The Cheerful Host Has Favorite Guests

The village church in Makvaneti,
in the misty hills of Guria

Among the many surprises and discoveries of living in Ashfield, Massachusetts and working with Double Edge Theatre since about 2006, perhaps one of the least expected involved my meeting Tristan Sikharulidze and his trio, Shalva Chemo. Tristan is a master singer and living repository of the fabulously rich tradition of polyphonic song in Guria. In the spring of last year, Tristan's group came  to the U.S. for a concert tour organized by Carl Linich, a leading American expert on Georgian music and founder of the Kavkasia vocal group. Along with concerts in the expected places like Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., the three Gurian singers visited some rural areas of New England and upstate New York, performing and giving master classes. One such event was at the home of Ricki Carroll in Ashfield, a rambling, curiously-decorated house with a lovely backyard, the kind of place where local musicians performed and amateur singing societies held potluck dinners. When the announcement came in a local email newsletter that this Georgian group would perform and hold a master class, I signed up immediately, not really knowing anything about Gurian music in particular. The master class started at 4pm and I was ten minutes late – in one of those twists that remind what privileged company I've been able to keep in my artistic life, my tardiness owed to a private meeting with the legendary Polish actress Rena Mirecka, then in residence at Double Edge. At Ricki Carroll's house, we spent about an hour learning a Gurian song, a lovely piece whose text told a story of the angels Michael and Gabriel, followed by a potluck dinner and a sold-out concert featuring the masterly voices of Tristan Sikharulidze, his older brother Guri Sikharulidze, and the bass Merabi Skalandadze.

Me with Tristan and Levan

Fast-forward a year, almost to the day, and I find myself in Tristan's study, looking at photos from his tour, including one from the Ashfield master class that, but for my lateness, would've included me as well! I had come to Makvaneti, Tristan's village 5km from the main town of Ozurgeti, in the hope of meeting this man whose music had entranced me before. What I received was two days of essentially private master classes and a remarkably generous welcome from Tristan's family. When I first arrived at Tristan's home, I had Francesco, my companion from the Samegrelo expedition, with me. Within minutes of getting there, Tristan said, "Well, what song do you want to learn?" and launched into his lesson. I don't think Francesco was expecting this exactly – having to sing with us – but he gamely went along before leaving to meet up with another friend back in Ozurgeti. The first song we learned was called "Maspindzelsa Mkhiarulsa, or "The Cheerful Host." As I understood it, this would be an appropriate first song at a supra, with a text celebrating a merry host and his funny guests, and admonishing God "not to interrupt" someone with so many friends. I took extensive recordings throughout my trip, but, as in Svaneti with the Pilpanis, the singing here was instructional, not performative, so there's not as much to share. After teaching me the words and melodies by ear, Tristan would sing each of the three harmony parts for me to record. One of his grandsons, Levan, was also with us at the dining room table, and joined in from time to time. Here's a brief moment, with Levan singing the top line, me singing the middle part, and Tristan singing bani, or bass, when I suddenly heard the structure of the song working together, despite my stumbling:

And, for comparison, here's Tristan's group "Shwidkatsa" singing the same song on CD:

In the liner notes to one of the two CDs Tristan gave me as a gift, Anzor Erkomaishvili repeats the common wisdom that a great Gurian singer never sings a piece the same way twice. Erkomaishvili should know, given that this founder of the world-famous Rustavi Ensemble came from the same village as Tristan. Improvisation is integral in the traditional performance of Gurian songs. When it comes to improvising in the midst of fast-moving three-part harmony, this is easier to understand in the context of the traditional trio setup – with one person per part, improvisation comes more naturally – yet there's a certain specific language of Gurian improvisation that allows for variation of performance even in larger groups. This is especially true in the passages of the song that include "nonsense" syllables like "a ba de lo de lo wo de la de la wo da," which are yet to be taken seriously as the vehicle of flights of improvisational skill and melodic interplay.

Tristan himself doesn't speak English, but when we were alone he was able to communicate enough in terms of the music, and the rest of the time his two grandsons, Levan and Ila, were there, and they both spoke English very well. With Levan and Ila, we shared our tastes in music and literature, and our interests in languages of the world. I never thought my ability to draw a reasonably accurate Indo-European language tree would come in handy, but Ila was interested, so I happily complied with one. He in turn, while sharing his interest in progressive rock, was shocked that I, a resident of Boston, no less, had never heard any of Dream Theater's music. Unforgivable, apparently.

Ozurgeti is only a 30-40 minute marshutka ride from Kobuleti, so I have every intention of returning and learning more songs. I hope there'll be chance to hear the whole Shalva Chemo group together, or at least to hear Tristan singing with some of his fellow Gurians. He really is the acknowledged master of this repertoire, and it would be a shame not to gather what I can from him, especially as he is so generous with sharing.

One final image that stuck with me was Tristan showing me a ch'uniri – the uniquely Svan bowed instrument – which had been given to him by Islam and Vakho Pilpani, the masters of Svan music whom I had stayed with back in January. More and more, I feel a web of hospitality, generosity, and love of music forming around me, along with the conviction that the significance of these relationships will resonate for many years to come.

NEXT TIME: EASTER IN GELATI

Weekend in Samegrelo

It's Passion Week here in Georgia and anywhere where the Julian calendar is still used to calculate church feasts, resulting in Easter this year being celebrated a week later than in the Western Gregorian system. Easter, the terminus of Passion Week, in Georgian is "kristes aghdgoma", literally "Christ's rising-up." A nice result of the importance of this period of time in Georgia is an extended holiday from school. I've already used my time off to visit the great Gurian song-master Tristan Sikharulidze in Makvaneti, and will head to Gelati Monastery in Imereti to hear their famed choirs for the Good Friday and Easter Vigil services. Each of these trips will be featured in feature posts.

Francesco's host family at their shop,
with Kristina, our invaluable translator

Playing catch-up now, I wanted to share some of the music from my journey to Samegrelo two weekends ago. The main city of Samegrelo, a region in Western Georgia north of Guria and Achara, is Zugdidi, which is where my friend Francesco, another TLG volunteer from Italy, is working. His host family, who run a small shop in the labyrinthine bazaar of downtown Zugdidi, welcomed me into their home for two nights, and arranged for a wonderful musical encounter on Saturday.

I had been to Zugdidi once before, in January, when traveling with Teatr ZAR to Svaneti. Zugdidi is the closest city to upper Svaneti, and in addition to being a major stopping place for marshutkas en route, it's where anyone needing supplies of any kind (oil, car parts, hiking equipment, etc.) loads up before heading into the Svanetian mountains, where resources are scarce. My impression of Zugdidi at that time was decidedly unpleasant, thanks to the bitter cold, the recent heavy snowfall, the smoke-filled cafes, the seemingly inscrutable inhabitants, and murmurs of danger being so close to the disputed border of Abkhazia. Nowadays, a tense stability makes such worries largely unfounded, though 5-10 years ago, separatists had made raids in Zugdidi, and the city has been undoubtedly altered – something like 30,000 displaced persons from Abkhazia swelled the city to double its size, leading to a sort of urban sprawl.

The boundless hospitality of the families I met did much to dispel my original impression of the region, where Mingrelian, a language related to Georgian but mutually unintelligible with it, is spoken at home and among friends. After a feast at Francesco's host family's home on Friday night, the two children in the family and a cousin who spoke excellent English, took me to the Dadiani palace museum in the city. This was the home of the Dadiani family, who had been kings of Samegrelo until the early 19th century, and whose artwork and furnishings showed strong influence from Russia and France. An in-law of the family was descended from one of Napoléon I's generals, and thus the museum is one of three places where an original bronze death-mask of Napoléon is displayed. I was struck to see, in the ornate bookcases of one of the sitting rooms, a large number of music scores – most of them, it seemed to me, were long-forgotten 19th-century French operas and operettas in a piano-vocal arrangement. It was raining that day, and none of the pictures I took are much to speak of.

Sadly, I also don't have any pictures from later that night, when Francesco, two other TLG volunteers, and I, were hosted at a supra in the village of Kakhati. The lack of photos owes more to my inability to do two things at once: I was too busy operating my portable recorder, and forgot to hand off my camera to one of my fellow guests. Our hosts were two brothers, who knew many Georgian and Mingrelian songs, and were happy to oblige us right from the beginning. Here's the song they sang for us first:

You can also hear one of their daughters singing with them here. She had a lovely, piercing voice, and joined in with some songs later in the evening, after her duties preparing and serving the food with her mother, aunts, and cousins, was more or less concluded. There are actually three brothers in this family, and in their full complement they're able to cover the three vocal parts of all traditional Georgian music. What we heard that night, and what I'm sharing here, was not the best representation of these brothers' skill, missing, as it were, the bass. In these recordings, you can often hear one of the brothers sliding between the middle and lower part, when the harmony particularly requires it. Nonetheless, I was awed by the power of their voices, which were still strong and strident two hours of singing later. Their third brother, apparently, lives in Tbilisi, but returns from time to time, like at Easter. I hope to return at some later point to record the men with full harmony.

There was so much food – when we walked in, there was simmering on the wood stove a giant pot of ghumi, a tasty kind of white cornmeal polenta, into which you plunge pieces of cheese. To stir the pot, a spoon approximately the size of a boat paddle was required. The Mingrelian way with roast chicken was also delectable, cut up into crispy-skinned pieces that are impossible not to eat with your hands. And where there's food in Georgia, of course, there's wine. Three toasts in, the brothers took out a crystal drinking-horn, clearly reserved for special toasts. In this case, the subject of the toast was us, the guests. After downing the horn, the younger brother offered it round. Francesco's host father accepted, and one or two other Georgians – I was the only foreign guest who took the offer, and managed somehow to accomplish the feat without pausing in the middle. It was the least I could do …

I would estimate a half-liter as the volume of the horn at our feast.
No wonder some later events from that evening are a blur …

Now was my chance to show them the one or two Mingrelian songs I had up my sleeve. First I tried one called "va giorko ma", which I believe means "You Don't Love Me." As soon as I started, the brothers and other guests joined in. I reproduce part of the song here, with apologies for the prominence of my voice in the mix, owing to the fact that I had the recorder on the table in front of me. You can also hear me missing a point in the song where, apparently, you're supposed to repeat the previous phrase before going on to the next section. It was great fun, all the same:


A few toasts, and songs expertly sung by the brothers, later, I proposed the Aslanuri Mravalzhamier (I linked to a YouTube video of this song in a previous post. The results aren't worth sharing, but I loved the Mingrelian Mravalzhamier (each region, practically, has its own Mravalzhamier, the traditional toasting song) that the brothers sang in response:


Finally, we sang the one Acharan song I'd learned up to that point, "Ts'qals Napoti", (which I talked about here). At first I stuck to a lower bass part (which I was kind of making up) and let the brothers sing the top two lines, but after one time through, and with people clapping to the beat, I started the song over again, and everyone joined in with gusto. This was the participatory highlight of the evening for me:


All together, the two brothers sang something like twelve songs. My ear for either the language or style is not enough for me to discern specifically Mingrelian traits in the songs, and it's very possible that some of the pieces they sang were from other regions. Everything they sang, though, was infused with lyricism and a sense of sweet harmony, somewhere between the languid melismas of Kakhetian table songs, and the restless, often dissonant puzzles of Gurian songcraft. One of the most revealing moments of the night for me came when I asked if another song I knew, "Ia Patonepi," was Mingrelian. It was, they confirmed for me, but explained that they wouldn't sing it at a supra. I had known that the song derived from a tradition where songs were sung around the bed of an ill person, in the belief that the pretty songs would dispel the spirits making the person sick. It was striking, nonetheless, to realize that such songs still have a specific power among these communities, and are reserved for specific occasions in the life of the family.

Toward the end of the night, the young people in our hosts' family began to take control, which meant pop songs being played from the computer and all of the male guests (myself, Francesco, and Shane) dancing with the young ladies present. Then, with the suddenness that always seems to mark the end of Georgian parties, we gathered our things and were back in the taxis heading home for Zugdidi. The taxi drivers, by the way, sat at the table with us, participating in the feast, thankfully excluding the toasting part.

The next day, somewhat the worse for wear, I went sight-seeing with Francesco, his host sister, and another volunteer, to the village of Tsalenjika. The main site to see here is a church, perched high on a hill (as so many are), and featuring striking frescoes from the 11th-12th centuries, the "Golden Age" of Georgian culture. The artwork is in pretty bad shape, but what remains is haunting, bringing to mind the frescoes I had seen inside the church in Svaneti, though in a more refined, less immediate style. This was the first church I've been in, also, that truly had no artificial light inside, which made me appreciate the construction of windows and the importance of candles, omnipresent in Orthodox churches, even more.

The cupola (is that the right word?) of the church in Tsalenjika.

We also stumbled upon the House-Museum of a minor Georgian poet, Terenti Graneli (1901-1934), of apparently melancholy disposition, who was born in town. After a brief return to Zugdidi and a cup of coffee at the "American Bar" in town, I found myself once again riding along the Black Sea coast, back home to Kobuleti, happy to have such new, positive memories of this unique region.

NEXT TIME: Private Master Class with a Gurian Song-Master

Images From My Day Job

A girl from the first grade who danced in traditional Adjaran dress
at the March 1st International Woman's Day Celebration

Greetings from a suddenly warm Kobuleti in April! I'm working on a longer post right now – with music! – from my trip to the Mingrelian-speaking region of Georgia last weekend. In the meantime, though, I wanted to share some photos from my work teaching English at Public School No. 3. Now, if I had to rank my reasons for traveling to Georgia, the top two would be hearing/learning music and absorbing/involving myself in the culture. Teaching English is certainly encompassed in the latter, though it wasn't the prime mover in this whole adventure. All that said, the challenges and rewards of teaching have surprised me. The system here requires some adjustment for someone used to public schools in Newton, Massachusetts: particularly the emphasis on reading and rote memorization, to the detriment of speaking or functional vocabulary, as well as the precarious discipline, with students rarely waiting to be called on or staying quiet while other students speak or read, and prevalent copying and other, more subtle, forms of cheating. I do what I can to share my values, especially when it comes to listening when someone else is speaking, and generally having respect for one's peers, but whenever I feel myself getting too schoolmarm-ish, wearing out the Georgian words for "be quiet!" "sit down!" or "repeat after me!" I remember that the most important thing I can share with these children is my own wonder at the power of language, and the joy of discovery when some element of a foreign tongue clicks into place in your mind.

I'm the one in dark green.
Also my beard is much fuller than any 10th grader's.

I've also been able to be involved with the students a little bit outside of class. My classes with the tenth grade (the oldest students I work with in class) usually dissolve into discussions about things like sports, movies, travel, and books (which is really what I think is most useful anyway – casual conversation), and one day they asked if I liked to play basketball. Apart from soccer, my love for which I rediscovered at Double Edge Theatre, basketball is the game I have played the most in my life, and have had the most, if still moderate, success. I'll spare you my play-by-play account of my championship-winning basket at Boston College Basketball Camp in 1995. Anyway, I had been looking for some ways to get some exercise, and I happily took up the class's offer to play basketball with them after school. Since then I've played three three-on-three games with them, and it's been a lot of fun. I've lost whatever shooting touch I once had, but I still try to play lock-down defense of the old Bill Cowens-Celtics school. I am also unafraid to exploit my height advantage over the 15-year-olds.

My thanks to the student who took this great photo,
capturing a moment when I had no idea whom to pass to.

I've also started meeting with a group of students interested in more English conversation. This has been fun, though despite most of the students I talk to telling me they want to join this "club," every Monday it's usually just four girls and a boy from the seventh grade. But I think their English is definitely improving! I'm at the beginning of the extended Easter holiday now. No school today (Monday) and then no school from this Thursday through next Tuesday. My travels during this period should be fun – tomorrow I head to Guria, a region famed for its complex polyphony, to meet Tristan Sikharulidze, a revered song master and leader of the group Shalva Chemo, which I had the pleasure of hearing in concert in, of all places, Ashfield, Massachusetts last April. Here's a recording of the group, a traditional Gurian trio:

After that, I plan to go to Gelati Monastery, near the major city Kutaisi, to attend Orthodox Easter services (the feast day in the Julian calendar being a week offset this year from the Gregorian). The monastery is in a famously beautiful location, and its choir is known for maintaining a certain ideal of Georgian chant. I'm quite excited. I promise much musical material from these next trips!

On an after-school outing to a park in town,
with my co-teacher Sopi and one of the sixth-grade classes
(also the photographer's thumb)