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Press “play” on Nayri, the debut full length from songwriter Laura Zarougian which we’re pleased to premiere today, and you’re greeted by a voice as timeless as the culture of her family’s native Armenia. Her voice, ethereal and shimmering, is imbued with an inner glow. World weary yet proud, Nayri, like the artist herself in many ways, is a balancing act of two worlds: heavy and light, opaque and gin clear.
Caught somewhere between east and west lies a tiny landlocked country of ancient rock, traditions, and song. Thousands of miles away, Zarougian was raised next to the vast Atlantic Ocean, nestled between two distinct musical styles. Her childhood was a soundtracked by a mixtape of sixties and seventies folk legends and the Armenian folk songs her grandparents passed down like water from the mountains. “I call the genre ‘Armenian Cowgirl’” says Zarougian, “because the themes are often about the stories of my ancestors, through my own interpretation of the American music I love.”
Lyrically, her themes explore her Armenian and Middle Eastern identities. “I was first drawn to folk music because of the stories. I’d get pulled into the world of the narrator or characters” explains Zarougian. “I didn’t sit down to write the songs on the album with a theme in mind, but I was definitely conscious of the story I was telling. As a granddaughter of genocide survivors, I understand the importance of passing on memories through song- from Beirut to Cairo to the Armenian highlands. My story is one of refugees, displaced people whose voices were and are still underrepresented.” As Armen Saryan of iHeart Media puts it, Nayri, “moves us in such a way that we long for home, and a place far beyond us, all at the same time.”
In a synthesis as Zarougian concludes “My album, Nayri, traces the stories of my family’s migrations through time and space.”
