Long life!
 

making a toast

A Mravalzhamier needs an identifier like "Benia's" because this traditional song of congratulation and good wishes comes in dozens of musical settings from all over Georgia. Some have additional text in the same vein, but most, like this version, use only the word mravalzhamier, stretched out, broken up, and sometimes injected with stray vowels. A Mravalzhamier would customarily be sung at the banquet table, as part of the elaborate ritual of toasts and accompanying songs (see Guruli Vakhtanguri for another of these), but it's surprising in how many other contexts it can come in handy.

The late Benia Mikadze was the leader of the Imeretian regional ensemble Sanavardo, and into his eighties he was a formidable champion of folk music. When Anzor Erkomaishvili invited Benia to appear on his folk-music TV show, he introduced him with the usual platitudes, ending with "And now it's my honor to welcome Benia Mikadze." Benia, tiny, gaunt, white-bearded, leaned into the microphone, pointed a challenging finger at Anzor, and, without saying a word, sang out the first note of a Gurian toasting song--a song that required Anzor to come in with the next voice just one note later. Anzor is not your average talking head, and after just a millisecond with his mouth hanging open he came in correctly, and our friend Malkhaz Erkvanidze from the Anchiskhati Choir (who were all waiting in the wings to sing with Benia later in the show) hustled on stage a moment later, just in time to supply the third voice. It made great TV.

Malkhaz Erkvanidze of the Anchiskhati Choir and Anzor Erkomaishvili of the Rustavi Ensemble

Benia Mikadze [photo: V. Markarova]

Both Malkhaz and Benia came from the Imeretian town of Samtredia, in an area where the music carries influences from both Guria and Imereti--regions whose styles are closely related anyway. This Mravalzhamier setting, either Benia's own invention or at least a version he adopted as his signature song, leans musically toward Guria. Malkhaz, whose father sang in Benia's ensemble, transcribed it when he was an ethnomusicology student. Years later we came across Malkhaz's transcription by roundabout means, learned it, and casually launched into Benia's personal Mravalzhamier the next time we were at table with the Anchiskhati Choir. Malkhaz froze, his fork halfway to his mouth, the look on his face almost as good as the one on Anzor's when Benia suddenly began to sing.

1. I was twelve years old. I wanted to catch a dove,
    My own heart's sweetness, to raise by hand.
2. We all want to travel one road--I had to go there.
    I wanted to return soon, having reached my goal.
3. My dove wasted away, it flew away.
    I can't stand, can't sit, until it returns.
4. My dove was attacked, doomed never to see old age.
    Forever was sealed your fate and mine.
 

three chonguris and a bass panduri

Though some songs are many hundreds of years old, folk music in Georgia is still a living form, and new songs in the traditional styles are being created even today. Chkimi Toronji, whose plaintive, melancholy tone is characteristic of a whole genre of traditional "heartbreak" song, was composed around 1931 by a husband-and-wife team, Beglar and Kionia Akobia, with words by Beglar's uncle, Paole Akobia. The Akobias came from Zugdidi, so the text is in Megrelian, the language of the western Georgian lowland region of Samegrelo. Megrelian differs from Georgian about the way German does from English: there are many obvious cognates, but the languages are not really mutually intelligible. (Megrelians grow up speaking both.) Though Carl once met the Akobias' daughter, we actually learned this song from an old Melodiya LP by the choir of the Megrelian village of Tsalenjikha. The accompanying instrument is the chonguri.

Come, let us drink the new sustenance,
Not sprung from hard rock but flowing from an ever pure spring
Issuing from the very grave of Christ, and by which we have been renewed.
 

Gelati Cathedral, in Imereti  (12th -18th century)

The medieval liturgical music composed in Georgian monasteries comes in two styles: eastern ("Kartli-Kakhetian"--see Jvarsa Shensa) or western ("Gurian"). The differences between them parallel the differences in the folk music of east and west: in the east, more triadic chords and greater importance of the middle, more melodic voice; in the west, fewer triads and greater independence of the parts. In addition, chants in the western Georgian style (also called the "Gelati School" after the principal medieval monastery identified with it) fall into two modes, simple and mixed, where the relative independence of the lines is again the issue.

Movedit da Vsvat, a chant for the Eucharist, is an example of the western Georgian mixed-mode style. In keeping with the long tradition of written rather than orally preserved liturgical music, we learned this from a book, Kakhi Rosebashvili's 1976 collection of Georgian hymns in the Gurian style (Kartuli Galoba: Guruli Kilo). Rosebashvili recorded and transcribed the parts as remembered by older singers, notably Artem Erkomaishvili, the great-uncle of our friend and mentor Anzor Erkomaishvili. But Rosebashvili's transcriptions are piano-ready and therefore no help in deciding questions of tuning. We tune the liturgical music the same way we do the folk music: the same methods of counterpoint construction apply, bringing with them the same imperatives of tuning by quintaves instead of octaves, and scalar motion by intervals that lie between a half and a whole step.

1. Black-eyed girl, woman, darling, 2. Why must you kill my heart? Woman, darling, 3. Either give me my knife, woman, darling, 4. Or call me your own. Woman, darling, 5. Black-eyed girl, woman, darling. The eastern Georgian regions of Kartli and Kakheti share most of their musical repertoire, though their styles of performance are distinctive. This ballad contains both styles: the triplet meter of the choral section suggests Kartli, while the melismatic, highly ornamented, Persian- influenced vocal style of the solo is typical of sun-parched Kakheti, famous for its vineyards.

a Kakhetian feast table

1. The black thrush spoke. I wonder what he said?
2. There goes a deer! Bark at him, dog!
3. Bark at him, Mura! Catch the deer!

Much of the folk repertoire from Guria, in the steep hills and hollows of southwestern Georgia, is characteristically sung by a trio: strictly one voice to a part, so that each singer can improvise and embellish freely. As with most Gurian trios, there's not much text in Shavi Shashvi, and what little there is goes by in three quick bursts. But some of what may sound like nonsense isn't: "ali!" is what you say to urge a dog on, and "am! am!" is what Georgian dogs say instead of "bow wow!"
 

Anzor Erkomaishvili interviewing Kavkasia  on his TV show, "100 Georgian Folk Songs"

To explain how we learned this and several other songs on our album, it's necessary to introduce Anzor Erkomaishvili, the director of the renowned professional Rustavi Ensemble, based in Tbilisi. Anzor is also the most visible and best-connected advocate of Georgian folk music around, partly through his weekly TV show, "100 Georgian Folk Songs," which he uses to spotlight the work of musicians old and new. (He put Kavkasia on the show and made us overnight celebrities.) Anzor is a scholar and a fierce preserver of the old singing traditions, and himself the last in a long line of famous singers: the Erkomaishvili Brothers were giants of Gurian trio music before the First World War.

We sort of knew one version of this particular and essential Gurian trio before we went to Georgia. But when Anzor learned that we intended to perform Georgian music in America as a trio, he said, "Forget that Shavi Shashvi you know--I'm going to teach you the version my grandfather and his brothers sang." And so he did. Though he was seriously ill at the time, we were summoned to his bedside. At first he could barely lift his head from the pillow to sing us our parts, but note by note, line by line, voice by voice, he pieced together the song in our heads. The process took all day, including a break for a grand dinner, during which Anzor--still lying down but within reach of the table--prompted us to deliver the string of ritually required toasts in the proper traditional order, while those fragments of Shavi Shashvi already lodged precariously in our heads began to dissolve away in wine. Then we went back to work again. As the hours passed and we gradually wilted Anzor got steadily stronger, till he was sitting up and gesticulating to correct us, while his wife and his elderly mother hovered anxiously nearby, trying to restrain him. But we couldn't leave till he had heard us sing Shavi Shashvi flawlessly from top to bottom.
 

Part of what Anzor was really teaching us--while we thought he was just teaching us another variant of a song we knew--was the grammar by which allowable and cool new variants are constructed, and the version we now sing incorporates some moves of our own.

Anzor teaching us a song