Lena Chamamyan

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Lena Chamamyan لينا شماميان
Birth name	Lena Chamamyan
Also known as	Damascene Jasmin
Origin	Damascus, Syria
Genre(s)	Arab pop music, Classic, Arab Tarab, Arabic music, Arabesque music, Music of Egypt, Middle Eastern music
Occupation(s)	Vocals
Years active	2005–present
Website	official website

Lena Chamamyan (Arabic: لينا شماميان) is a Syrian singer of Armenian descent. Born in Damascus, Syria, she started singing at an early age giving her first concert when she was five years old.

1 Life
2 Music
3 Discography
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Life

Lena Chamamyan Was born in Damascus city where she finished her elementary and secondary education through which she held many school concerts. The first of which she held at the age of five. She started to studying music at the age of nine, she graduated from the economics management department at Damascus University in 2002. while she was studying at the higher institution of music in Damascus, she graduated as a classical vocalist in 2007.

Throughout her university education, she joined many workshops in the field of classic music with Gloria Skalki (Italy) Karmen Filarna (Italy) Mia Bits (Netherlands).

She also joined Jazz workshops, most importantly, with the German Accordionist (Manfred Leuschter).this resulted in Lena and Manfred featured on each others albums and many concerts in Syria and Germany. She also worked with many vocalists and musicians of different nationalities in many jazz festivals in Syria.

[edit] Music

The idea of the project was born before Lena started to study music academically. Classic was mixed with oriental jazz and Armenian music to reflect the unique essence of Lena's style as a vocalist. She was charmed from the very beginning by the idea of mixing simple oriental tunes with cords. Many friend from the high institution of music helped Lena understand and conceptualize the project the first of whom was Basel Rajoub who arranged the music and managed the project.

They together won the middle east first award presented by Radio Monte Carlo in 2006 for Hal Asmar Ellon album that was produced by the means of the grant given to him by (al-Mawred al-Thakafi) institution (Egypt). This helped to enrich the artistic abilities reflected on their second step of the project, the album Shamat.

The thesis being reflected in the steps of the project can be explained in two points: First of all, it's an attempt to revive folkloric songs, especially Syrian ones, in a modern style and arrangement keeping the originality of the tunes and the lyrics in order to create a link between monotonous oriental classic music and contemporary world music that has a harmonic accompany and different musical styles and instruments that contribute to enriching the tune and to activate the beauty of its genre which helps world cultural contact by forming a specific unique language especially outside the Arab world. The second point is to introduce original compositions allowing a more free space of tunes and lyrics as in Sha'am and Magic from Shamat album. Composition will get more focus in the next albums.