Born in Adapazari , declared blind four days after his birth , Hrant as a child sang in the choir of an Armenian Apostolic Church . His family fled to Konya in 1915 to escape the Armenian Genocide ; there Hrant first studied the oud , with a teacher named Garabed . In 1918 the family returned west , first to Adapazarı and then to Istanbul , where Hrant continued his musical studies under some of the leading teachers of the time , including Kemani Agopos Ayvazyan , Dikran Katsakhian , and Udi Krikor Berberian ( all Armenians ) . Somewhere along the way he also learned to speak French , and was actually accepted at age 16 to a Paris-based school for the blind , but he contracted typhoid fever and was unable to travel
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Udi Hrant Kenkulian