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Wrapping up our collective August, we can all probably agree it was pretty memorable.
Black smog thanks to a two-week long fire at the Nubarashen landfill, the concert of global icon J.Lo and a historically controversial meeting between our Prime Minister and the Azerbaijani President in the White house.
Yes, plus the Lion’s Gate portal. For believers, it’s a moment when energy pours through a cosmic “gateway,” favoring manifestation, abundance and new cycles. Here in Yerevan, the symbolism felt both ironic and apt: a “portal of opportunity” opening just as our capital was shrouded in morning smoke, while Pashinyan was preparing to sit across from Aliyev in Washington, and while Jennifer Lopez was about to step on stage, where few ever expected to see her.
But, astrology aside, let’s talk about J.Lo, an artist and entertainer ranked #15 on VH1’s 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons and named one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.
Our city had been waiting for more than just “one night” and when she finally came and went, attracting over 30,000 people, with around 15,000 traveling from abroad, she left us with dazzling memories and of course, a fair share of controversy.
Criticism and controversies centered on the reported $6 million fee for her performance, and more specifically on the $37,000 budgeted for catering. Some users of social media transformed that figure into a series of gleeful roasts offering menus of rare gastronomic items such as “jareet kartoshka with Swarovski” (yes, fried potatoes with Swarovski crystals), etc.
I guess what we witnessed was not just an introduction to new astrological cycles, but also to something known as the J.Lo effect, a phenomenon described in The New York Times and elsewhere, referring not only to her powerful influence on beauty, fashion and cultural trends, but also to spurring conversations.
“Criticism always appears when something happens for the first time,” reflects Gevorg Gevorgyan, founder and CEO of Auto Gallery IM MOTORS, one of the event’s official partners. “They are very helpful to reflect on certain things and to make fine adjustments next time, but you can’t and shouldn’t really try to avoid them.”
For him the concert was more than just a night of music, it was an investment in Armenia’s cultural presence: “It was an absolute pleasure being involved in such a high-profile event. I think the more we create memorable events that can be talked about in the world, the more we’ll be seen and recognized. To level up doing anything, you should keep moving in the same direction, doing more and more events, learning more and more until you achieve better results, better quality and even more friendly prices.”
Many critics argued that Armenia, a country that does not typically host global superstars, wasn’t ready for it, and perhaps not yet, for an event of this scale. But Mane Minasyan, a cultural manager and member of J.Lo’s local logistics team, sees it differently.
“I think our people were open and genuinely excited to have a ‘big concert by a big person.’ As simple as it sounds, that feeling was deeply honest,” she reflects.
For her, the experience was overwhelmingly positive; working alongside world-class professionals, being immersed in an atmosphere of excellence: “I focused only on that. But I think one of the negative sides of our region is that we don’t empathize with our neighbors, we’re never fully happy for what happens either with us or with our neighbors, for their achievements and secretly are jealous of them. The same is true in our society.”
Minasyan’s words touch on something unspoken: Armenia’s cultural rivalry with Tbilisi. For years, Georgians had been the ones hosting world-class concerts, while Armenians crossed the border in quiet envy. This time, the flow was reversed.
“It was incredible to see the Armenia-Georgia border overflowing with people, but moving in the opposite direction this time. Not Armenians traveling to Georgia for a concert, but the reverse, bringing 15,000 people here,” says international communications and visibility advisor Hermine Hakobyan, who views the moment as a potential turning point in Armenia’s tourism narrative.
For years, the international media has presented Armenia as a country where conflicts happen, wars happen. Hermine says events like this allow us to rebalance that image, forces us to seriously reconsider our tourism narrative, something long overdue. Most importantly, it brings more young people here.
She acknowledges Armenia has never been known for its clubbing culture like Berlin or even Tbilisi, but insists the country can have its own allure for younger audiences—an allure that is finally being communicated.
Of course, there was backlash. Many criticized the concert’s cost in a country weighed down by challenges. But Hakobyan argues that waiting for problems to vanish before investing in culture and tourism is a mistake. “If we do nothing until every issue is solved, those issues will only double. Development itself requires resources, and events like this bring them in,” she says.
For her, the J.Lo concert was not just entertainment, it showed “Western audiences that Armenia is a safe, welcoming destination. More importantly, it mapped us onto the radar of international touring artists and their managers. J.Lo won’t be the last name on the list. Her presence may well have planted the seeds of something long-term, though time will tell.”
She acknowledges that to avoid backlash in the future, there needs to be more transparency and better communication about the benefits of a concert of this scale, how much profit it made, or not, how that will be re-invested in the country, etc.
Hasmik Tonapetyan, a communication expert specializing in strategic communication, conflict resolution, and intervention design, continues this line of thought by pointing to gaps in messaging that may have fueled the backlash.
“Strategic communication means the ability to shift perceptions, to reshape narratives and, ultimately, behaviors,” Tonapetyan explains. “From this perspective, while the event was extraordinary in scale, it still lacked a crucial element of strategic communication. In a society where trust in government and institutions is already fragile, that gap created a space for mutual criticism. Yet, with the right approach, it could have been transformed into an opportunity to foster connection and strengthen trust between citizens and the state.”
Tonapetyan adds that she doesn’t place a lot of faith in the numbers that were shared, “they didn’t seem reliable, or were presented in a way that made them appear unreliable.” She insists, many things could have been done differently, and that includes consistent, transparent engagement with the public: explaining the vision behind the event, the financial investment required, and why it made economic sense for the country.
“Nothing in governance is purely black and white,” Tonapetyan continues. “When money is allocated, the aim is often to generate further resources and, in turn, to address social issues. But that’s not how the average citizen will necessarily see it. There are nuances that need to be carefully communicated to avoid failed messaging.”
Indeed, most people neither see nor fully grasp these interconnections, and this remains a challenge that requires work.
Tonapetyan emphasizes that Armenia’s legacy of strained dialogue between citizens and government, complicated by collective trauma and repeated miscommunication, demands a new, more deliberate bridge of communication, one that not only informs the public of decisions or events, but also situates them within a broader narrative of the country’s development.
“I have no idea what our national narrative is, apart from empty pathos,” she remarks. “It is never clearly communicated to the public. At the very least, people should know how each new piece of information fits into that larger story.”
Tonapetyan also notes that reactions inevitably generate counter-reactions. People’s reactive behaviour, leads to other reactions, perpetuating a cycle of quick responses rather than adopting a more reflective, transparent approach.
Without such transparency, the numbers, 30 thousand or 33 thousand, feel pretty arbitrary and only deepen existing suspicion.
“These kinds of events are like litmus papers, they reveal more than we’re ready to see,” shares Vahan Stepanyan, co-founder and CEO of PAN Photo Agency and founder of RAMBALKOSHE contemporary art museum.
“You need to stop just being a commenter and take a look at the whole picture, not just a piece of it,” says Stepanyan. “It’s not enough to focus on the two million or six million spent and declare it ‘bad.’ What matters is offering something, an alternative. Many of Armenia’s core issues remain unresolved because they exist only as comments: ‘It’s bad,’ or ‘It’s very bad,’ without anyone proposing a solution.”
Stepanyan explains that criticism keeps us trapped in a game you didn’t create and one you can never win: “Reactive behavior is expected, waiting for someone else to act, then reacting, but that never changes anything.”
He recalls that when the Snoop Dogg event sparked online discussion, he wrote a long reflection and spent a month researching venue types, existing infrastructure, and potential options. “I even enlisted architect friends to get a clearer picture of what could have been achieved with the resources spent at that time,” he says.
“My fight isn’t about any single event. It’s about the bigger picture: a government that chooses short-term, situational solutions over long-term strategies. People still accept it because there’s a thirst for events, for novelty. But what matters to me isn’t a one-off action—it’s about creating a more consistent, thoughtful flow,” he notes.
And while I was busy speaking with these professionals, trying to understand where I stand in all of this and what I could add, the criticism took a more moral turn. Comments about J.Lo’s body, her age, her outfits, came laced with envy and projection. One furious Instagram DM asked whether “dressing Artsakh’s displaced people in bikinis” was really the only way to attract government aid.
Some women were openly offended by society’s fascination with J.Lo’s appearance. Others encouraged Armenian women to draw inspiration from her appearance. Some dismissed her entirely, insisting she should instead take cues from Armenian women, their survival skills, resilience, and devotion to family, accusing society of idolizing a woman who, according to one Facebook post, “sold her soul to the gym.”
Clearly, the J.Lo effect cast many collective shadows in our society, touching on morals, survival, sexuality and identity, but that, I think, is another story.
Meanwhile I’ll make sure to finish this one on some bright note.
“Well, finally, I think we’ll have to find a way of letting bright colors, music and diverse cultures enter our dimension and become part of our reality,” Mane Minasyan wraps up.
And perhaps, once we figure out how to avoid Nubarashen landfill fires every summer, understand that high-caliber artists travel with enormous teams who eat a lot, learn to ask our government to share their cultural plans openly, and maybe—just maybe—trust their vision, we’ll be ready to host Madonna too.
So what did J.Lo trigger in our hearts? Hate? Sorrow? Jealousy? A clearer vision of the contrasts we live in?
I’ll leave that one for you to answer.
Rhythms
The August issue of SALT will immerse you in the rituals, rhythms and contradictions that shape contemporary Armenian life. From the evolving traditions of wedding rituals to the raw voices of Yerevan’s underground music scene, this month is about encounters, where heritage meets reinvention, where spectacle (hello, J.Lo) collides with satire, and where diaspora-Armenia relations unfold in all their messy, modern “situationships.” August is a month of intensity, and this issue embraces it with stories that are layered, unexpected, magnetic.
Cover photo by Lilith Margaryan, featuring Futurili.
Armenia and the Diaspora: A Situationship?
Armenia and its Diaspora share a bond of love, pride and pain—full of longing, misunderstandings and unspoken truths. Tatev Hovhannisyan explores their complicated “situationship” where memory and survival meet politics, and where distance both deepens and strains connection.
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