Some places are big in size, and some places are big in spirit. Calumet is firmly the second kind. This small, dimly lit room on Pushkin Street is one of Yerevan's most honest live music venues, where the stage and the audience are close enough to almost breathe on each other – and that is precisely what makes it irreplaceable. There are no strict genre boundaries here: blues, rock, jazz, funk, ethno, acoustic sets, even experimental nights, and all of them sound different than they would on a large stage, because the small space seals the music inside the room with nowhere for it to escape or dissolve into distance. The bar is simple and unpretentious – beer, wine, cocktails, no excess glamour – because the whole point of the evening is the stage. Concerts here often run longer than planned, when the band and the crowd fall into the same rhythm and nobody wants to stop. Calumet is the underground heart of Yerevan's music scene, one that survives not through marketing but through word of mouth and the simple fact that once you have been, you will want to come back. The kind of place that feels like a secret even when it is full.