The Fifth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony ...

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Andrea Kuzmich
the ability to love. It is what “saved” Georgians. So perhaps this role of Christianity in Georgia’s national
history is what is being played out in Georgian polyphonic songs and what is being felt by Georgians and non-
Georgians alike. Given that highly spiritual individuals fostered the tradition, it makes sense that this would be
so. <strong>The</strong> sense of connectedness and healing which North Americans felt in Georgian polyphonic songs parallel
the unity and the sense of being saved that Georgians draw from Christianity.
It is perhaps a daring and speculative path to try and read the collective memory that a traditional music
embodies. Neither memory nor music are easily read. <strong>The</strong>re are more overt ways of reading the history of a
people in their music but a rather powerful understanding of the music results when one tries to analyze how
a music performs a history, an ancestry – especially in a transnational, trsancultural context. One has to look
at the interaction of a number of ways of perceiving the music and the past, and weave together some kind of
understanding. In this case, I considered 1) this history of the country and its affect on the musical practice;
2) the structure (or sonic composition) of the music; and 3) the rhetoric that surrounds the practice. From
this I have constructed an explanation that ties the affect of the music for non-Georgians with the ancestry of
the people who originated the music. Of course, there are undoubtedly a number of loose threads, from the
music, the practice and the past, that still could be used to further develop this understanding of how Georgian
polyphony performs ancestry.
Notes
1 Others who discuss the reservoirs of collective memory are Pierre Nora (1994) who applies the term “les lieux de mémoire” and
Connerton (1989) who discusses the embodiment of memory which differs from the inscription/publication practice of memory
2 A rather heated discussion ensued the presentation of this paper in 2010 concerning the original performance practice of this
song, and my reference to its aggressive sonic quality. I was informed that the song was not originally a war song but a work
song for farming. Despite the original context, some Georgians agreed with my labeling it aggressive. It was further suggested
that the historical and continuous volatile geopolitical situation in Georgia would require all farmers to be prepared to defend
their crops and land. It is certainly an interesting development warranting more attention than I have afforded here
3 During feudal times, skilled singers could actually gain social mobility through chanting, as is documented in the case of
Khelashvili family (Karbelashvili, 1898: 61-7)
References
Anderson, Benedict. (1991). Imagined Communities. London: Verso
Bithell, Caroline. (2007). Transported by Song: Corsicna Voices from Oral Tradition to World Stage. USA: Scarecrow Press
Connerton, P. (1989). How Societies Remember. New York: Cambridge University Press
Halbwachs, Maurice. (1992). On Collective Memory. Editor, transliter and with an introduction by Coser, Lewis A. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press
Karbelashvili, Poliekvtos. (1899). Kartuli saero da sasuliero kiloebi, istoriuli mimokhilva mghvdlis (Georgian Secular and
Ecclesiastical Modes, a Father’s Historical Review). Tbilisi