Why Armenia?

In Santiago Chile I studied music, mostly jazz and played jazz music on the guitar. But I always had a curiosity for different music. There is different music for everything, there is music you can dance to, music you can relax to but I saw that I really wanted to listen to more eastern music because of the depth it has.

Soon I discovered Armenian music and fell in love with it, especially Komitas. I started listening to it and realized I wanted to learn to play the duduk. There weren’t many Armenians in Chile but I found a duduk teacher in Argentina (Gagik Gasparyan). He hosted me and taught me the basics of the duduk.

I am very grateful to him and his family for welcoming me into their home. I also began singing with the Armenian collective choir in Chile with Nelson Baloian as director. The Armenian community in Chile has always supported all the initiatives I have presented, I am very grateful for opening the doors of their home to me. After some years I decided to go to Armenia to have a direct connection with the culture and music and continuous learning to play the duduk professionally.

Why Duduk?

There is music that offers you more ways to connect with silence, and silence gives you a way to connect with yourself or some essential part of you, its music for silence and that is what I found in the duduk.

I arrived in Armenia for the first time in June 2023 and reached out to some music teachers and tried to learn but it became difficult and I realized the plan may not work and I even thought about going back to Chile. But one day, I was sitting at a café and I recognized Arsen Petrosyan from all my music research and approached him and told him I would like to learn the duduk and he agreed to teach me. Today I feel very gr ateful to be his student and to cultivate a beautiful friendship with him.

The plan was to come to Armenia only for 6 months. At the end of the 6 months, I returned home. The connection with this land, the friendly and special atmosphere, and my interest in improving my skills with the duduk made me return to Armenia after 3 months in Chile. I spent that time organizing a concert of Armenian music with Chilean musicians in the Armenian collective of Chile, and preparing a new trip to Armenia with no return date.

I returned to Armenia in March 2024 to continue my classes and to discover more about Armenia. I discovered AVC to be a good way to draw into the local environment and to collaborate in some way with this land.

Why AVC?

At AVC I had very rich experiences as a Spanish teacher and I had the chance to work with Levon Eskenian of the Gurdjieff Ensemble, one of the highest quality groups of Armenian traditional music, trying to connect Armenian culture with Hispanic countries. AVC not only helped me with customized volunteer placement, but I also really appreciated the support services available to volunteers, such as excursions, Armenian dance classes, the close connection with other volunteers, but mostly it was the support of the great work of the staff members.

In June of 2024, exactly one year after my first arrival, AVC helped organize a small concert where Arsen, myself and a very special Qanon player Astghik Snetsunts performed. It was such a great experience playing the duduk for an audience and then getting a chance to share my experience of being in Armenia with the public.

That small performance was very important because the idea of playing with Arsen and Astghik in a group in trio format gave us the idea of organizing a tour spreading this music outside of Armenia. So I made some contacts and was able to create a musical tour in Latin America and Spain, where we played 6 concerts in Chile, 1 in Colombia, at the World Music Festival and 1 in Spain in the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. It was so amazing because every concert had at least 500 in attendance.

What’s Next?

Armenian music, to me, lets a person feel. It has the energy to take you away from the world and connect with your own spirituality. My background in jazz music was far from this tradition, so I looked for an instrument to take me to this traditional sound and I found the duduk. That drive brought me to Armenia where I am currently living and in the spring Arsen and I will be playing more music together and hosting more concerts, where I look forward to performing Armenian music in Armenia and around the world.

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César Vas is an AVC Alumnus from Santiago, Chile where he owns his own music shop. He studied jazz music and primarily specializes in playing the guitar. He is an amateur singer and trains voraciously with the duduk. As an AVC alumnus, César has found a home in Armenia and his love and passion for music is what led him to orchestrate performances and tours to perform live in and out of Armenia.