Historian and curator of the AGBU Nubarian Library in Paris, Boris Adjemian reveals a fascinating piece of Armenian history — the story of how 40 Armenian orphans were brought from Jerusalem to Ethiopia in 1924 by the Emperor Haile Selassie to be part of a brass band.
According to Adjemian, the boys were all survivors from the Armenian Genocide and had been brought to the Armenian monastery of St. James in Jerusalem in 1922.
“In 1924, when the Crown Prince Ras Tafari of Ethiopia, who later became Emperor Haile Selassie I, came to Jerusalem, he met with these boys; he offered Armenian Patriarch Yeghishe Turyan to bring them back with him to Ethiopia,” Adjemian explained in an interview with CivilNet.
Why would the Crown Prince of Ethiopia want to take a group of 40 Armenian orphans to Ethiopia? According to the historian, Ras Tafari offered to take the boys in order to create not only his own personal fanfare or brass band but also to have them become the official orchestra for the Ethiopian government.
The most astonishing part of the story is that these boys, aged 12-18 had no musical training or experience. Certainly the Crown Prince of Ethiopia could have hired professional musicians but he decided to bring the Armenian orphans instead. “This can be explained by the special relationship between Armenians and Ethiopians before 1924 and this special relationship is obvious if you look at the role occupied by Armenians servants of the Ethiopian court at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century,” Adjemian explained.
What happened to those boys? There was a signed contract between the Crown Prince and the Armenian Patriarch who signed in the name of AGBU — the orphanage at the monastery was run by the AGBU — and that contract stipulated that the 40 orphans would receive salaries, would have a place to stay and would be trained and educated in the Ethiopian palace.
A Very Armenian Anthem
At the time when the 40 orphans were brought to Ethiopia, there was an Armenian musician who served as the director of the brass band. His name was Kevork Nalbandian and the Emperor asked him to write the official anthem for Ethiopia. Thereby, the first national Ethiopian anthem was written by an Armenian and performed by the Armenian orphans from the Genocide.
Adjemian said that until the collapse of the monarch in 1974, this remained the official national anthem of Ethiopia.
Today, there are very few written sources about the orphans. “We know that at the time, there was an Armenian community in the 1920s of about 1000 people. The orphans were able to integrate into the community and most married into the community,” Adjemian said. “After the end of their five-year contract, some of them left for Europe and the United States and their tracks have been lost.”
However, the majority of the boys stayed on in Ethiopia, built homes and lives, they tried to develop local skills and get jobs. It is said that the Emperor gave them land in order to build their houses in the center of Addis Ababa.
Today there are only about 80 Armenians in Ethiopia. The loss of community members can be attributed to the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974 which led to the exile of most in the community. Boris Adjemian said that many were leaving even before the revolution because of the social and economic conditions in the country, however he was quick to add that there was no policy against the Armenians by Ethiopian authorities, it was simply the difficult conditions.
“The community exists with its institutions, a community council, a church with mass each week, a cemetery, a small school, the Ararat Club which serves as a restaurant – so the community didn’t completely disappear.
