(upbeat Armenian music) - [Lisa] Local guitarist Sean Blackman performs in Armenian inspired tune.

Our latest film about the Motor City music scene is, "We Thrive."

Our previous films, "Nothing but Music," followed working class musicians.

And "Paradise Boogie" took a look at the Detroit blues scene.

- I've been playing electric guitar in the band Chain Reaction doing classic rock and blues for over 30 years.

I've been around Armenian music most of my life but I never really thought about playing it until now.

- [Lisa] Armenians have been in Detroit since the very late 1800s, after the Armenian genocide, many more arrived.

My own family has been here for over a hundred years.

- [Eric] Despite Armenian's tragic history, we've always thrived by way of music, classical, jazz.

(upbeat guitar music) Traditional folk.

(upbeat folk music) Blues, hard rock and every other genre.

My mother was German and my father was Armenian.

When you make a film like this, you really take a deep dive into your heritage.

It's made me think a lot about the blending of those two cultures.

In particular, I always felt like a fish outta water, yet I had a strong affinity to being Armenian at the same time.

And whatever I was going through in my life, music has been there for me.

(upbeat clarinet music) - I did my public school education in Detroit.

I did my secondary education at Cass Tech in Detroit.

That was the time that Harry Begien was band director at Cass Tech.

(exhilarating band music) Everything that transpired at CassTs was next to professional level.

Of course, that we were kids, we were fearless.

Diana Ross came from Cass Tech.

Dennis Edwards, one of The Temptations was in my classes you know, so it was a school that fed the music industry whether it was classical music or pop music.

- [Eric] Juilliard trained clarinet virtuoso, Hachig Kazarian who has entertained thousands nationwide talks about some influences on Armenian music.

- As a nationality that live surrounded by Muslims, there had somehow to intermingle with the Muslim, the Turk.

There has to be Armenian music that got projected there and Turkish music that got projected to the Armenian.

So there is some similarity.

Some Armenians don't like to hear music that has that Middle Eastern sound.

Armenian church music is a very pure Armenian music and a lot of our music sounds Middle Eastern.

People will identify Armenian music with the mass, the Badarak on Sunday.

- [Vaughn] In the Middle East, the oud is considered the queen of all instruments.

- [Eric] Community leader, radio show host and entrepreneur, Vaughn Masropian is also a vocalist, oudist and percussionist.

♪ Opa Vaughn, you've been a percussionist and vocalist with a band the Johnites.

- Actually the Johnites have been around for over 52 years.

I fell in love with the oud, very, very light instrument.

It has 11 strings and this is a dual tone instrument meaning there's two strings for each tone.

A lot of the villages, they didn't have amplifiers.

Whenever the oud player had to play the drum had to sort of tone down a little bit because it's, it's a softer instrument.

(upbeat oud music) So that was actually one of my mother's favorite songs.

(speaking in foreign language) And it's a very old Armenian song about someone who saw his love sitting under the apple tree.

This is a fretless instrument, so obviously you can get all the quarter tones that you would like.

You can bend your notes, it's, you know, similar to a violin.

There's no, there's no frets here.

So the fingerboard is, your- - Sky's the limit, basically.

- Sky, yes exactly.

- This is an instrument, it's over 20 years old.

It was built in Turkey.

I've been working on this instrument for the last few months.

Wanna record with it doing for our film.

It's a stirring task master though, I'll tell you because it's been a real adjustment for me to learn how to play this.

(upbeat oud music) - [Lisa] Michiganders, Tia Mayhem and Tanya Venom educated at the Berkeley School of Music record on the song "American Son," and appear in our film, "We Thrive."

♪ American son - [Eric] Even the music of hard rockers are influenced by their Armenian roots.

- We have always felt different, always.

I mean, we were born twins, we were born different.

We've always been into things off the beaten path.

I mean, we're musicians.

It's beautiful.

- I think it's pretty awesome to put Armenian traditional music into modern hard rock, and, well everyone can hear it and be like, what's that instrument?

And eventually it'll become known that that's the duduk, that's Armenian.

The band's Armenian.

- Yeah, a lot of people don't even know what a duduk is.

- [Tia] Most people don't know where Armenia is.

(upbeat rock music) ♪ Dream shifting in the sand ♪ You'll never see me as I am ♪ Putting on my headdress to appease you ♪ ♪ Some things in the mind, but I am ♪ - [Eric] Music coming from the Detroit area had many influences including modes and beats from Armenian Americans which inspired me to write the song "American Son."

♪ American son you're not one ♪ Until you know where you came from ♪ ♪ American son you're not one ♪ Until you open the door ♪ A nation of immigrant souls ♪ Searching for something that's real ♪ ♪ They journeyed into Ellis Island ♪ ♪ Sailing towards an ideal