The Fifth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony ...

Ancientness and Traditionality in Georgian Traditional Vocal Music
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To freely paraphrase Massumi, a definition is the place where nothing ever happens (Masumi, 2002: 27). As
such, my goal is to share information directly from the interviews and ethnomusicological works by Georgian
scholars and avoid (as much as is possible) defining these terms in the traditional academic sense.
Description of ancientness and examples in the data
In my reading and experience so far, when Georgians speak of something as “old”, the meaning with
regards to time is usually closer to what is considered “ancient” in the western world. Like Georgia, many areas
of Western Europe and the Americas have been settled for thousands of years. <strong>The</strong> cultural groups that are
currently dominant in most of these areas, however, have not been established for nearly as long, contributing
to a difference in understanding and perception of old and ancient.
In describing ancientness, the focus is not simply on the perception of time. By my interpretation of the
data, in the Georgian sense ancientness is a flexible idea – as distant as the pre-Christian age and as close as
the pre-Soviet days. More than simply implying extreme age, the data of this project describes ancientness
as a perception of considerable distance or space in terms of time and in terms of life experience. In reading
Georgian ethnomusicological works, it would seem that Georgian scholars are heavily invested in making a
logical and empirical claim to the ancientness of Georgian traditional vocal music.
As part of a welcoming speech to the United States Vice President Joe Biden on July 23, 2009, the
Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, stressed the resilience of Georgia as a nation that is three thousand
years old (Saakashvili, 2009). Ancientness in the temporal sense is also stressed in Georgian literature through
the examination of the origins and evolution of vocal polyphony. Throughout the vast majority of articles,
lectures, and sound recording liner notes on Georgian music, vocal polyphony is described as the most ancient
of all Georgian music. Much of its cache in this regard derives from the frequently cited ancient character
of Georgian vocal music linked to the observations of the Greek historian Xenophon in 401 B.C. <strong>The</strong> short
account briefly describes the marching songs of Mossiniks, an early tribe living in what is now Georgia, in that
the tribe sang in a “distinctive manner” (Jordania, 2000: 842-843). Other prominent Georgian scholars, such as
Rusudan Tsurtsumia, lay claim to this ancient nature as well. After relating the same account, she continues:
“And really, it is impossible to assert that by this “specific way” the Greek historian meant polyphony, but it
can be presumed that already, by that time, the Georgian song was polyphonic because a few centuries later,
this “specific” singing culture conditioned the originally polyphonic character of the Georgian polyphonic
chanting within the initially monodic Christian world” (Tsurtsumia, 2002: 97).
Further evidence for these claims of antiquity comes from ongoing manuscript studies that suggest welldeveloped
notational and oral systems for transmission of vocal music prior to the thirteenth century. Building
upon the work of other Georgian scholars, Manana Andriadze and Tamar Chkdeidze discuss this in their
presentation on historical evidence of chreli systems of musical notation in Georgian sacred music. <strong>The</strong>y
acknowledge the possibility that cherli was created in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a replacement
for forgotten Georgian neumes, but conclude through comparisons between manuscripts that cherli existed as
a parallel system to the neumes at least as far back as the thirteenth century (Andriadze, Chkheidze 2002: 452-
454). In their book on the first recorded music of Georgia, Anzor Erkomaishvili and Vakhtang Rodonaia note
the different analyses that situate the origin of Georgian folk song polyphony between the third and second
millennia, B.C. and the beginning of polyphonic chant around 6 A.D. (Erkomaishvili, Rodonaia, 2006: 24).
Nearly all of the Georgian scholars discussing the origins of vocal polyphony point to significant ancient
elements present on recordings, manuscripts, and in current performance practice which suggests a Georgian