The Fifth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony ...

394
JEREMY FOUTZ (USA)
ANCIENTNESS AND TRADITIONALITY IN GEORGIAN TRADITIONAL VOCAL MUSIC
“If it is not old, then Georgians aren’t interested”, quipped Luca, a Georgian sociologist and jazz
aficionado. “Look at out buildings, our churches, our music”. We were discussing the cultural importance of
Georgian traditional vocal music, talking loudly over the Russian music videos that were blaring overhead in
a fashionable bar on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi. Of course, “old” is a somewhat nebulous term, but coming
from a Georgian, the word has a different connotation than from most people in Western Europe or North
America. In the Georgian context, “old” seems to be nearly synonymous with ancient. Through interviews
with Georgians in the summer of 2009 and through reading English translations of works by Georgian
ethnomusicologists, it is abundantly clear that Georgians have emphasized what I call the “ancientness” of
their traditional vocal music. Within Georgian ethnomusicology and within the larger Georgian culture itself,
the concept of ancientness has a prominent role in musical discourse and, I assert, in the perception and
practice of “traditionality” of Georgian traditional vocal music.
Data sources for this project include selections from Georgian ethnomusicological literature and analysis
of detailed interviews conducted in the summer of 2009 with Georgians from all walks of life including
musicians, non-musicians, and scholars.
While I believe these interviews can illuminate aspects of Georgian culture, they do not define Georgian
culture alone. Together with literature selections from Georgian ethnomusicologists, we can begin to recognize
the emergence of ancientness and traditionality as important contributors to Georgian culture.
Analyzing possible cultural interactions is daunting business, even if one “belongs” to the cultural group
in question. In discussing ethnomusicological insiders and outsiders, Nazir Jairazbhoy makes several points
which partially ease my mind in presenting my analysis. He states that no ethnomusicologist would claim to
possess “the deeper intuitive grasp” of their subject matter than the people themselves (Jairazbhoy, 1984:
37). Let me be clear – I will forever lack the understanding of Georgian music, history, and culture that
comes only with life experience as a Georgian. Jairazbhoy suggests, however, that the outsider can “bring to
bear a different perspective and approach which might help to illumine certain musical phenomena”, offering
potentially “ingenious ideas and approaches” (Jairazbhoy, 1984). Quite honestly, “ingenious” is beyond my
grasp, so in this paper I will aim for thought-provoking. In this manner, I mean merely to offer suggestions
and outline a web of interactions and likely possibilities as we walk through a portion of my research project.
Another potential stumbling block that must be addressed involves the almost pathological need in
cultural studies to exhaustively define concepts. In this project, I suggest that ancientness and traditionally
should be conceived not as rigid definitions but as a field of probabilities. In this approach, I draw upon the
work of Brian Massumi. In his book, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, Massumi uses an
approach to description and “definition” based on the idea that a concept can be “abstract-but-real” (Masumi,
2002: 5-16). He uses the example of Zeno’s arrow to show that the flight of the arrow can only be perceived
at its conclusion and endpoint. By defining things in concrete terms, their endpoint is reached, freezing the
concept and, in many cases, ignoring its path or journey to that end point. This does not imply that the concepts
discussed here are completely subjective, but that the flight path is perhaps more important than the terminus.