The San Francisco Bay Area artist RAVEN was born in Beirut, Lebanon at a time when the city of Beirut was considered the Paris of the Middle East. Raven’s ears were filled with the sounds and melodies of the traditional Armenian folk songs at an early age, as his young mother Yvonne an avid singer and performer in Beirut’s Armenian community sang the songs of her ancestors.

Raven began studying classical violin at the age of ten at the Conservatoire Nationale de Beyrouth under some of the most prominent te…