If, in his time, the large Komitas type-setter regarded the flute shevi shepherds as Armenian of the instruments, if the oboe zuma is the instrument of full air par excellence to the country, the doudouk became the identity marker of the Armenian music. Its plaintive sonorities expressing with more the melancholies of people, 3000 year old old man, who through the vicissitudes of a complicated History (putting it at the catches with the Romans, Mèdes, Arabs, Mongols, Persians, Turks) could forge a civilization and a very particular inheritance. A heritage seriously put at evil by the territorial cutting-up of Arménie and the genocide of 1915-1918 of which a million and half of Armenian of the Othoman empire will be victims. 

When well even the followers of the doudouk are legion around the lake Sevan, the players of exception are rare. The instrument does not exceed an octave and a third and has few notes. And all its virtualities thus lie in the virtuosity of the artist, the agility of his fingers, the control of a breath, which requires a daily investment seldom implemented by amateurs. Every ten years besides, in front of 100.000 people, in Gumri "the trophy is held of the Masters", the occasion for a public expert of adouber those which enter the circle very closed of large. In 2002, it is with this recognition that right Lévon Minassian had. A scene which it could divide with Djivan Gasparian, Serguie "Lalig" Garabedian or fire Valodian Haroutiounian, in other words, the fine flower of the instrument. 

Franck Tenaille