The Fifth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony ...

A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Study of East Georgian Polyphonic Song
Styles in the Context of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Monophonic Music
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singing, because of the strong aesthetics of solo performance in these songs. I will only briefly mention here
that by the aesthetics of solo melismatic performance, tetrachordal scale elements, improvised rhythm, absence
of regular metre, and open, extended forms Georgian “long” songs resemble typologically the solo singing
styles of south Transcaucasia (Armenia and Azerbaijan), Middle East and Central Asia. Ornamentation in
melody, irregularly accentuated rhythm, non-metric structures and tetrachordal scales in the monodic musiccultures
of Transcaucasia and Central Asia are discussed in detail in Poladyan (Poladyan, 1948: 9), Kushnarev
(Kushnarev, 1958) and Blum (Blum, 1980: 73).
Solo work songs Orovela and Urmuli are unique to Kartli and Kakheti regions of Georgia. <strong>The</strong>y have not been
recorded in any of the regions of Western Georgia or East Georgian mountains. At the same time, there are important
commonalities between Orovela and Urmuli and the work songs from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Central Asia in terms
of social function and ethnographic context. Let me first mention terminological-ethnographic parallels between the
Kartli-Kakhetian solo work song Orovela, the Armenian song Horovel, and the Azerbaijanian song Holovar which is
important in the context of this comparative research. As described by Armenian musicologists, Horovel is a generic
term to denote all songs associated with the various agricultural jobs such as ploughing, winnowing and threshing
(Atayan, 1965: 6). Georgian ethnographers explain the name orovela and orovel in Kartli-Kakhetian solo work songs
as a deity to whom farmers (peasants) appealed for a plentiful harvest; performance of these songs was believed
to be an integral prerequisite for providing good crops in the villages. Musical-stylistic commonalities between the
Kartli-Kakhetian Orovela and the Armenian Horovel are discussed in ethnomusicological literature (Mamaladze,
1962: 33; Kazarova, 1980: 22). Azerbaijanian farmers also sang a song called Holovar on the first day of ploughing
in early spring (Javadova, Javadov). Terminology and ethnographic context of the songs clearly indicate a common
social-ethnographic and apparently historical background of the Azerbaijanian Holovar, the Armenian Horovel and
the Kartli-Kakhetian Orovela.
Geography of the distribution of Orovela is further expanded toward south and east of Transcaucasia, in
the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. <strong>The</strong> rural solo song genre “Maida” [lit. ‘small’ in Tajik
language] in Uzbekstan, Tajikstan and Khirgizstan has been performed during certain labour processes such
as the archaic method of driving bulls across the threshing floor (laid with sheaves). In the text of the song
a farmer asks the bullock which is turning the millstone to grind the grain finer (Karomatov and Abdulaev,
1985). <strong>The</strong> text of Khirgizian Maida contains exclamation oroy, oroy (Beliaev, 1974: 4) which is similar to
Armenian, Azerbaijanian and Kartli-Kakhetian words and exclamations orovel, horovel and holovar. Like the
Kartli-Kakhetian orovela, the Uzbek Maida is an ornamented melody based on tetrachordal scales, sung in
an irregularly accentuated rhythm and non-metric time. <strong>The</strong> form is an improvised structure consisting of the
sections of various duration and melodic content.
Despite the noted similarities, there are cultural differences between the east Georgian and Middle Eastern
singing styles, but in this paper I cannot present a full descriptive and comparative analysis.
<strong>The</strong> comparison of Georgian “long” table songs (both polyphonic table songs and solo monophonic work
songs) with the monodic song styles of south Transcaucasia and Central Asia shows that the style of Kartli-
Kakhetian “long” songs is intermediate between the Georgian polyphonic and the Central Asian-Middle-
Eastern-Armenian-Azerbaijanian monodic music-cultures. <strong>The</strong> features of solo singing in Georgian table songs
are well integrated into the indigenous polyphonic type of music and occur only as a set of stylistic elements
within the otherwise polyphonic context of Georgian culture. I call it monody in the context of polyphony.