06/10/2026
This is one of the very first records we found after dedicating our collection to Armenian and adjacent music, and it happens to carry great sentimental value. This copy of “Assyrian Folk Dances” from the Shemiram Orchestra led by Dr. Lily Teimourazi belonged to a local folk dance teacher named Eurydice “Diki” Shields whose choreography career began as a child at festivals and weddings with her Greek parents. She later began expanding her repertoire of international folk dance as an undergraduate at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). Because she was usually the only person from Riverside who attended workshops or dance camps in the Los Angeles, San Diego, and Santa Barbara areas, Diki began teaching folk dance at UCR. Diki also taught workshops in children’s dances for school teachers and was a teacher of folk dancing in the San Bernardino-Riverside County areas for more than fifteen years. This record served a much greater purpose than dedicated listening; it also served as a manual used by Diki to lead her dance seminars. In addition to Diki’s handwritten notes, this record also has its original liner note booklet with history about the dances and step-by-step instructions on how to perform them.
On another note, Dr. Lily Teimourazi was an influential member of the Iranian-Assyrian community whose father Dr. Younan Oraham saved 2000 Assyrians fleeing from Hakkari during the Seyfo (Assyrian Genocide) by allowing them refuge on his properties in Urmia and providing them with medical treatment. Lily also helped her father in nursing Assyrian genocide survivors back to health, she later married a physician and the best man at their wedding was famed general Agha Petros. Following a long period of medicinal and cultural studies between Georgia and Iran, Lily founded the Shemiram Orchestra in 1957 which was active all the way up to 1980 after music and dance became forbidden in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Today, the Teimourazi family are remembered as champions of Assyrian culture, identity and survival
