Day-Trips to Batumi

AUDIO CORRECTED (and check out my snazzy new flash player!)

I'm back! Sorry for the delay in posting: a strange cough/cold kept me out of commission for a few days, and then somehow the internet connection at my home wouldn't allow me to upload pictures to this blog. So I'm writing this once again from the (still unheated) computer room at my school. Before I was sidelined by illness, I made my first solo trip to Batumi, the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara, to hear some church music. This was two Sundays ago, and though it was rainy and cold in Kobuleti, and I woke up with the aforementioned cough, I took the half-hour marshutka ride to Batumi to attend the 3-hour Divine Liturgy Service at the Cathedral of the Mother of God. This church was originally built as a Roman Catholic church, in a sort of Gothic revival architectural style around 1900. The pews that presumably had been there in its Catholic past had all more or less been removed (the congregation, with few exceptions, stand throughout Georgian Orthodox services), and the church was quite full. As I entered, I was pleased to hear a strong, male choir, singing the traditional Georgian chant. I had heard a rumor that they sang hymns more in the Russian tradition here in Batumi, but it doesn't seem to be the case. Here's a brief clip of the men's choir (about eight or nine men total). You can hear me trying to stifle my inconvenient cough in between verses:

One of the many stained-glass windows, 
another sign of its Catholic past. 
An even better one featured angels playing
traditional Georgian instruments,
but it was right next to the ikonostasis
and I didn't want to intrude with my camera.

Even more interesting than the men's choir, which sounded very good, was a group of children and I think a few women, who alternated different responsorial duties with the men's group. There were about fifteen or twenty of them, of varying ages, and their voices cut through the space in pure harmonies, somewhat like an English boy-choir, but less polished, more full-throated. Here they are, singing one of the liturgical pieces I've come to recognize from church services. I don't know the name of it yet, but I think it's beautiful. I think I include two or three verses here; in total, there were at least eight or nine, and the whole piece lasted about ten minutes:





It was my plan to try to speak with the choir director, a middle-aged woman who led both the men's and children's choirs with calm assurance, but in the hubbub after the service ended, I couldn't manage the introduction. Thankfully, there are more musical discoveries waiting in Batumi.

A week after this trip, I took the marshutka back down the coast – another rainy, dreary day – this time with the goal of introducing myself at the Zakharia Paliashvili State Conservatory. I had a letter of introduction in Georgian, written by my co-teacher Lamara, and after sitting in on a piano lesson where a young woman played Saint-Saëns' 2nd piano concerto with admirable grace given the horrendous state of the piano she played on, I was introduced to some of the music faculty. One of them gave me the name of a young woman, named Lolita, who leads one of the few really traditional music ensembles in Batumi. Their name is Aidio, and they're an all-female singing group. Their focus is on songs specifically from Achara, which is very exciting for me, as it's not an area that's represented as highly in recordings and texts that it make it out to the States. So last Friday, I met Lolita and got to listen to a rehearsal. The songs were lovely – combining the intricate runs and occasionally dense dissonance of the Gurian style I was familiar with, with a graceful, dancelike quality. There's a website, alazani.ge, which has audio examples of songs from throughout Georgia (in English and Georgian), so I downloaded a couple tracks by this group, Aidio, to give you a sense of their sound. Here's one - I believe it's a dance song:




I hope to have some regular encounters with this group, and I also have a plan to meet a traditional ensemble from Kobuleti. Apparently, Kobuleti was the home, in the past, of especially intricate vocal songs, though it's unclear how much that tradition has lasted.

As a final image of this first description of Batumi, here's Medea with the Golden Fleece, atop a super-tall pedestal in the middle of one of Batumi's squares. As I may have mentioned, this region of the Black Sea coast was once part of the ancient kingdom of Colchis (6th to 1st centuries BCE). In Greek mythology, in turn, Colchis was the legendary home of Aeetes, Medea, and the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts in search of the golden fleece. I took a picture myself of this statue, but it was so overcast, you couldn't really see any detail in the sculpture. So I stole this from Wikipedia:

Imagined dialogue with city planners:
"So, this is before she killed her children, right?"
"Oh yes, of course. We don't condone that kind of behavior."