Postcript: Shen Khar Venakhi

The grounds of the Samtavro (Transfiguration) Church and St. Nino's Nunnery,
in Mtskheta.

Hello! It's been a while since my last post, and this will just be a short one. I've been placed in the town of Kobuleti, on the Black Sea coast of Adjara, Georgia's most Southwesternly region. I've already had a week of teaching English as a volunteer with Teach and Learn in Georgia (TLG) and will be writing more as I settle into this new job. My internet time is limited (currently in the school's computer room), but I thought I'd just relate another part of my story from Svaneti:

On our first night there, we were welcomed by the Pilpanis with a huge meal, with toasts and songs (one of which I included last time). Later that night, I found myself standing near Islam Pilpani, the elder statesmen of the family, who speaks no English. He gestured for me and Alessandro, a member of ZAR, to sit with him. He then proceeded to pour us shots of homemade vodka (or ch'a ch'a), distilled from bread and wickedly strong. I did not want to refuse, afraid it would affect our lessons with him somehow. Three shots in three minutes later, I felt like he was warming up to us! Sometime later, he began singing the song that has been in my head constantly since setting forth for Georgia. Its name is "Shen Khar Venakhi" – "You are a Vineyard" – and it's a hymn to the Virgin Mary. It's an ancient piece of verse, probably from the 12th century, and the music, though it's hard to know for sure, is pretty old as well. Admittedly, it's one of the Greatest Hits of Georgian church music, but for me that didn't take away its simple beauty. I didn't have my recorder running when we sang it in the Pilpanis' living room, and it's probably for the better, given the uncertain intonation that tends to accompany drinking, so I'll just link to a recording by the group, Georgian Voices:

Shen Khar Venakhi, on YouTube

(I wanted to embed the video, but it looks like the ethernet in the school blocks access to YouTube!).

The smooth, stepwise motion of the middle voice, though not unusual in Georgian chant, reminds me so strongly of vines, growing and falling, interweaving with the other parts, which fits the images of nature throughout the text. The last part of the song, beginning with "mze khar", "you are the sun," accompanied by a stunning change of harmony, is always a shock to me.
Anyway, it was a great moment in Svaneti, to find myself unexpectedly singing one of the songs I was dying to hear. After we returned to Tbilisi, some of the younger people with ZAR were trying to learn it (it's part of the theatre's repertoire), and we ended up spending an hour singing the piece in the dining room of our home stay. It was the first time I'd taken part in a ZAR singing rehearsal – with their intense concentration and attention to details of dynamics, vowel shape, and breath – and it seemed like the perfect way to end the first part of my trip.

Swan Songs

The town of Mestia, seen from the road into the mountains

After many encounters with Georgian church music in Tbilisi (as well as a number of dinners and toasts at the quintessentially Georgian "Racha" restaurant), I set out with the group from ZAR for Upper Svaneti, a region of Georgia high in the Caucasus mountains. The people here, known as Svans, speak a quite distinct dialect of Georgian – many would say a different language – and preserve local traditions and customs, especially their ritual and folk music. Teatr ZAR's history with this region goes back at least ten years, to the musical expeditions that led to the group's first performance. As Jarek tells me, it took them some time to locate what singers they could learn from, eventually finding a place with the famous Pilpani family of singers. They've become famous partly because of their ability – especially the elder Pilpani, Islam, and his son Vakho – as teachers. After witnessing the truly ancient funeral song of Svaneti, the "zar," Jarek and his collaborators, in 2001, asked to learn it, and ultimately based their first performance around, and took the name of their group from, the "zar." So, this is an old friendship, and I was privileged to be present for the reunion.

Seen somewhere on the road to Zugdidi:
Quijote, for my friends at Double Edge

The trip to Svaneti from Tbilisi is quite long, 9 hours or more in all. Our main stop was in Zugdidi, a city only 28 km from the Black Sea. Along the way, I was reminded of the perhaps quixotic nature of my Georgian adventures (see left). The road from Zugdidi to Mestia has been recently improved, apparently, shortening that leg of the trip from 6 hours to about 4. I must admit, as our hired marshrutka sped around mountain curves, dodging debris from rock slides and the ever-present cows, I shuddered to think what the road used to be like. We arrived after dark, finally, and were welcomed, exhausted and cramped, into the home of the Pilpanis. A huge meal (the first of many) was laid out for us, followed by the obligatory toasts. Members of the Pilpani family and friends sang for us in welcome. Here's a short excerpt, recorded that night, of a Svani song, "Jgragish" :




We later learned this song from Islam Pilpani, though listening to it again, I can see that we never quite achieved the particular tuning and resonance that typify this music in its native environment. It snowed that first night, at least three or four inches, which gave an amazing stillness and silence to our first glimpses of Lenderji, the village where we were staying, and Mestia, the main town in Upper Svaneti.

The view from my bedroom window

The village, with its typical Svan defensive towers

Our mornings in Svaneti were our own to wander through the villages as a group, marveling at the natural beauty of the surrounding mountains, the age and often dilapidated state of the homes, and the incongruity of the new building projects, which include a tiny airport, ski lodges, and a tourist information building where we found neither tourists nor information.

An age-old sight in Svaneti

Not so age-old: the police station

We were unable to see the magnificent collection of icons and artifacts normally on-view at Mestia's Ethnographic Museum, as the Museum was undergoing renovation (read: had been completely demolished), another part of President Saakashvili's program of modernization at all costs. The precious items had been put in hiding during the construction. Fortunately, Jarek had gotten to know the priest in Mestia, and the next morning he took us to the oldest church in the town.

This is a two-tiered structure. The upper church, dedicated to the Transfiguration of Jesus, dates to the 11th-13th centuries. The lower church, which was completely hidden by soil when Mama Giorgi, the priest, first took his post, dates to the 8th-9th centuries, and was dedicated to St. Barbara. The frescoes in both churches had been restored – in the lower church especially, many layers of artwork can be seen at once, with earlier strata becoming visible through cracks in the newer.

The Crucifixion, in the upper church

Eyes peer through from an earlier age, in the lower church

On our way back down the hill from this church, Mama Giorgi – a man of maybe 55, with a long scraggly beard and gentle, sad eyes – began sliding down the slippery, packed streets, his feet in front of each other like an expert skier, a childlike joy in motion, pausing only when villagers paid their respects.

Islam Pilpani had promised to work us hard on the songs, and he did – we learned 10 songs in two packed days. I found myself singing the bani, the third, bottom part. Being a tenor, I normally would sing either the second or first, but also being the least experienced in Georgian singing, I was happy to tackle the relatively simple bass lines. From this position, I really could hear the structure of the two voices moving above me, and could start to pick up how to make the micro-adjustments of tuning necessary to hold the whole together. I recorded these singing lessons, but don't really think they're meant for public consumption – certainly not as any kind of substitution for the teaching of Islam Pilpani. The in-person transmission is essential to this kind of singing, with adjustments of notes and corrections of pronunciation by the teacher. Islam does also lead a chorus of men from Svaneti, called "Riho," and there are a bunch of their recordings online, where you can hear more of these rough-hewn harmonies. Many of the songs we learned were truly ancient – one of my favorites, "Lajgvashi," describes the different huge, magnificent animals that are to be sacrificed to various "pagan" gods. I was surprised to learn about newer songs, though, including one moving, relentless song called "Gaul Gavkhe," which describes the massacre of villagers in the town of Qalde by Russians in the 19th century. Clearly the sources of inspiration were not shut off deep in the immemorial past.

These marathon singing sessions were always followed by generous meals where everything was homemade – the bread, cheese, vegetables, yogurt and meat all grown, raised, baked, or cultured in the Pilpani household. I had never been so moved by hospitality, even if that's the thing I was most led to expect when traveling to Georgia. I'm very happy to be in the country for another five months, especially if it means I can travel back here in the spring, to see these wonderful people again and perhaps learn some more music. In the meantime, I will carry these memories, my recordings, and my cryptic musical notes, which I hope to be able to decipher after the songs have faded from my ears.

NEXT POST: Teaching English Somewhere in Georgia!

Christmas Vigil in Tbilisi

A view of Tbilisi from the Baratashvilis Bridge

After 11 hours in the Munich airport between overnight flights (a very nice airport, I might add, but still an airport), I arrived in Tbilisi at 4am on January 6, and was immediately relieved to discover that my friends' plane had been delayed. I was set to meet up with members of Teatr ZAR, a Polish theatre group who had done extensive musical research in Georgia, but international logistics being what they are, I was nervous that our simultaneously arriving flights would lead to some missed connection. Thankfully, I had time to get my bag and a bottle of water before ZAR arrived from Istanbul. I knew Jarek Fret, the director, and a few other members of the company already, and was pleased to meet some new people – from the U.S., the Ukraine, Italy, and South Africa – who had recently joined ZAR's work. After a quick ride to our homestay and a far-too-short nap (given that I was now 9 hours removed from Boston), we set out to explore the churches where we would soon hear some of the vocal music (sacred, in this case) that brought me to Georgia in the first place.

In Orthodox churches, Christmas takes place on January 7, and the most extensive celebration is the night before, with an "All-Night Vigil" beginning around 11pm and going until 4am in many places. In Georgian churches, everyone stands - there are only seats usually for the very old or unwell. That said, there's also a certain attitude toward attendance in which people are constantly going in and out of the church, staying for a minute, then going back out to talk on their phone or with friends. We started our evening at 11 at the Sioni Church, the former seat of the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church. The place was packed – I stood shoulder to shoulder the whole time, and it took me a full ten minutes to push through the crowd (which had started moving forward, I think for the Eucharistic celebration) when I saw the rest of my group leaving. We ended up going to Sioni, Anchiskhati, Kashweti, and finally the Mama Daviti church, all in Tbilisi, in a night that ended around 3am for me (Olla and Tomek from ZAR lasted 'til 4 I think). I brought my audio recorder with me and was able to capture some of the music at the different churches. First, in Sioni, they have two choirs, one with mixed female and male voices, the other all-male, in the traditional three-part arrangement. Jarek tells me that in the past, they even had a third choir. It was really fascinating hearing the interplay of these two choirs with the heavily-mic'd voice of the priest, often in a different key than either of them. In this excerpt it begins with the mixed choir, in harmonies that sound to me at least more Russian than Georgian, with the male choir taking over about partway through:

Sioni Cathedral, packed inside and thronging outside.

After stops at the Anchiskhati and Kashveti Churches (at the latter the constant sound of the door opening and closing behind me made my recordings useless), the last place we went to was up a steep hill on the south side of the Mtkvari River, the Mama Daviti church. The choir there was remarkable – its director is one of the leading proponents of Georgian chant, and has reconstructed many of the old liturgical pieces – their tuning and sense of the acoustics of the space, and the simultaneously strong and gentle voices. Here's a brief excerpt from that night – I hope to return later in my trip for a more extended listening opportunity:

Mama Daviti Church, seen in daylight, before the grueling ascent

The next day at Mama Daviti (in my jet-lagged memory it felt like early morning, though it was really a Christmas Vespers service), I got to witness a baptism and hear a different incarnation of the chant tradition, as an all-women choir subbed in for the no doubt exhausted male choir. During the service, I turned to my left and suddenly saw the priest plunging a naked infant three times into a bathtub-sized baptismal font. The subsequent cries of the child (and the unforgettable look on the young mother's face) were counterpointed by the calm dispatch with which the priest carried out his duty. Here's a last audio sample from my Christmas church wanderings, first a haunting response from the women's choir and then a more elaborated "Aliluiyah":



Next Post: Venturing into the Mountains to Learn Swan Songs