By the evening of Nov. 22, EPOS Club on Abovyan 10 was already full long before the concert began. Every table had been booked in advance, and when the lights dimmed, it became clear this wasn’t just another night in Yerevan’s intimate music scene. It felt more like a gathering of people who had known each other for years, bound by a shared emotional memory—one that only a handful of musicians can still awaken. Forsh is one of them.
Wearing a white pullover, jeans and Adidas sneakers, his white ponytail tucked beneath a hat and round glasses flashing under the lights—58-year-old Vahan Gevorgyan nicknamed Forsh, years ago by his musician friends, a name that has since come to symbolize a whole era of Yerevan’s urban-folk sound—stepped onto the small stage with the comfort of someone entering a familiar living room. Small in stature but unmistakable in presence, he carried the quiet confidence of an artist who has shaped the city’s musical memory. The carefully shaped moustache, the small smile—everything about him felt distinctly, recognizably Forsh.
EPOS’s interior—Armenian ornaments, excerpts of Gevorg Emin’s poetry and a depiction of Hayk Nahapet, the founder of the Armenian nation—set the tone for a night rooted in cultural memory.
The room, no larger than space for 70 people and filled mostly with a 27-to-40-year-old crowd, was alive with warmth. Late-arriving friends hugged those already seated. Couples settled behind tall candles and small groups waved across the room. At the bar, a few solo listeners sipped Takar wine in quiet concentration. The anticipation felt personal rather than staged.
Forsh performed alongside longtime friend and musician Davit Musheghyan, turning the night into a shared concert rather than a solo set. Their collaboration—built on years of friendship and musical shorthand—gave the evening its balance. With guitar, harmonica, tambourine and the occasional burst of accordion, they moved easily between quiet folk intimacy and moments of unexpected energy.
“Now we’ll play the songs we usually sing with friends, after the concerts, when the tea arrives,” Forsh said at one point, leaning back with a small, familiar smile.
When the music began, it was immediately clear why Forsh remains a defining voice of old Yerevan. His timbre—a textured blend of nostalgia and tenderness—carried songs about a city that once moved slower and breathed differently. These were songs of nighttime cafés around the Opera House, friendships that stretched across decades and the warm atmosphere Armenians call colorit—a feeling that no longer exists in quite the same way.
What made the night remarkable was the way the audience responded. They forgot to eat. They leaned into the music instead—singing, swaying, whispering the lyrics. At one table, a man on what looked like a first date sang softly, blushing as his partner laughed quietly. Groups at the back stood to sing, while solo listeners at the bar closed their eyes and followed along. These were not passive listeners; they were participants in a shared city-folk ritual.
The emotional peak came with This Is How We Live in the City We Love (Հենց այսպես էլ ապրում ենք մեր սիրած քաղաքում). The song is a kind of urban diary of Yerevan—full of small, ordinary details that feel universal to anyone who has lived in the city. Over the years it has become a communal refrain, sung in cafés, bars and gatherings as a reminder of how people once lived and still hope to live.
It felt like the entire room had been waiting for this moment. The first chord instantly unified the audience. For a brief stretch of time, generational differences disappeared. Young attendees—who never experienced the open-air cafés near Opera House, the poet-filled nights or the quiet intimacy of the old city—sang the lyrics with the same conviction as those who had. It was as if they, too, had lived in Forsh’s Yerevan, witnessing a world they had only heard about yet instinctively agreed was richer, or at least warmer, than their own. Through Forsh’s music, they searched for an emotional doorway into the city’s past.
The truth behind the night is simple but powerful: young people are still trying to access the Yerevan that shaped their parents and grandparents. Forsh is one of the few artists who can give them that access. His songs are portals—carrying not only musical memory, but the city’s emotional memory. And that emotional memory carries a responsibility: to be cared for and passed forward.
In many ways, Forsh has already succeeded. He has made young people feel and love a Yerevan they never lived in and never will—yet will one day describe to their own children with the same warmth, longing and affection.
After nearly two hours of folk ballads, urban anthems and an unexpected shift into Italian, Spanish and English classics, Forsh closed with Yerevan Is Us. In doing so, he placed the responsibility of memory—old and new—into the pockets of a younger generation, inviting them not only to inherit Yerevan’s past, but to create its next colorit. He accepted the applause with a steady expression, unchanged from the moment he stepped onstage, and quietly walked to a table of friends. Within seconds, he was in conversation with them, as if he hadn’t just carried a room of people through decades of Yerevan’s history.