment that might
finally implement

the long hoped for reforms

for minority groups
inside of Turkey,

constitutional reforms
that had been promised

since the mid 19th century,

a time that was
perceived as bringing

a new multicultural
potential equality

through the Ottoman empire

and long sought after change.

My friends, you must not worry,

the constitution is for us.

You must, I must believe this.

- But the revolution
was short lived.

Within half a year, the sultans

counter revolutionary forces

are trying to bring down

the new secular
Young Turk government

and I would note that that
government of 1908, 1909,

is still a moderate
hopeful, more inclusive

and liberal group

but with a succession
of violent events,

the counter revolution
that I just mentioned

in 1909, and then the outbreak

of the two Balkan
Wars, 1912 and 1913,

the moderate new Young
Turks were gotten rid of

by violent revolution
by this new group,

Enver, Talaat, and Djemal.

Who would seize power in 1913

and institute and implement

more extreme nationalism

and one that was
predicated on a pan Turkish

ideology that
advocated that Turkey

could only be
restored to its health

and well being by purging Turkey

of its minority elements.

Its minority population,

especially the
Christian minorities.

So pan Turkism now evolves
as a more virulent ideology

of the new Ittihad party,

the new Committee of
Union and Progress party

and we are in a very
different place by 1914

as the war comes.

We have a group running
Turkey with a staunch

and extreme nationalist
ideology to make Turkey

Islamically homogenous.

- They didn't have orders
to kill them immediately

but they were pre planning,
they were weakening them.

This were all very
highly educated,

intellectually
sophisticated people

who had ideas about
liberty, about democracy,

so they knew that all
what is happening to them

was illegal and it
was not to be done.

So therefore, to be
able to break them,

they used all this secrecy

and predictability,
this matter of cruelty,

psychological cruelty.

Come on my friend, this terrible

joke is nearly over.

- It was done in a
such a secretive way.

In the middle of the night,
they came to their homes

and they say, please come to
the central police station.

The commissioner has a
few questions to ask you.

Sometimes people left with,
you know, their pajamas on

and they went because they
were just very consciously,

the were going to be
asked a few questions.

Something very funny which
confuses them even further

that among the group,
there was some other people

who didn't belong
to this intellectual

of Armenians of Constantinople.

For example, there was
the Butcher of the street.

Armenian Butcher of the street

but his name happened
to be the same name

as another Armenian intellectual

so the police didn't
differentiate who was,

so this butcher was there
with his bloody apron on.

The people didn't understand
what he was doing there

which was further confusing them

and they thought,
this must be a joke.

- The CUPs plan to solve it's
perceived Armenian problem

through genocide,
through mass killing,

forced marches,
and the destruction

of Armenian cultural artifacts

and architecture and towns
and villages and cities.

Evolves, it begins within
the context of World War I

began as Enver proclaimed
the Armenian soldiers

at the Russian Turkish border

to be unreliable,
to be sagacious,

even though Enver
made a disastrous

military blunder in the
Battle of Sarikamish

in late December of 1914
and early January of 1915,

he really scapegoated
the Armenian soldiers.

So by the winter of 1915,
the Turkish government

has decided to strip all
the Armenian soldiers

of their weapons and put
them into labor battalions

and now, they
become sitting ducks

to be mass killed.

So they will be
killed systematically

throughout the winter and
into the summer of 1915

and by this method,
the Turkish government

has already succeeded
in eradicating

the most potent part of
the Armenian population,

its able bodied
man from the ages

of about 15 to 45.

The next population
that would be targeted

would be the intellectuals
and the cultural leaders

and of course this brings us
into the story of Komitas.

In Constantinople, now
Istanbul, on April 24 of 1915,

about 250 to 300
Armenian cultural leaders

were arrested and
by cultural leaders,

I mean poets, playwrights,
novelists, journalists,

teachers, academics, clergy,
wealthy philanthropists

of culture, publishers,
magazine editors, and so on.

All rounded up, arrested
from their houses,

taken from their houses
in the middle of night

and deported by bus,
ferry, and then train

to two prisons about 200
miles East of Istanbul.

Most of them were killed and
tortured in these prisons.

A few survived and
this act would be

reenacted in the summer
of 1915 several times

throughout Turkey in
order to eliminate

the cultural elite
and the intellectuals

and the logic here
is very obvious.

You want to cut the
head off of the culture

to pull its tongue out,
to silence its voice

because once you get
rid of the able bodied

man who could resist massacre,

you want to get rid of
those who can speak,

protest, write, and communicate
with the outside world,

so no you've gotten
rid of that group.

- They didn't know
what was going on

cause no one would reveal
that information to them.

No one would give
them that information.

Whats happening?

They could ask that question
as many times as they wanted

but the answer would
never come back to them.

They just kept doing
what they had to do.

That is, I'm gonna
get up in the morning

and I'm gonna take the food

and when they ask me to
leave I'm gonna leave

because when they would ask
them when are they coming home,

they did not get an answer

and then one day they
go and they're all gone.

- By the late spring of 1915,

the bulk of the Armenian
population that's left in Turkey

includes women,
children, the elderly.

There are still some
man and some boys

but mostly women,
children, the elderly

and they will now
be arrested on mass

and marched south and east

to the Syrian desert

and if they hadn't
been killed by the time

they got to the Syrian desert,

they were to die in encampments

and camps in this
ungodly hot arid region,

circled around the famous
epicenter of Dier ez-Zor

which is really the
kind of Auschwitz

of the Armenian genocide

where 400 to 450,000
people perished.

Now add that about
1.2 to 1.5 million,

that's an enormous
epicenter of death.

- Komitas identified
himself with Armenian people

and here they were being
killed on a massive scale.

It was crazy what was
going on, it was insane

what was going on and
how Komitas was going

to be able to accept
what had happened,

what was happening around him.

So here it was, magnified
100 times his childhood.

- If somebody's saying,
quick quick quick hurry,

we're leaving.

We're all packed up,
we're waiting for you

and there's Turkish
soldiers there

saying get ready, why
are you taking so much?

You don't have to take so much.

You're probably gonna come back.

We don't know.

Don't lock the door.

You don't have to lock the door.

There's nothing to protect here.

You don't have to
worry about it.

Get in the line.

Let's go and there's stories

where they just
get into that mode

and they just follow the
orders and they do it

because they really don't
have the full picture.

They don't see, oh we're
gonna go to New York and back.

They don't even have
destination in mind.

We're just moving.

We're deporting you,

we're getting you out of here

and when this is all
over, you can come back

and they don't understand why

they just know
they're doing that.

We can go to Guatemala,
where one day

the government sends
the perpetrators out.

We need to get rid of all
the men in the villages

and so they separate
them, take them

in hearing distance of
the women and children

and shoot them all

and leave the
women and children.

Just to get rid of that
indigenous culture in Guatemala.

They were the people
that were there first.

It's just like us.

We were the people
that were there first.

Let's get them out of here.

- a lot of the killing
was done by hand,

it was done with
farm implements,

cannery and butcher tools,

it was war time and
the Turkish government

was trying to save its resources

for the killing it
had to do on the front

and so the killing was gruesome.

It's closer to the
kind of killing

that was done during
the Rwandan genocide.

- It was just a matter of
getting rid of these people

and, I think that,

I think that the
people at the bottom

that were doing the
work, the killing,

just get so desensitized that
it's just nothing to them

and in the case of
the Guatemalans,

the anthropologist
who's doing the work

in Guatemala to open the
graves and look at these bones,

he notices that it's
not a matter of them

just shooting them, but they
would come and shoot them

and then hit them
and then carve them

and continue to kill them
and kill them and kill them

when they're already
dead in what he states,

is an overkill.

It's an overkill

and in Rwanda, the story
was that one of the

perpetrators said
the body was soft

and it was easy and it's like

we already hunted
them and run them down

and so then we just kill them

and then we just slice them up

because they're
soft and it's easy.

- During the Armenian genocide

we have a lot of butchering done

and again, women and children,

it was a high degree
of sexual violence,

of rape and of the
abduction and theft

of women into harems
and into slave auctions.

- And the small
children that were

two and three and
five and seven and 10

were experiencing things that

were, that are
totally unexplainable

if you're a child.

If you're three years old and
you've lived 1,000 days or so,

what can you understand about
seeing a bloated dead body

along your path?

What can you
understand about that?

It's not a cow or
a dog or a pig,

it's a human, it's somebody
that you're walking next to.

It's the possibility
of being you

and you can't even
make sense of that

because you're so tiny

and your thought process is so
inexperienced with violence.

So then what happens is that

depression and,

and the successive
images of violence

are penetrated in the thought
process of these children

and they grow up, some of
them losing their parents,

some of them never seeing
their parents again,

some of them running
and hiding and watching

other atrocities

and with no one to
talk to about it

expect experiencing a fear

that they don't even understand.

Why am I so afraid?

Why am I so afraid?

I don't even understand this

cause they don't
understand death.

They're all new.

- What happens to people
when we've had this

wound that no one
wants to acknowledge

and how do you deal with that?

- This process of
genocide and when

we're having it occur today

and we can't step in
and nip it in the bud

so that we don't have
it get to this point,

that's scary.

That's very scary, that
we are not wise enough

to say, all these steps
are happening again

and we're in the 21st century

and we're not gonna stop it

because we're not sure
if that's what it is

and then when it's over we say,

I think this might
of been genocide

and then we have this whole
society that's damaged again.

- After World War I, I
mean the story did get out.

The story was big news,
it was big news certainly

that Armenians were
Christians and there were

so many missionaries who
reported on what was happening,

the relief efforts and
Morgenthau's statements,

his book came out
immediately after the war,

actually during the war.

There was a lot
of attention paid

but then when Otto
Turk basically restored

Turkish sovereignty and decided

that this shouldn't be part

of the national
narrative of Turkey,

the story was largely suppressed

and almost every country
that they had relations with,

Turkey, there were economic
interest from oil leases

that they got from
dismantling the Ottoman Empire

if you were interested
in containing communism,

you had Turkey there.

If you were Russians and
you had a large Armenian

population, you didn't
want there to be too much

Armenian nationalism,

which might draw you into a war.

- Every village, town,
and Armenian quarter

of a city was emptied of
its Armenian population

and the death tolls range
from 1.2 to 1.5 million.

The fact remains that out
of about two to 2.5 million

Armenians in Turkey in 1914,

less than 100,000
remained after 1920

to give you a sense of
the eradication process

of this particular genocide.

At the cusp of the modern age.

- The 12 month genocide

when genocide reenacts

all

the many many
loses, the poverty,

loss of his friends,

loss of his community.

Mass murder of his
intellectual friends

with whom all he knew
in Constantinople.

Our journey's almost over.

A place called Cankiri.

- The Cankiri experience
was very pivotal

in what happened later
on in Komitas' life.

The majority of
Armenian intellectuals

of Constantinople
were rounded up.

They were in the same party.

The didn't know what was
going to happen to them.

They were not told, why
were they were arrested

and were they were being taken.

- The journey is marked by

a horrendous night
at the central prison

in the center of
Constantinople Istanbul.

During this
they had used many vehicles.

Initially they walked
and then they were put

on a steam ship and then
they were put on trains

and then pushed in carts.

Just imagine yourself,

you're being driven
destination you don't know.

You are being taken, you
don't know the reason

why you're taken away.

- The Armenians are surrounded
by militia and police

in large numbers,
you know to the point

where they're shocked that
there so many people on them

and of course, they
don't really understand

why this is happening to them.

That's what's like dramatic
in the Balakian memoir.

Everybody's saying
whats going on?

What have we done?

Why is this happening?

- During that three days,
that lasted 72 hours,

from Constantinople to
Central Jail and then

on those different
transportation modalities

until Ayas and Cankiri.

Nobody protested.

Really, there was this
still not understandable

to me, helplessness

but over the centuries,
being subjected

to the will of a dictatorship,

you lose that common sense
that some of the others.

Who wrote his memoirs about
road to Cankiri with Komitas,

let's say that we were aware
that something was cooking

and very interestingly,
Armando says,

like a sheep, taken
to the slaughter.

As if our coalition
was taken away from us

and he described that
helplessness and hopelessness

and then he says on the road,

we realize we better
start to understand

and watch what's going on

and because he put
on that aloofness,

he was able to survive.

- To see this in a
narrative account

of the journey to Cankiri
is a great indication

of the sense of shock and terror

that defined the states of minds

of many of the cultural leaders.

Komitas is probably
the most dramatic

in that particular moment.

All of my work, I left behind.

My papers are so fragile.

They're sitting there in room.

- It was immense
pressure on the mind

of everyone, especially
on the mind of Komitas.

At that moment, he
started to like,

somebody else was
thinking what was going

to happen to my money,
Komitas started to think,

what will happen to my
work that I left behind?

All the work of my life's effort

of trying to find the foundation
of Armenian.

All his works of his
multiple orchestration

and the Armenian songs.

That loss was immense.

My music, where is my music?

- That was enough to
break him and it broke him

and very simple
cruelty by

was the tip of the iceberg.

After that, he was scared.

He was hiding.

He didn't know where
to put himself.

He wanted, I suppose he just
wanted to close his eyes

and vanish from
all that atrocity.

- The scenes really depict
a kind of reign of terror

that's happening
for this arrested

subset of the
Armenian population.

Look there, did you see him?

The is hiding.

They are hiding in wait for us.

- along the way, people
are already beginning

to break down and one of
the most dramatic portraits

of a breakdown is
Balakian's depiction

of his carriage mate, Komitas,

who begins to lose his composure

and they're in the carriage now,

they're in a carriage

and the carriage is
a pretty rough ride

just on wooden planks,
bouncing pretty hardly

on this rough terrain

and Komitas asks
Balakian to pray for him

and he tells Balakian
that he sees fingers

coming out from behind trees

and there are no
figures coming out,

Komitas is already beginning to,

You know, become
extremely paranoid

and deranged, unhinged.

- When he start to be delusion,

he start to have illusions,

he started to make mistakes
between animals and people.

He started to see a donkey

and he thought that
was a.

So he started to have
secondary delusions

that were.

I'm afraid.

To a stake,.

They had lost that under
that tremendous pressure

fear anxiety and the future and

to fear of losing
his life's work.

I can't hear the music.

- One of the unique dimensions
of the Armenian genocide

is the eradication
of the intellectual

and cultural leadership
of a whole ethnic group.

There were a few
survivors but if we put

this generation of intellectuals

into perspective,
we're looking at

the emergence of
Armenian modernism

in the second decade
of the 20th century

and some of the most
important writers

in modern Armenian literature,

Danial Varoujan, Adom Yarjanian

who went by the
pen name Siamanto

and others were important voices

coming to their own,
they were all young

and they were all snuffed out.

I would mention as
well, Krikor Zohrab,

fiction writer, they
were all snuffed out

and journalists,
musicians, composers,

Komitas is the best known.

He was snuffed out.

- The social structure of the
community in Constantinople

was all broken down.

The Armenian patriarchy
was closed down.

The government had closed
down the Armenian patriarchy

and so still some of
his friends, families,

came to help him,
gave him a hand.

They took him to one of
the isles not very far

from Constantinople.

He recovered there.

He started to play some music
and he was feeling much better

and his fear of the
coming after him

was significantly diminished

but he stayed
there a few months,

he had to come back
to Constantinople

and then he had
no funds anymore.

He ran out of funds.

He had no other choice but
to escape into madness.

On there is no feeling,
there is illusion of world

where you make up things
and you live with those

and reality's too harsh,
too painful to cope.

He came so depressed

they had to hospitalize
him in Constantinople.

It was a military hospital.

Imagine Komitas was being
treated in a military hospital.

Fear had set in his heart
and he was terrified

that we as going to
be taken to

or to be taken away again.

He lived in a constant fear.

By 1918, after the armistice,

his friends, Komitas' friends,

realized that he's
not gonna get better.

Turkish hospital.

Komitas' relationship with
everybody in Constantinople

was severed, he
didn't trust anybody,

he was taken by anxiety and fear

and they realized he
need somewhere else.

Maybe in Paris,
his beloved friend

were helping to come
out of his isolation

and interjection of
the outside world.

He had conquered
France and Paris before

and now he was coming
back as a broken man.

His pride hurt and how was
he going to face Margret?

He was now a sick man.

Margret became his care
taker, his next of kin.

Throughout Komitas' archives,
files, medical files,

brought in Ville-Evrard
and Villejuif,

these are the two French
mental health institutions

where Komitas has stayed from
1918 until 1935, he's there.

You see Margret's
signature on receipts.

Payment of bills, on the
inventory of his clothes

and everything what a
mother, sister, wife,

next of kin will do.

So Margret Balbian was
all of that in one person.

The mother that he had
lost very early one,

the sister that he didn't have,

the wife that he couldn't have

because he was a celibate priest

and finally next of kin,
a daughter or somebody.

- Komitas' life, even
through the very end,

is tragic illness

and it's effects
on his incapacity

to produce what
he was so talented

and equipped to do at
the height of his career.

All that had kind of dwindled,

gone down the drain, so to speak

and it continues to illustrate
our history to this day

in that we Armenians,
everyone of us,

we are survivors of
the Armenian genocide

in that both survivors and
victims at the same time

because given our absorption
with the genocide,

our consumption with it,

has denied us of learning
more about our real history,

our true culture.

Armenian civilization
in it's richness.

- We have so much but
we have lost so much

and when I am
singing these songs

it is a funeral dirge,

that's what I'm
singing at that time

because I feel, I feel
what those words are saying

and they're telling me the loss.

- We're reminded that Lemkin,

the father of the
Genocide Convention,

pointed to the
destruction of culture

as an important part of
the genocidal process

and we don't, we don't
only want to focus on

the killing of people,
I mean that's important,

but also the loss of culture.

That is the loss of
libraries, churches,

museums, artifacts, books,

and the makers themselves.

The cultural producers.

The playwrights, the
poets, the fiction writers,

the journalists.

So the assault on
the intellectuals

in Constantinople and
elsewhere in Harpert in Vaughn,

in Di Ar Bek here, represents
this piece of genocidal

destruction, so it's
a very significant act

that so many and almost
all of these figures

were wiped out.

- He went from village
to village and collected

over 3,000 Armenian folk songs

that as a result of
the Armenian genocide

would of been totally lost

and we would of been devoid

of these beautiful Armenian
village songs for eternity.

- Suffered itself as a culture

for a long time
because of the absence

of the Armenian and
also of the Greek

and the Assyrian presence.

Because of the contributions
of these culture groups

to commerce, agriculture,
and the other trades

and professions,
medicine, pharmacies,

intellectual production,
all this was gone

and the remaining
Armenian population

which would continue to
dwindle, dwindle, dwindle

as would the remaining
Greek population.

That was most
dramatically dealt with

with the Greek population
exchange of the mid 1920s

between Greece and Turkey

but even so, in
the Armenian case,

the Armenians became
a disappeared group.

A silenced fragment of
a once thriving culture

within Ottoman Turkey

and the narrative about
what happened to them

was silenced by Turkish taboos

and Turkish law.

The story of the Armenian
genocide ,

the identity of
Armenians was hush hush.

Armenians could not speak
their own language in public.

They were heavily Islamized
in a public sense.

They were allowed to worship

and they could speak what
they wanted to at home

but the Armenians became
a disappeared minority.

- Komitas had no parents
but Armenian people

adopted him and he started
to identify with them

and when after the
Armenian genocide 1915,

when the people with
whom he identified

and the people who adopted him,

Armenian people adopted
him as their beloved son

when these people
started to be massacred

and on a massive scale,

that trauma was
too much for him.

- My mother was upset
what happened to Komitas,

very much disturbed
and I remember one

of our famous writers says,

I forgive Turks if only
they would save Komitas.

- This huge baggage of
the Armenian genocide

on his psyche was
a way to recover

from this, it should
have been a miracle

and there was no such a miracle

and he died in 1935 after,

after a physical illness.

He developed an
infection in his foot

which became a blood infection

and then he died from it.

There was no antibiotics
to treat him at the time.

So here, he melted away.

- When he's taken to the asylum

in Paris, he spent the rest
of his life as a insane man

and he died, you know,
in this horrible manner.

- In his childhood,
although he was deprived

of many many things, but
still he had his creativity,

he had his voice,

it could sing, that was a
way of expressing his pain

and through creativity,
through music.

I will show you how to read the notes.

You must trust the music.

You see, the lower
notes are necessary

to provide a measure
for the high notes.

Sometimes we must
trust the suffering

that it will bring us through.

- Oh he sees humanity, how
we outreach us to the others,

not only to the Armenians.

I believe that if Komitas

after outliving the
genocide and the exile,

he was in normal
health condition,

he was going to be a
source of inspiration

not only for the Armenians
but even for the Turks.

- The powerful story of rebirth

is the story of the Armenia
disappeared world wide.

The rebirth of Armenian culture

in communities Europe,
in North America,

in US and Canada
and South America,

in Australia, in
the Middle East,

especially in Syria and Lebanon

and in Russia.

In the soviet republic,
now the independent

Republic of Armenia,

who would imagine there could
be a republic of Armenia

95 years ago?

So Armenians have
emerged from fire,

from the ashes.

- We are more than victims
of the genocide, okay?

We are survivors.

- Music, I think, is a great
way of connecting with people

because it goes directly
through emotions.

You know, what does
this mean, you know?

It really is how
we feel about it

and I think Komitas, he
can play that kind of role

as a bridge.

- Because his songs
touches everything,

the real life of
the Armenian people.

- He must have been a
very sensitive deep person

to penetrate the very
emotions of human feelings.

This too comes out in his music.

What makes us human
in the final analysis

is that we have
mutual human feelings.

Regardless of our
ethnicity, of our race,

whatever, you know
the bottom line,

there are there's mutual
common human feelings,

that bind us together
as human family.

Komitas has penetrated
to the bottom of this.

- Komitas does not belong
only to the Armenians,

does not belong only to
the years that he lived,

Komitas is not the tragedy

but Komitas is a gift.

Komitas is God's
presence among us

through his life
through a service,

through his work, and
through his immortality.

- You need not be an
Armenian to feel at home

with Komitas.

You sense his humanity, his
sensitivity in his music.

There was a king of songs.

A minstrel poet
who played and sang

the nation songs of Armenia
for princes and kings.

The minstrel lost his position

when he fell out of
favor with the king.

It was only then when he was
truly free as a.