btwn Earth+Sky: Lara Sarkissian, The Forgotten USB - Stepanakert's Music Store 2016

Selections from a special personal archive of mine, from a USB drive I thought I had lost — In 2016, I was staying in Stepanakert, Artsakh for a couple of months. An Armenian Stepanakert local named Saro, had been running this tiny music store there for 20 years (which was also a GIF/wedding photo animation business on the side). It was my birthday that day, and we got to listen and pick hundreds of tracks from his computer. He burned these for me onto CDs or dropped them on this USB drive. Tracks range from Armenian, Uzbek, Tajik, Iranian, Russian, Lezgin, Georgian, Greek, Soviet — pop, trance, EDM, early 2000s ringtones, and more. As Stepanakert and the rest of Artsakh faced occupation post-2020 war, this resulted in the displacement of indigenous Armenian families, local businesses and livelihood. I hope Saro is still out there in the world, running a music shop and sharing this magic <3.