Call Number	AP 288
Part Number	Part I - Syro Malabar Church
Title	Rare melodies from the Syro Malabar Requiem Qurbana in Syriac.
Duration	10:44
Place of Recording	Major Archiepiscopal Marth Mariam Archdeacon Pilgrim Church , Kuravilangad
Date of Recording	5 July 2013
Youtube URL	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZQIzORsyvU
Video Segment (s)

Notes

Recorded at the premises of the Marth Maryam Church at Kuravilangad, Kerala, on Friday, 5 July 2013.

In spite of the poor audio-visual quality, this video provides a few forgotten melodies from the Requiem Qurbana in Syriac in the Syro Malabar Church from the Syriac era (before 1962). The recording took place immediately after a solemn celebration of Syriac Qurbana at the Marth Maryam Church at Kuravilangad in the Kottayam district of Kerala, India. July 5 of 2013 was the first Friday of the month. The church has been scheduling Syriac solemn Qurbana on the first Friday of every month. This gives an opportunity to the older faithful who grew up in the 1950s to relive the experience from their younger days, and for the younger generation a window to the distant past of the liturgical history of their mother church. One of the church musicians, Bennedy, fortunately, remembered a few melodies from the Requiem Qurbana from the past. We may not have an opportunity to hear these melodies from anybody else.

The recording took place in the courtyard of the church. Devotees were coming and going in hundreds. We get an opportunity to see the enthusiasm of the faithful. The visual also shows images of musical instruments on the facade of the side chapel.
Interestingly, this was the very first video recording session of the Aramaic Project. We are grateful to Kuriachan Palackal for organizing and managing the logistics of the recording in my absence. I had just landed in Kerala a day before and was still in jet lag.
This is one among the many videos that have been in our archive for all these years. We hope to post other videos in the near future.

Joseph J. Palackal, CMI
New York
30 September 2022