who asked the first question? - International Research Center For ...

190demonstrated by the specific scale used in this melody, containing an augmented second(totally uncharacteristic for village polyphonic songs in Georgia), and specific melodicembellishments, characteristic of the Middle Eastern singing tradition. Here is thismelody:Fig. 9. Melody of “Patara Gogo”, urban song from TbilisiNow let us have a look at what has happened to this melody in Georgia. Althoughthe main elements of the melody have remained the same, in Georgia this melody isperformed in three-part harmony. Following the principles of Georgian polyphonictradition, the original monophonic melody is “wrapped” from both sides by twoharmonizing parts: (1) another melodic part is singing on top of the main melody(performed by a soloist, mostly following the main melody in parallel thirds, andfinishing in a fifth), and (2) the bass part, a slightly moveable drone, performed usuallyby a group of singers. Now have a look at the same melody in a three-part “Georgianversion”:Fig. 10. “Patara Gogo” in three part harmony, as performed in TbilisiLet us now analyze what has happened in this case. Nothing particular – this hasbeen happening thousands of times between hundreds of different cultures: the melodyfrom one culture came into another culture and became popular. Every culture has anumber of such borrowings. Most importantly for us, during this transition the song hasundergone certain changes according to the intrinsic rules of the receiving culture.These “changes” can be quite robust (as in this case, when melody traveled frommonophonic to polyphonic culture and “obtained” additional singing parts), or quitesubtle (if the cultures are closer to each other – see the next case). So, in this particularcase the monophonic melody became polyphonic. It is clear that it’s the intrinsic rules ofGeorgian polyphony that remained stable. These intrinsic rules are the “grammar” of themusical language, much more stable than the “lexicon” of the language (melodies). Inother words we can say that the changeable component for a culture is what is performed(melodies that can be borrowed from the other cultures), and the stable component is howit is performed (following the intrinsic rules of the culture). If we ask questions in thiscase of the Georgian urban song with the Middle Eastern melody “what are theysinging?” and “how are they singing?”, the answers will tell us completely differentstories about different things. The answer to the first question (what are they singing - aMiddle Eastern style melody) is informing us about themigration route of the melody,