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MUSICAL DIALECTS OF THE SOUTH CAUCASUS
Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso (press release), Italy
June 19 2013
Onnik Krikorian | Tbilisi
19 June 2013
Funded by a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, three students from the
United States and Gibraltar are researching and recording traditional
music in the South Caucasus to make it available online
The two farmers standing barefoot outside their vegetable enclosure
close to Georgia's border with Dagestan meant well, but the wine they
offered tasted like vinegar. Likely to put a grimace on the face of
any foreign visitor, it did at least become more bearable with each
additional glass. For the Sayat Nova Project, a team of two Americans
and one Gibraltarian, the homemade beverage was an interlude to work
documenting the diverse musical traditions of the South Caucasus. The
farmers, members of the small Moslem Avar minority in Georgia, were
reluctant to let their guests go, but the latter had work to do.
The Sayat Nova Project Funded by a modest online campaign, the
Sayat Nova Project comprises Ben Wheeler, an ethno-musicologist, Anna
Harbaugh, a historian, and Stefan Williamson-Fa, an anthropologist. The
three students had hoped to raise $2,000 to record majority and
minority traditional music in the region, but instead collected
over $3,000. The project is named after the 18th Century Armenian
troubadour who wrote songs and poetry in Azerbaijani, Armenian,
Georgian, and Persian. Given Sayat Nova's richly diverse cultural
credentials, it seems only fitting that the project took his name.
The photo-story The folk music of the South Caucasus
Indeed, with the entire Caucasus populated by a diverse ethnic
and religious mix, more than 50 ethnic groups speak languages from
5 linguistic families while Christians - Catholic, Apostolic, and
Orthodox - live alongside Moslems - Sunni and Shia - and smaller groups
practice Judaism and Zoroastrianism. This diversity is particularly
evident in Georgia and especially Tbilisi, its capital, where Wheeler,
Harbaugh, and Williamson Fa are based.
"One thing we discovered with the online campaign is that the community
of people studying music in the Caucasus is very small and also very
close. Even across academic discipline, everyone appreciates the work
others are doing. That helped in terms of promotion and networking,"
Wheeler told Osservatorio. "I don't think we could have done this
project based anywhere other than Tbilisi. This was the place where
all these cultures really mixed and you can still see that today."
"Much of the existing work concerning the folk music of the South
Caucasus has been concerned with the study of musical traditions on
a national scale, focusing on the attributes that make it distinctly
Georgian, Azerbaijani, or Armenian," Wheeler wrote in a brief academic
paper shared on Facebook. "But this focus on the national, or the music
of the majority, needs to be supplemented with a parallel focus on
that of the minority: smaller ethnic groups and musical traditions that
are an integral part of the cultural mosaic of the South Caucasus."
The Ashiq tradition The Ashiq tradition - wandering minstrels in much
the same way as Sayat Nova was - particularly fascinates Wheeler and
his colleagues.
Indeed, he explained to Osservatorio, it was a chance visit to
the mainly ethnic Azeri-inhabited town of Marneuli and hearing the
local Ashiqs there that gave birth to the idea behind the Sayat Nova
Project. "We had a fascinating recording session," he says, "and
Stefan and I started talking about all these interesting phenomena
that haven't been studied. There's no information yet there needs to be
something so we started talking about collecting it all on a web site."
"We discovered there had been a specific 'school' of Ashiq music in
this region of Georgia and we found it interesting that this unique
tradition hadn't been recorded, with next to no information available
in English," Williamson Fa adds before Harbaugh interjects. "There
had been studies," she says, "but it was all done by the Soviets and
since independence the emphasis on preserving these unique cultural
traditions, that are really specific to these small ethnic groups,
has declined."
"The minstrel or bard tradition now closely associated with the music
of Azerbaijan was at one time a pan-Caucasian musical tradition,"
Wheeler explains. "In the 17th-18th centuries, professional
multilingual ashiqs circled through urban centers such as Gence,
Shemaxi, Yerevan, Tbilisi, and Derbend serving as conduits for news,
ideas, music, and culture. As Ashiqs settled in the mountains of the
lower Caucasus, distinct regional schools developed which absorbed
a great deal of local musical and verbal lore."
The Sayat Nova Project was particularly fortunate to find two such
Ashiqs in Georgia that represent the diversity to be found even here.
The first, Ashiq Garib, a 75-year old resident of Algeti, an ethnic
Azeri village in the Kvemo Kartli region of Georgia, was particularly
important. Serving as the main teacher of most of the saz players in
the predominantly ethnic Azeri region on the border with neighboring
Armenia, Ashiq Garib considers the tradition in Georgia is more
melancholic than that to be found in Azerbaijan, where it is more
light-hearted and entertaining.
At the other end of the musical spectrum, however, Ashiq Nargile
represents another example of the musical form recognized by UNESCO in
its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. A young, female saz player
and poetess, Nargile Mehtiyeva illustrates how, even in traditional and
often patriarchal culture, women can take a prominent role. The young
ethnic Azeri Ashiq also teaches saz to students, including Wheeler
and Williamson-Fa, at Tbilisi's State Conservatory. Wheeler performed
with Ashiq Nargile to end a saz festival held in Georgia in May.
"Breaking away from some aspects of the tradition yet holding tightly
to what they consider essential, it has been through their ability
to seize on the innovative nature of the genre that they have been
able to pull it successfully from the Soviet to the contemporary era,"
wrote Anna Oldfield Senarslan in an academic paper, Azerbaijani Women
Ashiqs and the Transformation of Tradition. Research such as that
will also be curated and shared by the Sayat Nova Project alongside
the project's recordings.
But the focus is not just on ethnic Azeri musicians in Georgia.
The Sayat Nova Project traveled to Azerbaijan After also recording
Armenian, Georgian, Kist, Avar, Tush, Bats, Kurdish, Iranian,
and other musicians in Georgia and Armenia, the Sayat Nova Project
traveled to Azerbaijan in June to record minorities there. "It is my
opinion that one of the most unique qualities of the South Caucasus
is the abundance of different peoples with their own cultures sharing
components of a common history," concludes Wheeler.
"If we can elevate these musical dialects to the same level as
national music, the resulting map will be richer, more detailed,
and better representative of musical culture in the region."
"We're not going to stop any wars with this site but we want to
create a place where people can have a conversation," he told the
Georgian Times recently. Indirectly, however, there is at least
the hope that people living in all three countries of the South
Caucasus will recognize what they have in common and respect what
they don't. Given the frozen conflicts in the region, as well limited
support for minorities since independence, that task is likely more
important than ever.
--- The Sayat Nova Project has a Facebook Page with links to blog
posts, audio recordings, and video from their work in the South
Caucasus at: http://www.facebook.com/SayatNovaProject .
http://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/All-news/Musical-Dialects-of-the-South-Caucasus-137970
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso (press release), Italy
June 19 2013
Onnik Krikorian | Tbilisi
19 June 2013
Funded by a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, three students from the
United States and Gibraltar are researching and recording traditional
music in the South Caucasus to make it available online
The two farmers standing barefoot outside their vegetable enclosure
close to Georgia's border with Dagestan meant well, but the wine they
offered tasted like vinegar. Likely to put a grimace on the face of
any foreign visitor, it did at least become more bearable with each
additional glass. For the Sayat Nova Project, a team of two Americans
and one Gibraltarian, the homemade beverage was an interlude to work
documenting the diverse musical traditions of the South Caucasus. The
farmers, members of the small Moslem Avar minority in Georgia, were
reluctant to let their guests go, but the latter had work to do.
The Sayat Nova Project Funded by a modest online campaign, the
Sayat Nova Project comprises Ben Wheeler, an ethno-musicologist, Anna
Harbaugh, a historian, and Stefan Williamson-Fa, an anthropologist. The
three students had hoped to raise $2,000 to record majority and
minority traditional music in the region, but instead collected
over $3,000. The project is named after the 18th Century Armenian
troubadour who wrote songs and poetry in Azerbaijani, Armenian,
Georgian, and Persian. Given Sayat Nova's richly diverse cultural
credentials, it seems only fitting that the project took his name.
The photo-story The folk music of the South Caucasus
Indeed, with the entire Caucasus populated by a diverse ethnic
and religious mix, more than 50 ethnic groups speak languages from
5 linguistic families while Christians - Catholic, Apostolic, and
Orthodox - live alongside Moslems - Sunni and Shia - and smaller groups
practice Judaism and Zoroastrianism. This diversity is particularly
evident in Georgia and especially Tbilisi, its capital, where Wheeler,
Harbaugh, and Williamson Fa are based.
"One thing we discovered with the online campaign is that the community
of people studying music in the Caucasus is very small and also very
close. Even across academic discipline, everyone appreciates the work
others are doing. That helped in terms of promotion and networking,"
Wheeler told Osservatorio. "I don't think we could have done this
project based anywhere other than Tbilisi. This was the place where
all these cultures really mixed and you can still see that today."
"Much of the existing work concerning the folk music of the South
Caucasus has been concerned with the study of musical traditions on
a national scale, focusing on the attributes that make it distinctly
Georgian, Azerbaijani, or Armenian," Wheeler wrote in a brief academic
paper shared on Facebook. "But this focus on the national, or the music
of the majority, needs to be supplemented with a parallel focus on
that of the minority: smaller ethnic groups and musical traditions that
are an integral part of the cultural mosaic of the South Caucasus."
The Ashiq tradition The Ashiq tradition - wandering minstrels in much
the same way as Sayat Nova was - particularly fascinates Wheeler and
his colleagues.
Indeed, he explained to Osservatorio, it was a chance visit to
the mainly ethnic Azeri-inhabited town of Marneuli and hearing the
local Ashiqs there that gave birth to the idea behind the Sayat Nova
Project. "We had a fascinating recording session," he says, "and
Stefan and I started talking about all these interesting phenomena
that haven't been studied. There's no information yet there needs to be
something so we started talking about collecting it all on a web site."
"We discovered there had been a specific 'school' of Ashiq music in
this region of Georgia and we found it interesting that this unique
tradition hadn't been recorded, with next to no information available
in English," Williamson Fa adds before Harbaugh interjects. "There
had been studies," she says, "but it was all done by the Soviets and
since independence the emphasis on preserving these unique cultural
traditions, that are really specific to these small ethnic groups,
has declined."
"The minstrel or bard tradition now closely associated with the music
of Azerbaijan was at one time a pan-Caucasian musical tradition,"
Wheeler explains. "In the 17th-18th centuries, professional
multilingual ashiqs circled through urban centers such as Gence,
Shemaxi, Yerevan, Tbilisi, and Derbend serving as conduits for news,
ideas, music, and culture. As Ashiqs settled in the mountains of the
lower Caucasus, distinct regional schools developed which absorbed
a great deal of local musical and verbal lore."
The Sayat Nova Project was particularly fortunate to find two such
Ashiqs in Georgia that represent the diversity to be found even here.
The first, Ashiq Garib, a 75-year old resident of Algeti, an ethnic
Azeri village in the Kvemo Kartli region of Georgia, was particularly
important. Serving as the main teacher of most of the saz players in
the predominantly ethnic Azeri region on the border with neighboring
Armenia, Ashiq Garib considers the tradition in Georgia is more
melancholic than that to be found in Azerbaijan, where it is more
light-hearted and entertaining.
At the other end of the musical spectrum, however, Ashiq Nargile
represents another example of the musical form recognized by UNESCO in
its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. A young, female saz player
and poetess, Nargile Mehtiyeva illustrates how, even in traditional and
often patriarchal culture, women can take a prominent role. The young
ethnic Azeri Ashiq also teaches saz to students, including Wheeler
and Williamson-Fa, at Tbilisi's State Conservatory. Wheeler performed
with Ashiq Nargile to end a saz festival held in Georgia in May.
"Breaking away from some aspects of the tradition yet holding tightly
to what they consider essential, it has been through their ability
to seize on the innovative nature of the genre that they have been
able to pull it successfully from the Soviet to the contemporary era,"
wrote Anna Oldfield Senarslan in an academic paper, Azerbaijani Women
Ashiqs and the Transformation of Tradition. Research such as that
will also be curated and shared by the Sayat Nova Project alongside
the project's recordings.
But the focus is not just on ethnic Azeri musicians in Georgia.
The Sayat Nova Project traveled to Azerbaijan After also recording
Armenian, Georgian, Kist, Avar, Tush, Bats, Kurdish, Iranian,
and other musicians in Georgia and Armenia, the Sayat Nova Project
traveled to Azerbaijan in June to record minorities there. "It is my
opinion that one of the most unique qualities of the South Caucasus
is the abundance of different peoples with their own cultures sharing
components of a common history," concludes Wheeler.
"If we can elevate these musical dialects to the same level as
national music, the resulting map will be richer, more detailed,
and better representative of musical culture in the region."
"We're not going to stop any wars with this site but we want to
create a place where people can have a conversation," he told the
Georgian Times recently. Indirectly, however, there is at least
the hope that people living in all three countries of the South
Caucasus will recognize what they have in common and respect what
they don't. Given the frozen conflicts in the region, as well limited
support for minorities since independence, that task is likely more
important than ever.
--- The Sayat Nova Project has a Facebook Page with links to blog
posts, audio recordings, and video from their work in the South
Caucasus at: http://www.facebook.com/SayatNovaProject .
http://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/All-news/Musical-Dialects-of-the-South-Caucasus-137970
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress