Transcript

Location: Saint Cloud Street and Rose Street

Richard Breaux: There was an estate sale on the North side of La Crosse. It was at 806 Rose Street, which, it turns out, was the Addis’s home or at least had been the Addis’s home since about 1924 or so. But by this point, I am a few years into my record collecting, so then one of the things I do is I go to these estate sales, occasionally, they have newer records, they have vinyl, y’know, 33, 45, but I’m really in search of 78 rpm records. That was November 7th, of 2015. 

But I saw records on the floor in a sorta, y’know, in a neatly organized stack. The next album or two I looked in, the 78 rpm records, were all in Arabic. And I remember being like, “What on earth?! Why are there records with Arabic script on them here in La Crosse?” And then I take those home, and I immediately try to research, you know, why these, why these records were there.

I would go to the public library, start researching, find out La Crosse had this Syrian and has this Syrian and Lebanese community. People have been in La Crosse just for at the time, just over a century. These records have their origins, at least in people who immigrated from greater Syria. But much of what I found, really, was through the La Crosse Tribune, then talking to people. The records had belonged to Elaine’s father. Partly, I know this because there was a homemade recording. So most of the recordings that were 78 rpm were commercial, but there were some home recordings of Siad Addis. Sometimes, there were some of him just speaking in Arabic, there was one of him singing in Arabic, there was one with these two of his children who were speaking in English talking about the Midwest Syrian and Lebanese Federation Convention for that year. My name is Richard Breaux. I’m an associate professor of race, gender, and sexuality studies at UW La Crosse.