100th Anniversary of Armenia's First Republic

I was wandering about yesterday evening after a day at the library, when I heard what sounded like bagpipes, Balkan style. (And for those who associate bagpipes solely with Scotland, no, different varieties are found in many countries!) I headed over in that direction and discovered a crowd around a troupe of costumed line-dancers.
Long ago, I used to design lighting (in a fairly primitive way) for folk dance concerts, so the type of dancing I was seeing, as well as the style of music, struck me as south Slavic and definitely not Czech. The costumes provided clues--the men wore sashes of red, blue, and gold stripes--but I'm not that familiar with every country's national colors and so wasn't sure whether they might be Montenegrin, Bulgarian, or what.
Before long, however, there were some speeches, and I discovered that rather than being part of a folk festival (and there was one just days ago), this event was in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Armenia's First Republic. Now of course I knew that 2018 is the 100th anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia's First Republic, but I confess I hadn't realized Armenia had even had a First Republic. When I think of Armenia 100 years ago, I'm afraid I think of the Armenian Genocide.
There was some more dancing, and then some more speeches. One of the dancers turned to me and asked in English, as the speaker was using Armenian at that moment, if I knew what the event was about. Since I had been standing there long enough to have picked up the gist of things, I was able to say that I did know it celebrated the 100th anniversary. The dancer noted that while Armenia has existed for thousands of years, the First Republic was a brief one. I commented that it must have come soon after the Genocide, and he agreed that it had. He asked where I was from, so I said the United States, and he commented that we have a large Armenian diaspora. I agreed, and began to say that growing up I knew a good many Armenian-Americans (as many Armenians settled in California), but at that point one of his colleagues moved him back into the main group.
It was an interesting and moving, not to mention unexpected, celebration, and I was glad I happened along just at the right time.