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Social and Political Constructions of Nation-Making inRelation to the Musical Styles and Discourses ofGeorgian Duduki Ensembles

To cite this Article: Tsitsishvili, Nino , 'Social and Political Constructions ofNation-Making in Relation to the Musical Styles and Discourses of Georgian DudukiEnsembles', Journal of Musicological Research, 26:2, 241 - 280To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/01411890701360120URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411890701360120

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Journal of Musicological Research, 26: 241–280, 2007Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN 0141-1896 print / 1547-7304 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01411890701360120

GMUR0141-18961547-7304Journal of Musicological Research, Vol. 26, No. 2-3, April 2007: pp. 1–51Journal of Musicological Research

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATION-MAKING IN RELATION TO THE MUSICAL STYLES AND DISCOURSES OF GEORGIAN DUDUKI ENSEMBLES1

Georgian Duduki EnsemblesNino Tsitsishvili Nino Tsitsishvili

Monash University

The study of the relationship between music and ideology in recentdecades has revealed multiple expressions of national sentiment andhelped us to understand those political-historical contexts in which theaesthetics of musical style are interpreted in close relation to the domi-nant ideologies of nation. The aesthetic perceptions of musical styles inGeorgia have been influenced by monoethnic nationalism and pro-Westernorientation. By supporting selected rural polyphonic singing styles ofethnic Georgians to become the symbol of national identity during thepre-communist, communist, and post-communist periods, the state’s andelite’s cultural discourses and policies have attenuated the status of theduduki ensembles and related urban musical styles derived from theMiddle Eastern maqam/dəstgah modal systems and the art of wanderingashugh/asik minstrels.

1I wish to thank Dr. Kay Dreyfus for her numerous critical readings of this article andsuggestions on improvements and stylistic corrections. I am grateful to the Georgian musi-cians who provided significant information about the history, music styles, and repertoireof the duduki dasta. For ethical and political considerations, however, I have decided notto mention their names. I established contact with the duduki musicians largely with thehelp of my friend and colleague Nana Kalandadze from The Folklore State Center ofGeorgia, where she manages contacts with rural musicians. I would like to acknowledgethe help of Joseph Jordania who accompanied me on several fieldtrips, and MaqvalaTsitsishvili, who searched through books and dictionaries and supplied precious informa-tion over the phone when I desperately needed it while writing this article in Melbourne.The comments, questions, and suggestions of the anonymous reviewers were most crucialfor the improvement and clarification of many aspects of my research, both for this articleand for the future.

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242 Nino Tsitsishvili

INTRODUCTION: THE STATUS OF DUDUKI ENSEMBLES WITHIN GEORGIAN NATIONAL RHETORIC

When I asked him what kind of music he loves to play most, a Georgianduduki2 player and teacher from Tbilisi answered metaphorically: “Youknow what, when I was a student at the Institute of Rural Agriculture[during Soviet times], there was a slogan that said, ‘There is no bad soil,there are only bad soil-cultivators.’ The same applies to music: there canbe no bad or good melody, there can only be a bad or a good perfor-mance.”3 My question followed a long, emotional, and tetchy conversa-tion on the subject of Georgian duduki music, its Persian-Middle Easterninfluences, and whether it represented Georgian culture; the musician fer-vently asserted the duduki’s “pure” Georgian origin and nature.

Despite the alleged philosophical “truth” inherent in the statement thatall kinds of music are equal, it is evident that different societies and subcul-tures within them apply different criteria of taste and aesthetic perceptionsto the music they hear. Music is capable of triggering emotions of love, nos-talgia, disdain, or intolerance, and it can contribute to the “construction ofthe self” by offering us the possibility of knowledge of other peoples andthe social worlds their music embodies, and of ourselves in relation tothem.4 Language surrounding music continues to be imbued with percep-tions of race and ethnicity,5 authenticity, nation-ness, or nation-less-ness.Most critically for this study, it has been repeatedly demonstrated in recentethnomusicological writings that musical cultures develop in close interac-tion with political culture, historical contexts, and economic changes,6 and

2Duduki (in Georgian), also known as balaban, yasti balaman, and düdük (in Azerbaijan),and mey or ney (in Turkish), is a double-reed aerophone with a cylindrical bore, widely used inthe Middle East and Transcaucasia, mostly in ensembles. See The Garland Encyclopedia ofWorld Music, vol. 6: The Middle East, eds. Virginia Danielson, Scott Marcus, and Dwight Rey-nolds (New York and London: Routledge, 2002); Andy Nercessian, The Duduk and NationalIdentity in Armenia (London: The Scarecrow Press, 2001), 18. It has a warm and slightly nasaltimbre often described in Georgian as sweet (tkbili). It is popular among folk and professionalmusicians. See glossary at the end of the article.

3Interview, Tbilisi, April 29, 2006.4Martin Stokes, “Introduction: Ethnicity, Identity and Music,” in Ethnicity, Identity and

Music: The Musical Construction of Place, ed. Martin Stokes (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1994), 3.5Ronald Radano and Philip V. Bohlman, “Introduction: Music and Race, Their Past, Their Pres-

ence,” in Music and the Racial Imagination (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1–53.6See Donna A. Buchanan, “Metaphors of Power, Metaphors of Truth: The Politics of Music

Professionalism in Bulgarian Folk Orchestras,” Ethnomusicology 39/3 (1995), 381–416; Buchanan,“Wedding Musicians, Political Transition, and National Consciousness in Bulgaria,” in RetuningCulture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Mark Slobin (Durham, N.C.: DukeUniversity Press, 1996), 201; Buchanan, Performing Democracy: Bulgarian Music and Musicians inTransition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006); Timothy Rice, “The Dialectic of Eco-nomics and Aesthetics in Bulgarian Music,” in Retuning Culture, 176–99.

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Georgian Duduki Ensembles 243

that rhetorics of national superiority and ethnic purity are attached toselected and canonized musical repertoires at moments of nationalist resur-gence and political transition.

In Georgia today, musical expressions of nation-building and monoeth-nic nationalism are embodied in the aesthetic assumptions, political orien-tations, and practices that academics, official musical organizations, andmusicians employ regarding the Middle Eastern-derived duduki dastarepertoire. These assumptions and practices aim to rationalize, endorse, ordefy (consciously or not) the line of difference drawn between oriental(aghmosavluri, lit. Eastern) music and its perceived negativity as “non-Georgian,” “foreign,” “imposed,” “Tatruli” (from tatari, the term for theAzeris), “Qizilbashuri,”7 “Musulmanuri” (Muslim), and “Somkhuri”(Armenian) on the one hand, and on the other, the rural polyphonic songtradition originally found among the largely peasant, ethnically Georgianpopulation and perceived as being “truly” Georgian.8 Musicians whopractice the Middle Eastern-derived repertoires and styles include ethnicGeorgians as well as Azeris, Armenians, Greeks, Kurds, and other minor-ities who have lived in the country for several centuries. This article, how-ever, focuses on the Georgian dasta musicians.

Despite their Georgian ethnic identity and background, duduki dastamusicians have inferior status within the nationalist rhetoric compared tothat of state-supported polyphonic choirs that sing rural polyphonicsongs. Their lesser status derives from the Middle Eastern Azeri-Persianand Armenian-associated styles of urban vocal-instrumental music theyperform; polyphonic song, in contrast, is perceived as autochthonous andpurely national (tsminda erovnuli). Such binarism became the backboneof Georgian monoethnic musical nationalism in the late period of theRussian Empire and in the socialist state, as well as in current musical-cultural policies and, even more so, in scholarly thought.

7Qizilbash are “Turkic tribesmen with origins in Azerbaijan, Anatolia, Syria, and the SouthCaucasus, who had become attached to the Safavid Sufi order over the course of the fifteenthcentury.” See Shahzad Bashir, “Shah Ismail and the Qizilbash: Cannibalism in the ReligiousHistory of Early Safavid Iran,” History of Religions 45/3 (2006), 235.

8Apparently influenced by Russian perceptions of the Orient, Georgian composer andmusicologist Dimitri Araqishvili (1873–1953) used the term “Eastern musicians” (Vostochnyemuzykanti, in Russian) in relation to the ensembles of Middle Eastern instruments known assazandari, which were popular in nineteenth-century Tbilisi (the capital of Georgia since thefifth century CE). See Dimitri Araqishvili, “O Gruzinskykh Muzikal’nykh Instrumentakh izSobranii Moskvy i Tiflisa” [On the Musical Instruments from the Collection of Moscow andTbilisi], in Trudi Muzikal’no-Etnograficheskoi Komisii, Tom II [Works of the Musical-EthnographicCommission, vol. 2] (Moscow: T-vo Skoropechatny A. A. Levenson, 1911), 190–1.

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DUDUKI ENSEMBLES: THEIR INSTRUMENTS, REPERTOIRE, AND STYLES, WITH SOME HISTORICAL AND ETYMOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

In this article I will discuss the musical constructions of nationalismand state-building in Georgia using the example of duduki ensemblesand their aesthetic conceptualization within the nationalist rhetoric.The tradition of playing duduki was widely disseminated in the cos-mopolitan city of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, at least since thenineteenth century, particularly among the multi-ethnic population oflower-class artisans and small tradesmen. The most common perfor-mance practice of duduki music is dasta, a type of ensemble com-monly hired to play at weddings and other celebrations andcomprising two or three duduki, doli (a double headed cylindricaldrum played with sticks or with hands), a singer (who is also the doliplayer), and more recently, an accordion, which became popular fromthe end of the nineteenth century and is still played throughout easternand southeastern Georgia. Apparently the word dasta was borrowedfrom the Persian language during the period of Persian-Georgian con-tact; in Iran, a daste is a group of men who meet to perform poeticlaments for martyrs.9 A similar word, dastalughi, is a refrain of a songthat contains the main motive of a poem in the ashugh repertoire.10

Similarly, we might imagine the link between dasta, the Georgianword for the duduki ensemble, and the Persian-Azerbaijani dəstgah, alarge cycle of mugham, the elements of which are assimilated intoGeorgian duduki music.

The most popular form of duduki dasta since the nineteenth century,one that is still commonly found in eastern Georgia, comprises threemusicians: damkvreli [the player], damkashi [the drone player], and med-ole [the doli player], who is a singer as well. Similar ensembles compris-ing either two duduki or two zurna and the drum are also popular in

9See Danielson et al., 1080; Stephen Blum, “Iran: An Introduction,” in Danielson et al.,826.

10About the dastalughi see Ioseb Grishashvili, Dzveli Tbilisis Literaturuli Bohema [The Liter-ary Bohemia of Old Tbilisi] (Batumi: Literaturuli Achara, 1997), 185. Dastalughi could also berelated to the Dastan (plural, Dastanlar) in Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Central Asia, which is asung poetic narrative performed by an asiq or bakhshi. See Danielson et al., 1080; Charlotte F.Albright, “The Asiq and His Music in Northwest Iran (Azerbaijan),” in Danielson et al., 851.The Georgian and Armenian ashugh and the Turkish and Azeri asiq means “lover” and isderived from Arabic. Both signify a folk poet, singer, and player. The most well known ashughpoets and musicians in Georgia were the Armenian Sayatnova (1712–95), who worked asGeorgia’s penultimate king Erekle’s court musician, and Ietim Gurji (1875–1940), the son of aTurkish-born Georgian; both were from Tbilisi. Poems written by Ietim Gurji are often sung bythe duduki dasta and individual singers today.

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Azerbaijan and Armenia.11 The traditional repertoire of duduki dastaconsists of a variety of vocal-instrumental genres and hybrid styles ofAzeri-Persian-Turkish and Armenian derivation. These are kalakuri[lit., “urban”] songs or instrumental pieces on the topics of love, home-land and feasting, and mukhambazi, a term which is believed to havephonetic and etymological connections with mughamat and to representa type of mughamat developed specifically in Tbilisi.12 However, itmight be more likely that the Georgian mukhambazi is related to a clas-sical Arabic poetic form mukhammas used in Central Asian maqam tra-ditions. The latter hypothesis seems more plausible becausemukhambazi is a poetic form introduced into the Georgian ashugh tradi-tion by Sayatnova.13 Another form of Middle Eastern ensemble andstyle of music particularly popular in Tbilisi in the nineteenth and thebeginning of twentieth centuries was sazandari (from the Azeri sazəndə[instrumentalist],14 an ensemble consisting of kemanche,15 tar,16 daira,17

11In contrast to the duduki, which is a double-reed cylindrical-shaped aerophone, the zurnais a double-reed aerophone with a conical bore. While duduki is specific to south Transcauca-sia and Turkey, zurna appears to be a common instrument in the eastern Arab world. Thezurna’s loud and high-pitched sound and the doli drumming are used to accompany outdoorwedding processions and wrestling competitions in eastern parts of Georgia. In some villagesthis practice was still in use in the 1990s. When the wedding procession entered the home,zurna would be replaced with duduki ensembles, the gentle sound of which is more suitable forindoor performances.

12Aleksi Barnovi, Dzveli Tbilisis Musikosebi [Musicians of the Old Tbilisi] (Tbilisi:Khelovneba, 1974) (in Georgian), 11.

13Zezva Medulashvili, Sayatnova (Tbilisi: Caucasian House, 2006) (in Georgian, Armenian,and Azerbaijani), 5.

14Tamila Djani-Zade, “Music of Azerbaijan,” in Danielson et al., 929. According to a Tbili-sian duduki player, the term sazandari derives from saz-na-dari, which is an amalgam of saz (along-necked fretted Turkish and Azerbaijani folk lute or any instrument), na (ney, Iranian end-blown flute), and dari or daira (a frame drum) (personal communication). Three similar instru-ments were used to accompany the singing of the asiq in Eastern Azerbaijan, Iran: the saz, thebalaban (a duduki type aerophone), and the qaval, called daira in Persian-speaking Iran (seeAlbright, 845, 848). A further parallel can be drawn between the duduki and balaban used toaccompany the asiqs, and the playing of the ney flute and professional poet-performers, asiq inTurkish Sufi ceremonies. Unlike the duduki and zurna players and ashugh poet-musicians whooriginated from the lower social class population, sazandari musicians seem to have had ahigher-class social and educational background.

15Spike fiddle played by a professional sazəndə or sazandari ensembles in Tbilisi, mostlyby Armenians and Azerbaijanis. The kemanche is similar in shape and construction to theGeorgian chianuri and the chuniri of the western Georgian provinces and some scholarshave equated these instruments. However, the number of strings and tuning are quitedifferent.

16Tar (tari in Georgian) is a long-necked lute with a body in the shape of a figure-eight, waswidely played by the Armenian and Azerbaijanian professional and folk musicians. There aresome Azeri tar players in Georgia today.

17Round frame drum.

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santur,18 naghara19 and singer [khanende]). But whereas sazandari per-formed the classical mugham repertoire, a large segment of the dudukiensemble repertoire today is made up of folk songs, an amalgam of Mid-dle Eastern styles, Georgian rural folk songs, and Western harmonies.20

Another traditional repertoire of the duduki dasta is baiati (aGeorgian word for maqam/mugham-dəstgah21). Georgian duduki dastamusicians denote the Middle Eastern-derived modal system by the termbaiati rather than maqam, mugham, or dəstgah, so that they have baiatirasti, baiati shuri, baiati hijazi, baiati chahargah, etc., rather thanmaqam rasti and maqam shuri. Generally, for Georgian musicians,baiati is the counterpart of the Arab maqam, Turkish makam, and Azerimugham, while “mugham” in Georgia is often used as a slang word for“mood.”22 This alternative usage of the term baiati in the Georgianduduki ensemble tradition may have various explanations. It is likelythat baiati was introduced into Georgia as a specific mugham of theAzeri-Persian dəstgah cycle, such as bayati qajar, bayati siraz, orbayati kurd, all of which are incorporated into the Georgian duduki rep-ertoire. On the other hand, the notion of baiati may also be derived fromthe bayati as a folk poetic genre, as in the Azeri tradition.23 For exam-ple, an accordion player and singer from an east Georgian villagedescribed one of his sorrowful songs to me as bayaturi, despite the factthat he was not familiar with the mugham/makam modal system.

Until the first decade of the twentieth century, the tradition ofbaiati/mughamat was well maintained by the distinguished Azer-baijani and Armenian tar players, singers (khanende), and sazandariensembles of the cosmopolitan and trilingual city of Tbilisi. Thesemusicians both practiced the mughamat and had a thorough theoreticalknowledge of the mugham modal system through their links with thePersian-, Arabic-, and Turkish-speaking cultural world. From thetwentieth century this situation changed. The cosmopolitan atmo-sphere of Tbilisi declined and the monoethnic Georgian populationgrew, the result of which was that many Armenian and Azerbaijani

18Trapezoidal zither struck with two mallets, today played largely in Iraq. Santuri wasplayed in Georgia by the sazandari until the twentieth century, but it is now preserved only inmuseums.

19Naghara is also known in Georgia as diplipito, a small kettledrum played in pairs. SeeDavid Alavidze, Kartuli da Sakartveloshi Gavrtselebuli Khalkhuri Musikaluri Sakravebi [Geor-gian Musical Instruments and the Instruments’ Spread in Georgia] (Tbilisi: Khelovneba,1978), 98 (in Georgian).

20See tracks 1, 2, 3, 4 on the CD Tamarioni (see discography).21From the Arab maqam, a polysemous term signifying a mode, genre, and a form of musical-

melodic development. See Djani-Zade, 929.22Mughamshi ara var [lit., “I am not in the mugham”] means “I am not in the mood.”23Djani-Zade, 931.

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musicians left to pursue their musical careers in Armenia and Azerbaijan,where the mugham and ashugh traditions were more appreciated at thestate and institutional levels.

While Georgian duduki musicians in Tbilisi today continue to prac-tice certain scales and tunes of the dəstgah/mughamat/baiati modal sys-tem, they do not have a thorough theoretical knowledge of themughamat as a modal system, mainly because of the lack of formal andsemiformal educational institutions that would teach the baiati (maqam)tradition.24 The detachment from the Middle Eastern makam and ashughtradition was also facilitated by the gradual integration of the maqamat/mughamat with Georgian and West European popular urban and ruralmusic styles, and as a result, by the development of specific local Georgianduduki styles and repertoire. Therefore, many terms and concepts ofPersian and Azeri origin have been used in transformed and hybridizedcontexts and meaning.

For example, present-day duduki players blend the concepts ofashugh and baiati and speak about the baiati (and mughamat) asderived from and associated with the ashugh tradition. The conceptuallink between the ashugh and the baiati-mughamat might be derivedfrom the possible connection between “dasta,” the Georgian word forthe duduki ensemble, and dastan, a sung poetic narrative performed byan asiq (ashugh) (as explained earlier). Mugham modes were also inte-grated with the asiq (ashugh) art in eastern Azerbaijan, especiallyduring Soviet times.25 The word baiati in Georgia also denotes a lyrical-love song genre set to the rubais of Omar Khayam26 [rubai is a classicalpoetic form often used in Central Asian maqam traditions]. For exam-ple, the urban modal improvisatory duduki solo “Shikaste” on the CDSoinari (see discography) is set to the words of a poem by the Georgianashugh Ietim Gurji, the eleven-syllable line (4+4+3) form of which isidentical with the short poetic forms of the asiq havasi in NorthwestIran.27 Besides, ashugh/asiq art was utilized in Sufi religious ceremo-nies, in which an asiq sang both liturgical and secular songs.28 Many of

24Several duduki players told me in conversation that there are special houses in Tbilisi andother east Georgian towns called bina [lit., “apartment”], where dasta musicians gather, learnfrom each other, and practice. These bina apparently replaced the guilds that were plentiful inthe nineteenth century. In these guilds of the mostly lower social class population, young musi-cians lived with and learned from their ustabash [the master zurna and duduki players]. Todaythe number of bina has drastically decreased. Most dastas today are in the Khashuri, Gori, andKaspi regions of eastern Georgia.

25Djani-Zade, 930.26Barnovi, 15.27Albright, 851.28Walter Feldman, “Ottoman Turkish Music: Genre and Form,” in Danielson et al., 114–5.

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these genres utilized makam modes, as is apparent from the practice ofMevlevi ney players.29 Such a polysemous and amalgamated usage ofthe concepts of makam, baiati, and ashugh/asiq speaks for the greatertendency of complex hybridization of styles and genres in the MiddleEastern-influenced duduki dasta music of Georgia.

THE STATUS OF DUDUKI IN THE MODERN NATION STATE

Based on my analysis of field recordings, interviews, Georgian aca-demic discourse, and cultural-folklore policies espoused by officialorganizations, my focus is on the ambiguity and expandable nature ofidentity that emerges as musicians and audiences alike try to explainand make sense of their simultaneous multiple musical experiences,tastes, artistic collaborations, and genuine love for music-making againstthe background of a persistent ideology of ethnic nationalism and aes-thetic standards set by the official music organizations and academia.Caught between the rhetoric of nationalism and a diverse social-ethnicreality in a dynamic and multi-faceted process of modern nation-makingthat has been in progress since the nineteenth century, dasta musiciansemploy ideas and interpretations that are often contradictory, pointingto an expression of identity that is ambivalent and conflicting: betweenthe self and the ideology, between the culture as defined by the officials(from institutions such as the Ministry of Culture and the State Conser-vatorium), and the multi-ethnic and hybrid culture in which they actu-ally live; between musicianship as an expression of nationality andstate-building, and musicianship as an activity that—due to music’sintangible qualities and economic considerations—crosses ethnicboundaries. While identity is in constant flux and national purity is anelusive and ambivalent condition, ethnicity and nationalism still remainas axes around which emotions and senses of belonging revolve and dis-courses of power and truth are shaped.

As we shall see, this ambivalence is rooted in Georgia’s political-historical experience of struggle for political-economic independencefrom Islam during the seventh through eighteenth centuries and fromRussia since the eighteenth century, which deepened, indeed created, asense of alienation among the multi-ethnic and multi-religious popula-tion of Transcaucasia, especially in the aftermath of the dissolution ofthe Soviet Union, the government of which silenced the differences andissues of interethnic relations. The experience of split and fragmentedidentity, in which musicians and scholars are caught between two con-trasting and conflicting worlds, is also facilitated by Georgia’s geopolitical

29Ursula Reinhard, “Turkey: An Overview,” in Danielson et al., 769, track 2.

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and social location between Europe and Asia. As their country is part ofAsia, Georgians cannot view things Oriental as completely Other, theymust view them as part of Self; therefore, the Orient occupies a differentplace in the Georgian experience than in that of the European West,because Orientalism as an intellectual concept was borrowed fromRussia and the West rather than emerging locally. Local culture and historywere manipulated to underpin ideas of the Oriental versus the European,to be discussed below. The inferior status of dasta musicians is alsolinked to the propensity of the Georgian political and cultural elites torepresent Georgia as intrinsically Western, and to the contradiction thatmay exist between the representations of the Western-oriented elites andthe historical-social reality of Georgia’s broader rural and multi-ethniclower social class populations.

MUSIC OF THE CITY, MUSIC OF THE VILLAGE: ORIGINS AND POLITICS OF GEORGIAN NATIONALISM

Georgia emerged at the crossroads of Europe and Asia in contact with theGreek, Roman, Byzantine, and Persian civilizations. In the fourth centuryGeorgia adopted Christianity and together with Armenia became the East-ern stronghold of Christendom in Caucasia. Georgia’s history and culture,however, was largely determined by links with the Islamic world.Through its long history of cultural and political ties with the great Per-sian powers from the sixth century BCE to the eighteenth century, as wellas the Arab Caliphate (seventh to tenth centuries) and Ottoman Turkey(fifteenth to eighteenth centuries),30 the social-political life particularly ofsoutheastern Georgia was under a direct influence from the Persian andIslamic worlds.31 Georgia was predominantly a peasant and rural societyand, from early Middle Ages until the late nineteenth century, the towns

30See chaps. 7–21 in Giorgi Melikishvili, Ocherki Istorii Gruzii, tom 1: Gruzia s DrevneyshikhVremen do IV veka N.E. [Essays on the History of Georgia in Eight Volumes, volume 1: Geor-gia from the Earliest Times to the 4th Century A.D.], ed. Giorgi Melikishvili and Otar Lortki-panidze (Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1989), 245–60, 271–4, 294–306, 226 (in Russian); AnriBogveradze, “Rannefeodal’nye Gruzinskye Gosudarstva v VI-VIII vv.” [Early Feudal Geor-gian States in the Sixth to Eighth Centuries], in Ocherki Istorii Gruzii v Vosmi Tomakh, tom II:Gruzia v IV-X Vekakh [Essays on the History of Georgia in Eight Volumes, vol. 2: Georgia inthe Sixth to Tenth Centuries], ed. Miriam Lortkipanidze and David Muskhelishvili (Tbilisi:Metsniereba, 1988), 141–88 (in Russian); Miriam Lortkipanidze, “Tbilisskii Emirat” [TheTbilisi Emirate], in Ocherki Istorii Gruzii v Vosmi Tomakh, 339–53; Ronald Grigor Suny, TheMaking of the Georgian Nation, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).

31As a result of Ottoman rule from the sixteenth century, the regions of southwest Georgiasuch as Samtskhe Saatabago and part of Guria (today’s Achara, Meskheti, and Javakheti [the lat-ter two regions are often referred to as one, Meskhet-Javakheti region]) were Islamized and, in theview of Georgian nationalists, lost their Georgian and Christian identity. When Russia colonized

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of eastern Georgia were largely inhabited by Muslims, Armenians,Azeris, Persians, and other foreigners.32 Multi-ethnicity, thus, has a longhistory in southeastern Georgia, and traces of its tremendous effect on thecharacter of the musical culture are audible in today’s duduki dastamusic.

Georgia’s ultimate decision to be politically oriented toward the Westdates from the end of the eighteenth century, when the eastern Georgiankingdom, desperate to defend itself from Ottoman Turkey and Persia,signed the Treaty of Georgievsk in 1783, which placed the Kartli-Kakhetikingdom (of eastern Georgia) under Russia’s protection. Russia annexedGeorgia in 1801, proclaimed it as a province (gubernia), and soon thewhole of Georgia became Russia’s colony. After a short period of indepen-dence (1918–21), Georgia became part of the Soviet Union. The turn fromthe multi-ethnic and hybrid society of eastern Georgian towns and Tbilisito a mono-ethnic nationalism was largely caused by the demographic-cultural and social-economic changes that occurred in Georgia as a resultof Russian colonization, capitalism, Russification, and the emergence of anational movement from the nineteenth century. At that time, large num-bers of rural Georgian nobility and peasantry, desirous of joining the grow-ing workforce of administrative bureaucracy and proletariat, startedmoving to Tbilisi (the capital, then and now). In a city where bi- andtri-lingualism was commonplace, they “came into contact with people ofdifferent cultures. One’s ‘Georgianness’ now had to be affirmed more con-sciously. In the multi-ethnic context of Tiflis [the old name of Tbilisi], theboundaries between ethnicities had to be defined and redefined.”33

In Tbilisi and other towns, ethnic Georgians, especially those from thewestern provinces, also came into contact with Persian and Armenian musical

the Caucasus at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Muslim Georgians of Meskhet-Javakhetiand Achara, fearing Russia’s and Christian Georgians’ revenge for their adoption of the Islamicfaith and Ottoman rule, immigrated to Turkey where they established Georgian villages. See PaulJ. Magnarella, with contribution by Ahmet Ozkan, The Peasant Venture: Tradition, Migration, andChange among Georgian Peasants in Turkey (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Company,1979), 14–6. Stalin deported Georgian Muslims (Turk Meskhetians, as they are called) fromMeskheti to Central Asia in 1944, out of a presumption that they would back Turkey during WorldWar II; their repatriation to Georgia caused very controversial responses from Georgian politi-cians and national leaders, some of whom, again, feared that their resettlement would create eth-nic problems, and that Turk Meskhetians would support Muslim culture and Turkey rather thanChristian and pro-Western Georgia. Georgian political leadership also expressed fear that settlingTurk Meskhetians in the Armenian populated area of Meskhet-Javakheti) would cause unrest inthe region. See “Ethnic Affiliations. Meskhetians,” European Country of Origin Information Net-work. Human Rights Issues, http://www.ecoi.net/doc/en/GE/content/4/2276, accessed June 4,2006. Azeris are ethnic Azerbaijani rather than Georgian Muslims.

32Suny, 38.33Suny, 115.

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cultures that were completely different from the choral-polyphonic forms oftheir village communal music-making. When the rising patriotic intelligen-tsia looked for sources of national and cultural identity by the beginning ofthe nineteenth century, the music of Tbilisi and surrounding towns as wellas rural areas was, paradoxically for their quest, a complex amalgam ofArmenian and Azeri-Persian styles and repertoires played by professionaland amateur musicians of Armenian, Georgian, Azeri, Persian, Kurdish,Greek, and other ethnic backgrounds. From the nineteenth century this cul-tural amalgam was further elaborated by contact with the Georgian poly-phonic song tradition and with European and Russian influences.34

From the second half of the nineteenth century, the number of ensem-bles and musicians who practiced Azeri-Persian and Armenian-derivedhybrid styles, genres, and performance forms of urban vocal-instrumentalmusic declined. They were labeled as “foreign” in the increasingly mono-nationalistic and Europocentric letters published in popular newspapersand periodicals, and by musicologists and politically-active writers.35 Incontrast, rural polyphonic song, as it came to epitomize Georgian ethnic-ity, was one of the main desired ingredients—alongside Western classicaland modern music—in the making of Georgian national classical sym-phonic and operatic music. Such music embodied an idea of progress andof modernity, with roots in the ancient and rural autochthonous past. Asthe educated elite and scholars became familiar with the ideologies of Ori-entalism, modernity, European-Western superiority, and theories of theevolution of civilizations during the late nineteenth and especially twentiethcenturies, the intelligentsia and musicologists also perceived polyphony asa more European phenomenon than was the monophonic and monodicMiddle Eastern music.36 What in Georgian academic writings is defined as“oriental” (aghmosavluri), is actually a variety of highly hybrid styles ofpopular music, as implied in a definition like “Persian-Arab-Georgian

34For the introduction of European and Russian musical culture and educational institu-tions in Georgia see Araqishvili, Kartuli Musika: Mokle Istoriuli Mimokhilva [Georgian Music: aBrief Historical Study] (Kutaisi: Adgilobrivi Meurneobis Stamba, 1925) (in Georgian); IngaBakhtadze, Kartuli Musikalur-Estetikuri Azris Istoriidan: XIX Saukunis Meore Nakhevari [TheHistory of Georgian Music-Aesthetic Thought: The Second Half of the Nineteenth Century],(Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1986) (in Georgian); Gulbat Toradze, Kartuli Musikis Istoria, Tsigni I[The History of Georgian Music, Book 1] (Tbilisi: Ganatleba, 1990) (in Georgian).

35Disfavor of the “oriental” was also instigated by the Russian viceroyalty in Tbilisi, whoappeared as civilizers of “backward Asiatic people,” and who preferred that Italian opera beheard instead of the “semi-barbarous sounds of Persian music” popular a few years before theirarrival. See Suny, 93. Russian representatives had close ties with the Russified and at leastexternally Europeanized local Georgian nobility and intelligentsia.

36Araqishvili, Kartuli Musika, 22; Araqishvili, “Svan Folk Song,” in Essays on Georgian Eth-nomusicology (International Research Center for Traditional Polyphony of Tbilisi V. Sarajish-vili State Conservatoire, 2005), 56 (reprint in English).

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song” (Persidsko-arabo-gruzinskaya pesnya).37 It is this hybridity and theperceived presence of an “oriental” sound, alongside elements of so-called “cheap” popular styles, that makes this music a “conflict zone” for thenational ideology, with the latter’s emphasis on the alleged intact authen-ticity and European-ness of the polyphonic music (with its connections toChristendom38), and on progressive Western classical and modern music.

NATIONALISM AND THE ESSENCE OF GEORGIAN MUSIC

As the Georgian patriotic elite of the nineteenth century set out to cre-ate an “awakening” of the nation from its centuries of self-oblivion,music became one of the expressive forms that had to manifest a dis-tinctively Georgian character. Therefore, it became necessary todefine which type of music best represented the Georgian nation. Anidea of rural folk song in the Herderian and European sense, in whichnational song had the power to represent universal human culture, thespecific people’s character, and the historical drama,39 was discoveredand revived in Georgia too. The first collections of Georgian folksongs appeared in the 1870s and 1880s,40 and folk song was imaginedas an expression of the Georgian people’s psychology, and of a pureGeorgian character and taste.41 The polyphonic singing that accompa-nied the customs and agrarian life of the largely peasant, ethnic-Georgiansociety in the villages became the “cultural-historical physiognomy ofGeorgian music.”42

37Araqishvili, Kratki Ocherk Razvitya Gruzinskoi Kartalino-Kakhetinskoi Narodnoi Pesni [A BriefStudy of the Development of the Georgian Kartli-Kakhetian Folk Song] (Moscow: K. Menshov,1906), 285 (in Russian). See also Archil Mshvelidze, Kartuli Khalkhuri Kalakuri Simgherebi [Geor-gian Folk Urban Songs] (Tbilisi: Georgian Department of the Muzfond [Musical Fund] of theUSSR, 1970) (in Georgian); Barnovi, 1974; Tamar Meskhi, “Georgian Town Polyphony Songs,” inProblems of Folk Polyphony: Materials of the International Conference Dedicated to the 80th Anniver-sary of the V. Saradjishvili Tbilisi State Conservatoire, ed. Rusudan Tsurtsumia (Tbilisi: Tbilisi StateConservatoire, 2000), 135–42 (in Georgian with English summary). Russian popular music of thepost-socialist period has become a new source for the cassette industry in Georgia today and iswidely played in the buses and minibuses (called marshrutka) that run in and between towns andvillages.

38From the eighth to ninth centuries an elaborate tradition of polyphonic church chantingand liturgy developed in Georgia. First it was introduced from Byzantine and Syria as a one-part canonical chant system, but it was later polyphonized by Georgian church musicians.

39Philip Bohlman, The Music of European Nationalism: Cultural Identity and Modern History(Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2004), 42–3.

40Araqishvili, Kartuli Musika, 41, 50; Otar Chijavadze, “Kartuli Musikaluri Kultura XIXSaukuneshi” [Georgian Musical Culture in the nineteenth Century], in Toradze, KartuliMusikis Istoria, 74.

41Bakhtadze, 88.42Bakhtadze, 94.

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In 1886, Ilia Chavchavadze (1837–1907), a Georgian writer and one ofthe founders of the Georgian liberal-democratic nationalist movement, pub-lished his letter on “Georgian folk music.” It was inspired by the first concertof Georgian polyphonic songs performed by the “Kartuli Koro,” a choirformed in 1885 by Lado Aghniashvili, a Georgian public activist and theeducated son of a Georgian priest.43 In his letter, Chavchavadze made a cleardistinction between Georgian rural polyphonic and Asian types of music,saying that “a Persian does not like our three-part song because he does notunderstand it.”44 While Chavchavadze intended to distinguish Georgianpolyphony both from European and Asian (Persian) music, his implicit con-cern was to dissociate Georgia from Asia, for the author believed that“Europe has left Asia behind,” and that Georgian polyphony could be “acompletely new phenomenon in the history and theory of music,”45 to beacknowledged by Western cultural hegemony. It is symptomatic that, a hun-dred years after the publication of Chavchavadze’s letter, a tendency to“overcome the oriental influence” in Georgian music was identified, devel-oping Chavchavadze’s thesis of a significant “typological” differencebetween Georgian polyphony and Persian monophony.46 This tendency,interpreted as the only way toward the creation of a unique and healthy clas-sical national music, still defines musicological thought in Georgia.47

It was assumed that the rural folk music of ethnic Georgians was supe-rior to urban music. The intolerance toward urban music had to do with anattribution of negative social values—such as the absence of a Western-style musical education, an association with lower-class uncivilized soci-ety, and “oriental” Muslim backwardness—similar to negative perceptionsof the “oriental” Ottoman Turkish cultural heritage in Bulgaria.48 Accord-ing to Imedi (“Hope”), the popular national-socialist newspaper of the1880s, the urban music was “either distorted, or comprised solo songs ofthe kinto [a low class of workers and craftsmen in Tbilisi]49 or Persianbaiati. Therefore, we can only call folk song those songs that are sung byrural people . . . . Fortunately, the people, which has always been thedefender of its national characteristics . . . protected and preserved its pure

43Chijavadze, 78–9.44Ilia Chavchavadze, “Georgian Folk Music,” in Essays on Georgian Ethnomusicology, 20.45Chavchavadze, 19.46Bakhtadze, 91–109.47See Rusudan Tsurtsumia, Twentieth-Century Georgian Music: Originality and Value Orien-

tation (Tbilisi: Tbilisi State Conservatoire, 2005).48Buchanan, “Wedding Musicians,” 206.49Kinto, who often entertained the public by playing and singing in the streets, were often

viewed as “dishonest” (tricksters) in contrast with the qarachogheli, another class of Tbilisiancraftsmen in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who were known for their honorable,manly (katsuri) behavior and respected by their fellow citizens. The qarachogheli often heldfeasts with the duduki dasta and ashugh singers.

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Georgian song tunes.”50 For the radical nationalists, rural songs had noth-ing in common with what they described as the “Persian croaking thatfills the streets of the city.”51 The Soviet era saw an even more stringentadherence to, indeed, an institutional endorsement of ideas of monoethnicnationalism and its cultural expressions. This included the establishmentof the State Ensemble of Song and Dance, the Cabinet of People’s Cre-ativity (established in 1936, renamed The House of People’s Creativity in1937 and, currently, The Folklore State Center of Georgia), and villageand regional choirs that openly promoted the rural polyphonic and ethnicGeorgian folkloric tradition. In Soviet times, the Persian-Azeri and Arme-nian heritage in Georgian culture was further marginalized and disguised,as Ziegler writes: “Urban music in the oriental style was now called the‘Song of Old Tbilisi’ to avoid any social and ethnic conflicts and to find apurely national term for this kind of music, which was no longer per-formed by Georgians and was not considered typical of Georgian musicalculture.”52 Despite the fact that the Ministry of Culture in Soviet Georgiaand the Professional Association of Art Workers recognized and evencommissioned duduki dastas to boost soldiers’ spirits during the GreatPatriotic War (1941–45), duduki music was largely marginalized. None-theless, while apparently missing from the educational institutions andcultural policies, the “Song of Old Tbilisi” and Persian-derived baiatihave survived in the expressive culture of a large part of the population.

An attempt to separate an indigenous Georgian urban music from a for-eign urban music in Tbilisi is palpable in the few articles written on thesubject of urban Oriental music. It clearly points to the desire to disguisethe ethnic-cultural hybridity of southeastern Georgia. For example, Msh-velidze, the expert on Georgian urban music, distinguishes between thehistorically earlier, local, ethnically-Georgian branch of the urban ashughmusic and the art of the Persian-Azeri ashughs, which, in his words, wasintroduced beginning in the seventeenth century. Noting the lack ofimportant social concerns in the poetry, he associated the music of thebaiati-mughamat style with the “exaggeration (‘hypertrophy’) of feelings,emotions of a person who lacks willpower [nebamikhdili, lit. lack of freewill], a contemplative perception of life [tskhovrebis ch’vret’iti agh-kma],” similar to the emotions of sentimentality, tears, passive fatalism,and private self expressed in Arabesk. In contrast, local Georgian ashughs

50Cf. Bakhtadze, 96.51Cf. Bakhtadze, 95.52Susanne Ziegler, “East Meets West: Urban Musical Styles in Georgia,” in Historical Stud-

ies on Folk and Traditional Music: ICTM Study Group on Historical Sources of Folk Music: Con-ference Report, Copenhagen, April 24–8, 1995, ed. Doris Stockman and Jens Henrik Koudal(Copenhagen: Danish Folklore Archives, Museum Tusculanum Press, 1997), 157. See Bar-novi, 20–1, 25–6.

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featured “self-controlled sensibility, healthy emotions and optimism.”53

Drawing such a clear boundary between the Georgian per se and thePersian branches of “oriental” ashugh music does not seem very convinc-ing, given the fact that a large majority of Tbilisian professional musi-cians (and the general population) were of non-Georgian and mixedbackground and, as the author himself admits, Tbilisi was an internationalcenter of Transcaucasia from before the seventeenth century. Therefore, anon-Georgian population and influences were significant here before theseventeenth century. Feasting and drinking are characteristic motives inboth ashugh poetry and duduki music, through which men achieve thecarefree emotional state of dardimanduli and keipi, in which they tran-scend everyday concerns and submerge themselves in thoughts of womenor the despairs of love, as expressed in a much-circulated saying amongthe dasta musicians and their audiences, “ghvino, duduki, kalebi” (“wine,duduki, women”).54

EASTERN GEORGIAN URBAN SONG VERSUS WESTERN GEORGIAN RURAL POLYPHONIC SONG

“Oriental” styles are widespread in eastern Georgia, while it is the west-ern provinces that are seen as providing most of the country’s polyphonicsong tradition, which is “entirely polyphonic” and viewed as being of“greater interest from a scholarly point of view.”55 This is despite thepresence of an elaborate three-part drone singing tradition in the Kakhetiprovince of eastern Georgia, which is also the source of national pride andscholarly interest.56 The similarities, as well as the differences, in the use

53For Arabesk see Stokes, The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 109–10, 142–7; For Georgian ashughs see Mshvelidze, 12.

54There might be some homology between the state of mind achieved through the consump-tion of alcohol at Georgian feasts and the mystic communion with God inherent in sama andsema (religious music and dance in Sufi thought and practice), the language of which is absorbedand redefined in Turkish Arabesk. See Stokes, The Arabesk Debate, 215–7; Feldman, 109. Theremight be a link between the Sufi sama and sema and the Georgian ritual round dance sama andsamaia, which was performed by mixed or single sex groups in different ceremonial contexts. SeeLilly Gvaramadze, Gruzinsky Tantseval’ny Fol’klor [Georgian Dance Folklore] (Tbilisi: Khe-lovneba, 1987), 123–33 (in Russian). Scholars are beginning to investigate the connectionbetween the Georgian feast and the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. An example of this is thepaper, “Liturgical Nature, Appraisals and Table Chants of the Georgian Traditional Feast,” pre-sented by Nino Gambashidze, Giorgi Gotsiridze, and Manana Shilakadze at the Third Interna-tional Symposium on Traditional Polyphony, held in Tbilisi, September 25–9, 2006.

55Araqishvili, “Georgian Music: A Brief Historical Review,” in Essays on Georgian Ethno-musicology, 27 (reprint in English).

56Polyphonic choral singing today survives in some parts of the Kakheti dialect area of east-ern Georgia, while it is almost extinct among the populations of the Kartli and especially theMeskheti areas.

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of harmony in European and Georgian polyphonic musics have beennoted,57 and the Georgian people were represented as the only bearers ofpolyphony among the Caucasian and Transcaucasian peoples (this state-ment has been proved wrong today). West Georgian polyphonic songsimultaneously represents what is pure, uncontaminated by the Orientalinfluence, uniquely national (tsminda erovnuli), and simultaneouslyEuropean, while the eastern Georgian baiati, duduki, zurna, or accordionembody the hybridity of the foreign (utskho) and the Asiatic. Such per-ceptions are reinforced by the complete absence of Middle Eastern musi-cal forms in western Georgia. The only West Georgian province whereduduki has spread is perhaps the Imereti dialect area, which is at the bor-der between northwestern and southeastern Georgia. Thus, in a subtle andimplicit way, the macro-level West-East (Europe-Asia) and national-foreign dichotomies have been reproduced implicitly at a micro-levelwithin Georgia, between the western and eastern regions.

The overmapping of macro and micro levels comes to light in informalconversations with duduki players and musicians who practice the so-called“foreign” styles. Several east-Georgian musicians expressed the view thatthe increasing influence of western Georgians in the politics of the countrybeginning in the second half of the nineteenth century was responsible forthe growth in popularity of polyphonic singing and the decline of that of theduduki, zurna, and the oriental styles of music.58 According to some easternGeorgian musicians, the focus on polyphony and Western classical musicdenies the obvious presence of music that is closer to the people’s hearts.59

Since this instrument [he referred to both duduki and zurna] is not popularin Samegrelo or Guria [western provinces], and now they [western Geor-gians] dominate the higher positions in some fields, they say it’s notours . . . .[I]t may not be the instrument of Makharadze [the Soviet nameof the central town Ozurgeti of Guria, western Georgia; see map inFigure 1], but it is the instrument of Tbilisi, Kaspi, Khashuri [easternGeorgian towns], and Zestaponi [the western Georgian town in theImereti dialect area at the border with eastern Georgia].60

From the beginning of the twentieth century, a new tradition of playingin an ensemble of three duduki was introduced, which often includes

57Araqishvili, Georgian Music, 22; Shalva Aslanishvili, Narkvevebi Kartuli Khalkhuri Simgh-erebis Shesakheb [Essays on Georgian Folk Songs], vol. 1 (Tbilisi: Khelovneba, 1954), 187–90(in Georgian).

58Nino Tsitsishvili, National Unity and Gender Difference in Georgian Traditional Song-Culture (Ph.D. dissertation, Monash University, 2005), 267.

59Interview, Tbilisi, July 9, 1999.60Interview, Tbilisi, April, 29, 2006.

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western-Georgian three-part songs61 and seems to have developed as anadjustment to the predominantly polyphonic culture of western Georgia andthe growing pro-Western inclinations of the political and cultural elites.This polyphonization of the duduki dasta can be interpreted as the Western-ization and improvement (both at the macro-European and micro-Georgianlevels) of the oriental music, and certainly facilitated the acceptance of theinstrument by the people of the western provinces. Paradoxically, the con-tribution of non-Georgians was decisive in this musical transformation, andparticularly the role of Khachik Talgaukov62 (1907–62), who, as some Geor-gian players say, was a Tbilisian musician of Greek nationality, a statement of

61Alavidze, 60.62Barnovi, 11; Alavidze, 60. Because of ethnic discrimination as well as Russification

policies, many Armenians, Kurds, and Azeris changed their names to ones with Georgianor Russian suffixes. Thus, Bagramiants became Bagramov, Mantashov became Mente-shashvili, Amirkhanian became Amirkhanov or Amirkhanashvili. Many jokes were circu-lated among the ethnic Georgians during the post-Stalin era, expressing the titularnationality’s position toward ethnic “inferiors.” According to one popular joke, a Kurdcomes to a town’s municipal bureau in order to change his surname from Bagrationi (aGeorgian royal dynastic name) to Dadiani (the name of the royal dynastic princes ofSamegrelo, in western Georgia). The serviceman at the bureau asked the Kurd why hewanted to change his name as he had already changed his Kurdish surname into the Georgianroyal name a few years ago. The Kurd answered: “Well, yes, but when they [Georgians] askme what was my name before Bagrationi, what should I answer?” (The assumption here isthat Georgians would guess from the Kurd’s physical appearance and accent that he is ofKurdish nationality).

Figure 1. Map of Georgia. (Maps courtesy of www.theodora.com/maps.)

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doubtful credibility, as his first name is clearly of Armenian origin, and hissurname does not have any evident Greek connotation.

MUSICAL IDENTITY, ETHNICITY, AND AMBIVALENCE

The ambivalent status of “Oriental” music arose out of the discrepancybetween the national elite’s support of “pure” Georgian folksong on theone hand, and the fact that the same educated elite in the nineteenth cen-tury still enjoyed listening to Persian and Armenian sazandari,mughamat, and ashugh art and considered it as part of their culture.63 Thesense of this discrepancy persists today, and is what the Georgian politicalscientist Ghia Nodia has identified as elitist qualms about the future ofGeorgian identity: that being “European-oriented” does not actually makeGeorgia “European.”64

For example, Georgian noblemen commonly played and sang to theaccompaniment of Persian instruments, such as the tari, which they keptin their homes.65 Araqishvili writes that the Georgian musician KharlampiSavaneli, who established the first musical school (1874) in Georgia, wasa patriot who protected the treasures of Georgian culture, and as a sign ofthis protection he would gather the old sazandari musicians and listen totheir music.66 Ilia Chavchavadze, the father of Georgian nationalism andthe patriot who made a clear distinction between Asian monophony andGeorgian polyphony as two incompatible types of culture, is believed tohave liked the mughamat-baiati, and, particularly, mugham dava. A storybehind this mugham tells how a thirsty camel in a caravan stopped in thedesert and would only rise to its feet again after the camel herder playedflute and sang mugham dava. Ilia Chavchavadze symbolically comparedthis story, attached as it is to the Persian-Azeri mugham dava, with thenational awakening of Georgia.67

The term “Persian-Georgian baiati,” used at the end of the nineteenthand beginning of the twentieth centuries,68 also points to the lack ofstrictly-defined boundaries between Georgian-ness and Eastern-ness andto the hybridity of the urban styles cherished by the elite. When it came tothe scholarly definition of a national musical culture at the end of the

63Araqishvili, “O Gruzinskykh Muzikal’nykh Instrumentakh,” 190–1; Barnovi, 14.64Ghia Nodia, “Georgia’s Identity Crisis,” Journal of Democracy 6/1 (1995), 106; Nodia,

“The Origins of Georgia’s “Pro-Western Orientation,” Newsletter of The Berkeley Program inSoviet and Post-Soviet Studies Graduate Training and Research Program on the ContemporaryCaucasus 2 (Fall, 1996), 5–6.

65Araqishvili, “O Gruzinskykh Muzikal’nykh Instrumentakh,” 190.66Araqishvili, Kartuli Musika, 43–4.67Barnovi, 14.68Araqishvili, “O Gruzinskykh Muzikal’nykh Instrumentakh,” 189.

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nineteenth century, however, the same poets and intellectuals dismissedbaiati and Eastern-Persian musical characteristics as foreign, unaccept-able, and forcibly imposed on Georgians, for such a dismissal seemednecessary for the creation of a uniquely Georgian national music. Para-doxically, they were now writing against a culture that was long experi-enced as part of Georgian social life, and which many poets and publicactivists admired. This signified the shift of the elite’s political-culturalorientation from Asia to Europe and the West.69 To rationalize this turn,the nationalist poet Akaki Tsereteli expressed the idea that Georgiansonly liked the Georgian words of baiati (mughamat), while disliking itsforeign tunes and oriental sound.70 Repercussions of this idea can beheard in the rhetoric of today’s duduki dasta musicians, who sometimesexplain baiati as “their tune and our words.”

DUDUKI MUSICIANS AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF GEORGIAN IDENTITY

In this section I explore two of the manifold ways through which dastamusicians try to overcome this socially and politically constructed con-flict. The first is their attempt to nationalize “foreign” musical styles andinstruments through newly-invented or discovered historical accounts,“facts,” myths, and anecdotes. History is adjusted to make the sound ofthe Arabic, “foreign,” “Tatar,” or Persian seem Georgian and to legiti-mize it in the context of official nationalism. Styles and repertoires thatwere dismissed and labeled as non-Georgian are transformed stylisticallyand imagined as “truly” Georgian, and dasta musicians adopt a new, morehegemonic and “legitimate” repertoire of polyphonic songs and styles.Formerly marginalized dasta musicians can then be rightfully representedin media and academic accounts of Georgian national music equally withproponents of rural polyphonic song.71 In contrast to the nationalizing

69Here I shall differentiate between the elite, who used music as a source of poetic inspira-tion, entertainment, and intellectual-ideological discussions, and musicians and the low classpopulation of eastern Georgia, for whom music had a more practical meaning as a professionalvocation and as marking important events of the life circle (weddings, deaths, village festivecelebrations). The elite quickly dismissed “Oriental” music when the time came to becomenational, Westernized, and exclusionist; the low classes (working class urbanites and peasants)in contrast, continued practicing and consuming the various hybrid musical forms until thepresent day, for Westernization and the benefits of nation-building were rather less relevant totheir lives than was the world embodied in and punctuated by dasta music.

70Bakhtadze, 93–4.71The exclusive national status of the polyphonic song is apparent from the UNESCO’s

proclamation of Georgian polyphony as a masterpiece of an oral and intangible heritage. SeeUNESCO, First Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity,2001.

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tendency, the second bridge over this conflict involves the cultivation of acosmopolitan attitude by some dasta musicians, creating a different worldof sensibility. Some of these musicians live in regions with a high concen-tration of ethnic minorities, and a consequently higher intensity of culturecontact. Within such hybrid cultural contexts, musicians are understand-ably unwilling to adopt the rhetoric of national purity and exclusiveness.

Literature on related topics concerning the interface between music,identity, political ideology, aesthetics, and cultural heritage emphasizesthe Gramscian notion of hegemony as a form of cultural leadership inwhich certain ideas dominate over others,72 as a relationship betweendominant and subordinate, hegemony and identity, in which musiciansnegotiate between their individual, internalized sense of self and localizedworldviews and the realities constructed by their government. As a result,cultural and human identities at any given moment are heterogeneous,fluid, and dynamic.73 Considering the multiplicity of identity expressionsand experiences possible in Georgia, neither of the two positions distin-guished above (nationalistic or cosmopolitan) is insular. Within their pri-marily nationalistic-purist or cosmopolitan-hybrid attitude, musiciansperform and talk about music in ways that point to their ambivalence andflexibility in being at once Georgians and human beings, citizens andmusicians, nationals and cosmopolitans. Both nationalists and cosmopoli-tans among the duduki musicians adopt attitudes of creative transforma-tion and synthesis; they themselves can function as agents of long-termcultural convergences that may result in an influx of new musical stylesand repertoires.74

Despite this Gramscian ambivalence over identity and multiple alle-giances, there seems to be a notable difference in terms of repertoire,playing styles, and ensemble structure, as well as attitudes and discourses,between the musicians in Tbilisi and the surrounding areas on the onehand and musicians in the rural, especially southeastern, parts of Georgiaon the other. In the capital Tbilisi, which is the home of the Georgianpolitical elite and cultural intelligentsia and cradle of pro-Western orien-tation, the discourse employed by duduki dasta musicians sounded muchmore nationalistic and purist, and, thus, reflective of the elite’s Westernorientation and the ideological policies of the Ministry of Culture, thandid that of dasta musicians in the south-east part of Georgia (where I alsorecorded dasta music), which has a high concentration of the Azeridiaspora and is only 30 kilometers away from the Armenian border. As

72Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 7.73See Buchanan, “Metaphors of Power,” 384.74Margaret Kartomi, “Preface” in Music Cultures in Contact: Convergences and Collisions,

ed. Margaret Kartomi and Stephen Blum (Sydney: Currency Press, 1994), xi.

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far as the structure of the ensembles is concerned, those in the southeastof Georgia share more similarities with the traditional Middle Eastern-Azerbaijanian and Armenian ensembles, comprising a solo duduki(damkvreli), a drone duduki (damkashi), and a doli drum. In contrast, theensembles from Tbilisi often comprise three duduki, a drum, and anaccordion. The inclusion of the accordion makes the whole tuning of theTbilisi dastas sound more tempered and European. The tendency towardWesternization and European influence is audible in the three-part har-monic arrangements of Georgian three-part polyphonic rural and urbansongs, while it is completely absent in the duduki ensembles on the south-eastern periphery.

The difference between the nationalized and polyphonized Tbilisi das-tas and the more Middle-Eastern sounding peripheral ensembles wasdemonstrated by the two completely disparate versions of the same songthat I recorded and heard from a Tbilisi dasta in 200275 and then from adasta in Dmanisi in 2006. The Tbilisi version was based on a clearly tonalharmonic progression in B flat major: dominant seventh on B flat, thetonic 6/4 on F, dominant seventh on F resolving onto the tonic major triadon B flat (see Example 1). The song is in 3/4 meter. The Dmanisi versionin contrast comprised an ornamented solo duduki improvisation in a freemeter based on a local version of the makam (baiati) rast mode from Gsharp (see Example 2). It seemed that the attitudes and perceptions of theduduki players from the periphery generally revealed more integrationwith the non-Georgian (Armenian and Azeri-Persian) music. These musi-cians earn their livelihood by playing at weddings, funerals, and other

75See track 6 on the CD “Soinari” (Discography) for the Tbilisi dasta version.

Example 1. The chord progression of a song played by the duduki dasta inTbilisi, 2002.

Example 2. A mode derived from the song of the ashugh Ietim Gurji,“Lamazebis Khelmtsipev” [the king of beauty], performed by the dudukidasta from Dmanisi.

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events in their multi-ethnic communities, where they come across andcollaborate with Greeks, Azeris, and Armenians, both the musicians andthe broader community members.76 They absorb styles and repertoires offoreign ethnicities from these encounters and collaborations. For exam-ple, one of my informants in southeast Georgia played with Azeri musi-cians at weddings and knew many Azeri tunes and songs.

All the duduki musicians whom I met were most cautious when speak-ing about the national and cultural affiliations of the musical style andrepertoires they play. Musicians with a clear Georgian ethnicity77 wereoften reluctant to comment on and acknowledge the presence of MiddleEastern (i.e., Persian, Azeri, or Armenian) links in their music. By

76The sense of historical rivalry and animosity toward ethnic minorities increased some-what in the aftermath of the Soviet Union, as radical leaders of nationalist and independencemovements dramatized ethnic rivalry. Zones of ethnic tensions in Georgia are Dmanisi, Mar-neuli, and Bolnisi, south of Tbilisi (see map in Figure 1), with their high concentration of AzeriMuslim population, and the region of Javakheti (with its center in Akhalkalaki), with a 91 per-cent Armenian population that fled there from Turkey in the first half of the nineteenth cen-tury. In contrast with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, no serious armed conflicts have occurred inthese regions. However, there has been civil unrest and the general alienation of the populationfrom the Georgian leadership. Ethnic minorities in these regions speak Azerbaijani or Armenianrespectively and sometimes Russian as a second language, but rarely Georgian. In Javakhetithey have used Armenian and Russian currency, receive Russian and Armenian TV and radioprograms, and learn Armenian history at schools. The Armenians there hardly feel as Georgiannationals. While Georgians and ethnic minorities generally live peacefully as neighbors, therewas ethnic unrest in Dmanisi-Marneuli in 1987, instigated by the radical-nationalisticmovement, which promoted the ideology of “Georgia is the land of Georgians” (and all the restare guests), subsequently depriving the Azeris of an equal right to own the land. In otherregions, perceptions of discrimination have been entertained by elites rather than initially orig-inating from among the population, especially in the autonomous regions of Abkhazia andOssetia. See Svante E. Cornell, “Autonomy as a Source of Conflict: Caucasian Conflicts inTheoretical Perspective,” World Politics 54 (2002), 245–76, 259; see also Paul Jackson, “Eth-nicity, Decentralisation and the Fissile State in Georgia,” Public Administration and Develop-ment 24 (2004), 75–86; Rostom Sarkissian, “Javakhk: Socio-Economic Neglect or EthnicUnrest?, Diplomacy and World Affairs, DWA Discussion Paper No. 101, 2002; at: http://departments.oxy.edu/dwa/papers/101b.pdf, accessed June 16, 2006; Natalie Sabanadze,“Armenian Minority in Georgia: Defusing Interethnic Tension,” European Center for MinorityIssues, Brief #6, August 2001, at http://www.ecmi.de/rubrik/59/issue+briefs/, accessed June16, 2006. “Javakh,” Javakheti’s Armenian national organization, has expressed demands forthe region to secede from Georgia and join Armenia, which, for political-diplomatic reasonsdoes not openly support such demands. Poor economic conditions, monoethnic nationalism,and under-representation in the Georgian government are among the major reasons for ethnictensions.

77There are instances where musicians and/or individuals have a mixed ethnic background,in which case their sense of ethnic belonging can be ambiguous. In some cases, individuals ofan Armenian ethnic origin have become Georgianized; i.e., their grandfathers or fathers havechanged their non-Georgian names into Georgian ones, have abandoned previous ethnic-cultural habits, and adopted Georgian ways of life. Some people try to conceal their back-ground, as it is more prestigious to be a Georgian than to be an Armenian or an Azeri.

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default, in conversation, musicians expected me, an ethnically Georgianmusicologist, to be a nationalist, to favor rural polyphonic songs overduduki and baiati, and to be critical of their “oriental” connections. Dur-ing one recording session at a restaurant in Tbilisi, my fieldwork requestthat they should “play something Azerbaijanian” was met with suspicionand hesitation by the musicians: Could I be trusted and their non-Georgianrepertoire revealed? The leading musician in the dasta (comprising threeduduki, accordion, doli and a singer) exclaimed, by way of proving hisGeorgian-ness, “Let’s sing Mravalzhamier,” a Georgian polyphonicurban song in a European style. It turned out that the dasta often playedthree-part polyphonic songs on three duduki (see Example 3). When Iasked why the dasta played and sang polyphonic songs, the same musi-cian replied, revealing the official voice, “The audiences understand whatgood music is.” He made a clear distinction between the Georgian and theAzeri versions of baiati, referring to the latter pejoratively as Tatruli, andrequiring that the group play baiati rasti on the words of Ioseb Grishashvili,the Georgian Soviet poet and connoisseur of the urban Tbilisi musical

Example 3. Makharia, a Megrelian polyphonic song played by the dudukidasta, Tbilisi, 2002.

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tradition (Example 4), rather than the baiati kurti (bayati kurd), suggestedby another musician in the ensemble.

Georgian baiati has modal, rhythmic, and melodic commonalities withthe Arab maqam modal system, Azerbaijani mughamat, and Persiandəstgah. Many modes (maqams or baiati as Georgians call them) andtheir characteristic techniques of melodic elaborations such as sobe andgushe are shared with the Arab and Persian maqam and dəstgah-mughamat, including the names of modes: baiati rasti, baiati shuri, baiatiqajari, baiati kurti, segah, hijaz shustari (sustər). However, in the processof a disparate historical development, the Georgian modal system came todiffer from its Arabic, Azerbaijani, and Persian prototypes. In Azerbaijan,

Example 4a. Song in the mode of baiati rasti played by the dasta in Tbilisi,2002.

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the mughamat system is fully reflected in the finger-board of the tar,while the Georgian baiati modes are played and conceptualized on theduduki finger holes. Shuri, segah, rasti, and chahargah are also the namesof fingerholes on zurna and duduki.78 As in the Persian dəstgah or theArab and Turkish maqam/makam system, each baiati has its own startingnote, though the starting notes of Georgian baiati are different from thoseof the identically named makam tetrachords in the Middle Eastern system.

78Ivane Javakhishvili, Kartuli Musikis Istoriis Dziritadi Sakitkhebi [The Main Questions ofthe History of Georgian Music], 1st ed. (Tbilisi: Pederatsia, 1938), 206 (in Georgian).

Example 4a. (Continued).

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For example, baiati rasti is always on B flat (the principal note on theduduki), baiati shuri is on C, and segah is played in two modes: The firstis similar to the maqam on the tetrachord kurd (according to the Arabmodal system) from B, modulating into D (see Example 5). The non-metricduduki patterns of the baiati rasti (Example 4a) explore various tonalpossibilities in different branches of the mode, returning to the tonal cen-ter each time, in a manner similar to the successive non-metric melodicpatterns that move around the central tone of each new sobe (a tonalbranch of a mugham). The fluctuating slides between the major and minorversions of steps in a scale are also common features in both Georgian

Example 4b. The European-influenced section of the song played by thesame dasta, in Example 4a.

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and Middle Eastern music. The doli drum is added in the second half ofthe song, a faster rhythmic-metric section that is sometimes called təsnif(a metrical genre), as in Azerbaijan. Here, the three-part harmonic pro-gressions played in regular meter by the three duduki—such as V-IVminor-I (in Example 4b)—show a clear tendency for Westernization inthis Tbilisi-based duduki dasta.

To prove their Georgian identity, as opposed to unwanted foreign eth-nicities, musicians from Tbilisi sometimes avoided mentioning Azeri andArmenian ethnicity and referred to them as magat (“them”), or “thosewhom we are suspicious of.” Instead of speaking of the similaritiesbetween Georgian and Armenian or Azeri duduki, zurna, and baiati,Georgian dasta musicians emphasized and essentialized differencesbetween “our” multi-part playing style (khmebshi dakvra) (as in Example 3)and “their” monophonic playing style. The latter is viewed as easy, whileplaying in parts is perceived as being a more difficult and, by implication,a superior skill that Azeris cannot achieve:

They [Azeris] don’t want to hear a Georgian melody, because Georgianmelodies are three-part [polyphonic], and they don’t understand theseparts. When he [an Azeri musician] has to play in thirds with anotherplayer, he can’t distinguish this third from the intervals of a fourth and afifth. That’s why one player plays solo, and the other drones, this is theeasiest way. Whatever they come up with melodically fits in [in relation tothe drone]. But as soon as we turn to Georgian three-part tunes (samkh-miani melodia), say, something as simple as “Tsitsinatela” or “Suliko”[Europeanized urban songs of western Georgian origin with tonic-domi-nant-subdominant harmonies], well, it’s simple for us but not for them,they can’t comprehend it. It may take me a month to teach them.79

Ambivalence towards foreign and hybrid cultures is apparent in state-ments made by Georgian dasta musicians, such as “Baiati is neitherAzeri, nor Iranian, nor Armenian. It is something intermingled alto-gether.”80 By making such comments, musicians try to eliminate the

79Interview, April 18, 2006.80Interview, April 18, 2006.

Example 5. Segah, played by the duduki dasta from southeast Georgia.

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question of the association of certain styles with ethnic inferiors, for suchidentification creates conflict with their sense of being Georgian, aslargely shaped by the official ideology of nationalism. Contradictorily,the musician quoted above explained to me that he can immediately dis-tinguish between the Armenian, the Azeri, and the Georgian styles ofplaying: “We are folklore experts, we can notice immediately what isArmenian and what is urban [Georgian], by its color and character; Azeriis entirely awful, without any good intonation.”

National ideologues manipulate the Georgian population’s animositytoward its minorities by exploiting, for example, the fear that MuslimAzeris’ high birth rates can lead to the extinction of the Georgian ethnic-ity, or the memories and reality of historical-territorial rivalry with theArmenians, or the possible pollution of society by state-less and, byimplication, culture-less and “inferior” Kurds. In parallel to the historical-political rivalry with Armenia, Georgian duduki players also resent theArmenian duduk players’ international popularity. While some Georgianduduki players correctly note that Tbilisi was the center of duduki tradi-tion, they are reluctant to admit, or are perhaps ignorant of the fact thatmany Tbilisian musicians affiliated with special musical guilds(saamkaro) were of Armenian background. And it is Georgia’s officialpatronage of the polyphonic song (not the Armenian musicians) that hascontributed to a gradual decline in the learning and playing of duduki inthe country, depriving the Georgian duduki players of an equal claim toits ownership internationally.

Ambiguously though, expressions of animosity toward Armenianduduk players are often counteracted by the Georgian musicians’ desire toinclude musicians of Armenian origin in the Georgian cultural narrative.For example, some Georgian players resent the fact that the well-knownashugh Sayatnova (1712–95), who was Georgia’s penultimate kingErekle’s court musician and is much respected among the Georgian das-tas, is claimed by the Armenians. Georgians acknowledge that Sayatnovawas Armenian by origin, but put forward the counterclaim that his mothercity was Tiflis (Tbilisi).81 This argument hardly helps to resolve the disputesince, while modern Tbilisi is the center of Georgian culture, Armeniansview the city as the largest Armenian cultural center in the Caucasus,82

based on the fact of its predominantly Armenian population until the endof the nineteenth century. Despite the rivalry, many Georgian musicianshave developed an “underground” collaboration with and admiration forArmenian, Kurdish, or Azeri musicians, which comes to the surfacecautiously in informal conversations and points to the formal denial but

81Mshvelidze, 19.82Manuk Manukian, “Music of Armenia,” in Danielson et al., 734.

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informal acceptance of the non-Georgian musical heritage and its non-Georgian practitioners.

The duduki is not the only instrument that is displaced in contemporarycultural rhetoric and official practice. Many musicians say that the zurnais unfashionable today. It was formerly used for wedding celebrationsamong the Azeris, Armenians, and Kurds, as well as among the majorityof eastern Georgians, but it has always been an unwelcome instrument atthe festivals organized by the state, possibly because of its loud, piercingsound and Middle Eastern associations. (Nowadays zurna is oftenreplaced with clarinet among Georgian and Azeri wedding musicians but,like the zurna, the clarinet is unwelcome at official and elite events).Some articulate Georgian musicians have expressed irritation at such pol-icies; one commented, “You may play zurna at the festival-Olympiad, butyou won’t get any assessment for that . . . . They play zurna in China, inJapan, in Yugoslavia, in the whole East, and here some bigots forbid us toplay . . . they just ignore it, which is the same as to ban it.”83 The sameplayer (quoted above) distinguished between the Georgian zurna, whichis played in pairs, and the Kurdish zurna, which is played as a solo instru-ment, both accompanied by the doli.84 The distinction between the one-and two-zurna playing styles is used by musicians and scholars to markthe multi-part, progressive, and national character of the Georgian zurna(compared to the solo, and by implication, simpler playing style of theKurdish zurna). As the above-mentioned musician said in conversationwith me, a Kurdish zurna player (mezurne) whom he knew personallybrought him his zurna and said: “Zurab [the name of the Georgian musi-cian], this is a Georgian zurna and I can’t use it, so you can have it,” acomment that points to the contradictory co-existence in the Georgianmusician’s parlance of the Other-ness of Kurdish zurna and the friendlycollegial relationship with the Kurdish musician in question in his livedexperience. The Georgian musician was very disappointed that the western-Georgian members of the state dance ensemble in which he played dudukiasked him to demonstrate Kurdish music when they saw he had a zurna.He answered with resentment (as he said to me), “this is not a Kurdishinstrument and you can’t play Kurdish music on it.” Many westernprovincial Georgians, having encountered the highly hybrid culture ofeastern Georgia in Tbilisi, think of zurna and duduki as essentially non-Georgian, being unaware of the fact that both have a long tradition in theeastern Georgian provinces.

83April 29, 2006.84According to other sources, zurna (accompanied by doli) was once played as a solo instru-

ment by Georgians too and a second zurna was added later. See Javakhishvili, 204.

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The exclusion of and ambivalence over zurna and baiati is not surpris-ing given that the emphasis of official organizations such as The FolkloreState Center of Georgia is still, even today, on the “development of statepolicy on folklore, adherence to authenticity, and the continuation of theseventy-year-long tradition [since the establishment of the center under adifferent name (the Cabinet of People’s Creativity) in 1936] with a mod-ern worldview.” One of the Center’s priorities is the “restoration of inter-action between the villages, districts, regions and the center,”85 thusconfirming the continuation of the Soviet-type national policies. Accord-ing to this centralized policy, musicians who participate in official festi-vals have to negotiate their repertoire with their local culturerepresentative, who ensures that it meets the requirements of authenticityand nationality (erovnuli), a procedure that points to the continuation ofcensorship. Thus, dasta musicians must play traditional folklore, whichmeans that their repertoire should be more Georgian and thus differentfrom that of the ethnic minorities. As one Georgian historian hasdescribed the political climate of post-socialist Georgia, this is thereplacement of a communist with a national ideology.86 However, thisseems to be more than national ideology; it represents the continuation ofa monoethnic nationalist philosophy that began in the nineteenth century.

RESOLVING THE CONFLICT: NATIONALIZATION OF THE FOREIGN OR COSMOPOLITANISM?

Stephen Blum has written that “. . . musicians and scholars in many partsof the world have faced conflicting demands made by spokespersons forcultures described as ‘modern’ or ‘traditional’, . . .‘national’ or ‘local’;and so on. People often act out these conflicts and explore possible reso-lutions in musical performances.”87 For many Georgian academics ormusicians, sound features that seem to be shared between Georgians,Armenians, and Muslim Azeri or Kurds have created ambivalent feelingsover and an ambiguous status for the Oriental heritage. While Orientalhybrid styles persist in the practices of the lower working classes of east-ern Georgia, official and scholarly discourses about this kind of musicare strikingly absent, as if they have never existed. It may be true that, ata broad intellectual and philosophical level, the national elite, officialfolklore organizations, and academics often accept other ethnicities andtheir expressive cultures as entitled to equal rights and treatment, and the

85The Folklore State Center of Georgia; at: http://www.folk.geo, accessed June 20, 2006.86Vakhtang Erkomaishvili, Eri da Ideologia [Nation and Ideology] (Tbilisi: The University

of Tbilisi Press, 2000), 74–7 (in Georgian).87Blum, “Conclusion: Music in an Age of Cultural Confrontation,” 254.

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issue of ethnic-cultural discrimination does not exist. However, valuehierarchies clearly emerge in informal conversations and official elitemusical practices, and these ethnicities either have the stigma of aperceived lower status or are seen as challenging Georgia’s civilizedEuropean-ness, independence, and territorial integrity. Experts on ethnicconflicts have also expressed the idea that

even though the Georgian constitution [formally] provides for equaltreatment of minorities and the legislature has all provisions againstdiscrimination [including folk organizations that represent ethnicminorities at regional music festivals], more work has to be done forthe enforcement of those provisions and, more importantly, for thebuilding of the civil society and inclusive understanding of Georgiancitizenship.88

NATIONALIZATION

Some Georgian scholars and musicians have “resolved” or dealt with theconflict between the ideal of a “pure” Georgian music and the historicalreality of multi-faceted musical identities by ignoring the fact of hybridityand culture contact, or rather diminishing its significance, “amputating”whatever “other” it contains and, in parallel to this, attempting to nation-alize, that is, Georgianize, the foreign elements.

A well-established thesis of Georgianization holds that Asian andArabic instruments “have lost their original face,”89 the defining fea-tures of Persian dəstgah/mughamat have been completely eradicated,and this art ultimately ceased to exist in Tbilisi,90 or elements ofimported foreign music have been adapted and subordinated to therules of the original Georgian folklore.91 Musicians who play dudukiand baiati often point to the Georgian characteristics of the baiati styleand attempt to prove the “pure” Georgian origin of the duduki, claim-ing as essentially Georgian those non-Georgian musicians who havecontributed to their development and popularity in Georgia. So, forexample, one musician told me, referring to Bagrat Bagramiants(Bagramov) (1850–1938), a Tbilisian dasta leader, singer, and player,“He is of Armenian descent but, can you believe it, he always sang

88Sabanadze, 6–7. As a result of the new minority policies, Azeris of southeast Georgia inBolnisi and Marneuli will soon receive Georgian news programs on TV in their native Azer-baijani language (June 2006).

89Barnovi, 10–1.90Bakhtadze, 107.91Grigol Chkhikvadze, Kartuli Khalkhuri Musika [Georgian Folk Music] (Tbilisi: Sabchota

Sakartvelo: 1965), 9–10.

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songs based on Georgian rules” [my emphasis]. Such claims are madedespite the fact that Bagramiants sang Armenian (as well as Georgian) rep-ertoire.92 The nationalization discourse ambiguously serves both to justifythe presence of non-Georgian musicians in Georgian territory as well as toexpress the fear and belief that in some cases, Armenian musicians haveunfairly appropriated Georgian culture and are “selling” it as Armenian.

History, myths, and historical anecdotes are often reconfigured toendorse the national origin of the duduki. As one musician said in conver-sation with me, “In Tbilisi composers are not interested in duduki, theythink it is tatruli (Azeri); but that’s not true, duduki is a purely Georgianinstrument.”93 While some Georgian and Soviet scholars consider dudukias a Middle Eastern or Arabic instrument,94 contemporary Georgianduduki players strongly believe that it is “Ours.” They hypothetically situ-ate the origins of the duduki in prehistoric times in the Kolkheti Valley,where the first western Georgian states emerged; alternatively they traceit to the ancient Sumerians some five thousand years ago.95 Such hypo-thetical suggestions, based on archaeological findings of end-blowninstruments and narratives of an historical-mythical character, empowermusicians, materializing cultural heritage and locating the imagined pro-totypes of the duduki on the territory of Georgia.96

While nationalism helped to fabricate the language of exclusion anddifference, musically and technically it also resulted in, and was the rea-son for, culture contact, stylistic transformations, and the creation of anew Georgian sound, which, according to nationalists, no longer bearstraces of Arabic, Persian, or Armenian culture. As an adjustment to thegrowing monoethnic nationalism and immigration of the non-Georgianpopulation from Tbilisi, the performance of sazandari with its emphasison mughamat gradually vanished, and only historical narratives andmemories of its distinguished practitioners can be found.97 Instead, thetwo-duduki dasta enlarged by a doli and singer appeared toward the end of the

92See Before the Revolution: A 1909 Recording Expedition in the Caucasus and Central Asia bythe Gramophone Company (CD TSCD921, Topic Records Ltd., 2002), tracks 6 and 7.

93Fieldwork, April, 2006.94Most writers wrongly identified oriental links as Arabic: See Araqishvili, Georgian Music, 33;

and Ia Kargareteli, Mokle Popularuli Samusiko Entsiklopedia [A Short Popular Musical Encyclope-dia] (Tbilisi: Sakhelgami; Sastsavlo Pedagogiuri Sektori, 1934), 29 (in Georgian). In fact, Georgianduduki dastas, sazandari, and baiati were related to Persian, Azerbaijanian, and Armenian music,with which Georgians have had more direct contact since the early middle centuries and even before.

95According to personal communications with musicians.96Many songs and anecdotes are drawn on to prove the duduki’s Georgian rather than

Armenian provenance. To my comment-question that people of other ethnicities also play duduki, aGeorgian player answered, “Sure, we play violin too, but that doesn’t mean that we invented it.”

97For the biographies of some sazandari musicians, see Barnovi, Musicians of the Old Tbilisi;on duduki, see Alavidze, 61.

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nineteenth century, and in the first half of the twentieth century three-duduki, doli, singer, and accordion dastas appeared (Figure 2), whichcould adopt and arrange the three-part Georgian rural songs (as in Exam-ple 3). In the 1950s to 1960s, a bass duduki was created to play the bassline of these three-part compositions. Such “transculturation” of instru-mentation resulted in substantial changes and innovations of repertoire bycomparison to the more traditional dasta repertoire of the mughamat,baiati, and ashugh singing. Multi-part pieces played in duduki dasta haveattained more legitimacy than the baiati because of their resemblance torural polyphonic song; their chords and homophonic structure are closernot only to the rural polyphony but also to Western European concepts ofharmony and polyphony. In Georgia, where today most people, includingdasta musicians, acknowledge the need for a Western political-social ori-entation, the music of baiati and duduki is a constant reminder of thecountry’s Eastern ties, hence the need for a nationalizing language andtransculturation that attempts to overrule this Eastern heritage.

COSMOPOLITANISM

Musicians who move in the circles of and are engaged with official cul-tural-administrative organizations, such as the Ministry of Culture,

Figure 2. The duduki dasta Soinari, Tbilisi, 2002.

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Conservatorium of Music, and State music festivals, or are part of main-stream state ensembles of dance, have adopted the language of national-ization and the denial of foreign-ness more readily. Professional dudukiplayers in rural areas whose primary occupation is playing at weddingsand other events have shown little engagement with the discourse of ultra-nationalism, especially in the regions of multi-ethnic populations. Theyserve the practical needs of the communities among which they live,rather than acting as spokespersons for defining the place of Georgianculture in the national agenda or reinventing national narratives. Whilethey have a sense of local identity and of the difference between theGeorgian, Armenian, Azeri, or Greek styles, there is rarely a mono-ethnicpatriotic imagination behind this sensibility. As one duduki player said: “Idon’t care about those officials and concerts;98 I am a musician, I am aman from Dmanisi [see map in Figure 1], I focus on my music, my busi-ness is to make music.”99 These professional musicians often play inensembles with non-Georgian musicians, thus reaching musicians of theofficially undesirable classes and ethnicities via human relations andpractical economic considerations. One amateur musician-friend andaccordion player-singer, when trying to explain that his loyalties lay withthe humane rather than ethnic ideals, quoted from a popular Georgiansong: “sadats ginda iq ilotse, katsi iqav katsurio” (“pray wherever youwish, but be a real man” [which means that it does not matter what nation-ality or faith you are, as long as you are an honest person]). However,even with their cosmopolitan attitude, such musicians have to defer tonationalism: At weddings they may play the clarinet and mugham associ-ated with the Muslim social world, but at state-organized festivals theyplay an exclusively Georgian duduki repertoire and the “Songs of OldTbilisi.”

While pro-nationalist duduki players who are engaged with the state-controlled traditional music shy away from revealing their collaborationwith and links to Armenian and Azeri repertoires and musicians, thosewho live in the areas of compact ethnic minorities speak Azerbaijani andArmenian (depending on the region) and play at celebrations of the Azeriand Armenian communities. Some of them have collaborated with theAzeri players at the House of Culture (the Soviet regional center which usedto monitor cultural life of a region) until the growing under-representationof the ethnic Azeris and negligence of social-economic problems led totensions and many Azerbaijanis left the region. Instead of Azeri music

98The musician here meant concerts of the Festival-Surveys, which started in 1927 whenthey were called Olympiads. They were transformed into the Georgian National Survey-Festivalsin the post-Soviet times.

99Fieldwork, May, 2006.

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ensembles, an ensemble of Svanetian (western Georgian mountainous area)song is now active in the House of Culture, instilling the indigenous Geor-gian sound. As one Georgian musician said ironically, “Formerly we wouldplay an Azerbaijani song after a toast at a feast, but now if I play it, they[Georgians] may break my forehead.”100 Echoing this irony, an accordionplayer from Kartli said, “The people of eastern Georgia absorbed Persian,Arabic, and Turkish music and they should be free to expose these influ-ences regardless of ethnic differences.”101

Soviet national policies such as the one expressed in a well-known slo-gan “national in form and socialist in content”102 tended to choose a majormusical form for each republic as representative of its people’s musicalculture. As a result, it is now stereotypical to associate Georgians withpolyphonic choruses, Armenians with duduki, and Azerbaijanis withmugham. Such an idea also governed the meeting of cultural dialogue andcooperation organized by UNESCO in 2003.103 Today such a definitionof cultural boundaries sounds like defining political borders betweenthese neighboring and often rival nations. The privileging of polyphonicsinging today is further influenced by the growing awareness and appreci-ation of Georgian rural polyphonic styles in Western Europe, America,and Japan. Since the collapse of the USSR, singers and choir leaders fromthese countries have frequently visited Georgian rural singers andrecorded polyphonic songs.104 Already at the beginning of the twentiethcentury, German and Austrian comparative musicologists had turned toGeorgian polyphony in search of the origins of European polyphony.105

100Fieldwork, May, 2006.101Tsitsishvili, 267.102See Marina Frolova-Walker, “National in Form, Socialist in Content: Musical Nation-

Building in the Soviet Republics,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 51/2 (1998), 331–71.103See Dialogue among Civilizations: Caucasus, June 3–8, 2003, Lithuania, organized by

Lithuanian National Commission for UNESCO in cooperation with UNESCO Division on Cul-tural Policies and International Dialogue (UNESCO Office in Moscow, Council of Europe); athttp://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001393/139314M.pdf, accessed June 16, 2006.

104Georgia: The Resounding Polyphony of the Caucasus. From the series “Music of the Earth”(CD MCM 3004, Victor Company of Japan, 1997); O Morning Breeze: Traditional Songs fromGeorgia Sung by Trio Kavkasia (CD LC 05537, Naxos World, 2001); Kavkasia: Songs of theCaucasus Sung by Trio Kavkasia (CD WTP 5178, Well Tempered World, 1995); Drinking Hornsand Gramophones, 1902–1914: The First Recordings in the Georgian Republic (CD 4307, Tradi-tional Crossroads, 2001); Mravalzhamier: Traditional Georgian Songs Recorded Live in Australiaand New Zealand (CD BOÎTE 013, 2004); Golden Fleece: Songs from Georgia (CD MCD 127,Move Records, 1999); Géorgie, Polyphonies de Svanétie: Recordings, Notes and Musical Tran-scriptions by Sylvie Bolle-Zemp (CNRS and Musée de L’Homme, 1994).

105Siegfried F. Nadel, Georgischer Gesänge (Berlin: Lautabteilung, 1933); Ziegler, “Kavkasi-uri (Kartuli) Mravalkhmianoba Germanulenovani Samusikismtsodneo Literaturis Sarkeshi”[The Caucasian (Georgian) Polyphony in the Light of German Musicological Literature], Sab-chota Khelovneba 1 (1989), 125–31 (in Georgian).

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As a result, the vocal polyphony of Georgian villages as sung by the state,regional, and independent choirs is, today, what epitomizes Georgian cul-ture for Western consumers—singers, composers, and community choirleaders looking for new sources of inspiration, exoticism, and reper-toire—as well as for nationalists. The eastern-Georgian hybrid stylesassociated with ethnic minorities and Persian heritage have been left out-side the country’s musical representation. Today more Georgian poly-phonic choirs travel abroad compared to duduki dastas and hence, as aduduki player from Tbilisi said, parents prefer to take their children tosinging and dancing lessons because they are more likely to travelabroad.106 In the light of the above, it is symptomatic that the entry onGeorgia in The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music107 is in the Europerather than the Middle East volume, where other cultures of south Tran-scaucasia such as Armenia and Azerbaijan are to be found. Such a distinc-tion of cultural spheres, between those which represent Georgia and thosewhich do not, however, makes it difficult for Georgian dasta musicians toemulate their southeastern neighbors in duduki playing and Middle East-derived forms of professional musicianship. Professional musicianshipbecame strictly confined to state-funded and Western-based classical andmodern performance practices, while rural polyphony became identifiedwith the similarly state-sponsored “folklore” (people’s self-creativity). Onthe other hand, dasta musicians obtained most of their income from themore lucrative sphere of playing at weddings as a kind of second econ-omy. Officially marginalized, they became more successful financially.

CONCLUSIONS

Today, ideas of deference and commitment to national identity and the con-ception of national purity, expressed by the nineteenth-century writer-politician Ilia Chavchavadze as “Fatherland, Language, Faith” (Mamuli, Ena,Sartsmunoeba), still exert rhetorical and spiritual power in Georgia. In thecontext of globalization, modern pluralism, and aspirations for membershipin the European Union, and as a result of the Western-led international com-munity’s demands that Georgia meets its requirements as a signatory to theCouncil of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of NationalMinorities (FCNM),108 such deference to exclusive nationalism in political

106Interview, April 30, 2006.107Joseph Jordania, “Georgia,” in The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 8, Europe,

eds. Timothy Rice, James Porter, and Chris Goertzen (New York and London: Garland Pub-lishing, 2000), 826–49.

108Jonathan Wheatley, “The Status of Minority Languages in Georgia and the Relevance of Mod-els from Other European States,” European Center for Minority Issues (ECMI), working paper #26(March 2006), 16; At: http://www.ecmi.de/rubrik/58/working+papers/, accessed June 10, 2006.

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life yields to efforts to resolve conflicts that have accrued due to their neglectand, alongside other factors, have prevented the achievement of territorialintegrity and democratic political-economic changes in the country.

The field of national culture (erovnuli polklori), which has servedas one of the key sources for the creation of a unified national identity,is more resistant to change. As an abstract, emotional-temporal, andseemingly nonpolitical experience, music has been more capable ofretaining the archetypal sentimental side of patriotism, hence implic-itly legitimizing “our” world against “theirs.” While social analystsand political scientists in Georgia have started taking steps toward adeconstructionist and critical understanding of Georgian society andculture,109 musical culture in general and Georgian music in particularhave not yet become a subject of critical social analysis in Georgianmusicology. On the contrary, polyphonic song has been elevated tothe status of the nation’s esoteric cultural icon. Official folklore orga-nizations, including the Folklore State Center of Georgia and theInternational Center for Georgian Folk Song, provide “activities forthe rescue of the Georgian folklore,”110 a redemptive language thatidentifies polyphonic song as the most valued cultural icon that needsprotection and, by inference, characterizes other musics as those fromwhich it needs to be protected. The discourse of national folklore ver-sus foreign (in its different hybrid forms) provides a site for flexible,complex, and often contradictory responses and overlapping identitiesamong scholars and especially practicing musicians, leading individu-als to develop various ways of resolving the conflict. Some musicianshave adopted a more nationalist position in line with the hegemonicmusicological and center-generated ideology; others have demon-strated more flexibility, acceptance, and even relatedness to the ethnicOther. Nationalization and cosmopolitan attitudes may seem to be twoopposite ways in which musicians and scholars in Georgia attempt tomake sense of and resolve the ambiguity between the ideology ofnationalism and the diverse social-cultural milieu in which they live.As opposite as these two attitudes seem, however, neither is intact, norcan they be arranged in a sterile binary pair, and the complex interac-tion between the national and foreign makes Georgian duduki musi-cians’ experiences a multi-faceted amalgam of responses to a dynamicpolitical-ideological environment. This amalgam of experiences points tothe difficulty of drawing a clear boundary between the Georgian and theforeign in a social milieu where East and West, modern and traditional,

109Nodia, ed. Kartuli Supra da Samokalako Sazogadoeba [Georgian Feast (supra) and CivicSociety] (Tbilisi: Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development, 2000) (in Georgian).

110http://www.folk.ge/about.php, accessed June 15, 2006.

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overlap and where cultural worlds are under constant selection, exclu-sion, and inclusion by the state and elite. As a result, dasta musicianshave to practice a heritage shared with Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iranwhile pretending that it does not exist.

GLOSSARY

Ashugh/ashughi/ asiq/aseq—a folk poet, singer, and a player in Tran-scaucasia, Turkey, and Iran.

Baiati—a Georgian term for mugham and a genre of love song. In theMiddle Eastern modal system, bayati is one of the maqams.

Balaban—a double-reed aerophone with a cylindrical bore in Azer-baijan, similar to duduki.

Chahargah—a baiati mode and a fingerhole on the zurna and the duduki.Daira—a round frame drum.Damkashi—a duduki player in the dasta who provides the drone.Damkvreli—a solo duduki player in the dasta.Dardimandi—the carefree emotional state achieved by men during the

drinking feasts. Alternatively, dardimandi may signify a person who is insuch an emotional condition. Dardimandi is often achieved when thefeast is accompanied by the music of duduki dasta.

Dasta—a type of ensemble commonly hired to play at weddings andother celebrations in eastern Georgia, and comprising two or three duduki,dhol, singer, and more recently, accordion.

Dastalughi—is a refrain of song which contains the main motive of apoem in the ashugh repertoire.

Dava—a mugham.Duduki/duduk⎯a double-reed aerophone with a cylindrical bore,

widely used in the Middle East and Transcaucasia, mostly in ensembles.Has eight or nine finger holes.

Dəstgah—a large cycle of mugham in Persia and Azerbaijan.Doli/dhol/daule—a double headed cylindrical drum played with sticks

or with hands.Kalakuri—[lit., urban]. Songs or instrumental pieces on the topics of

love, homeland, and feasting performed by duduki dastas. It also signifiesa genre of urban songs based on Western harmonies that substantially dif-fers from the kalakuri of “Oriental” derivation.

Hijaz—a maqam tetrachord with a characteristic augmented secondbetween the second and the fourth steps. In Tbilisi it is called ijazi,and is often an alternation of the tetrachords such as kurd, bayati, andhijaz as occurring in the Middle Eastern system. Ijazi also implies aninstrumental piece with an extensive modulation plan played by twoduduki.

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Kemanche/kemancha—spike fiddle.Kinto—a low class of male workers and craftsmen in Tbilisi.Makam/maqam—see mugham.Medole—a doli player (in a duduki dasta).Mugham/mughamat—from the Arab maqam, a polysemous term signi-

fying a mode, genre, and a form of musical-melodic development inAzerbaijani and Central Asian musical theory and practice.

Mukhambazi—a Georgian poetic form and a local permutation ofmughamat.

Naghara—a small kettledrum played in pairs, also known in Georgiaas diplipito.

Ney—an Iranian and Turkish end-blown flute.Ney or mey—a double-reed aerophone with a cylindrical bore in Turkey,

similar to duduki.Qarachogheli—a caste of artisans in Tbilisi in the nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries, who were known for their honorable, manly (katsuri)behavior and respected by their fellow multi-ethnic citizens. The qara-chogheli often held feasts with the duduki dasta and ashugh singers.

Rasti—a Georgian baiati. Rast is a mode in the maqam modal system.Santur/santuri—a trapezoidal zither struck with two mallets.Saz/sazi—a long-necked fretted Turkish and Azerbaijani folk lute or

any instrument.Sazandari—an ensemble of kemanche, tar, naghara, and singer.Sazəndə—an instrumentalist in Azerbaijan.Segah—a popular Georgian song in a baiati mode.Sama, samaia—a Georgian ritual round dance performed by mixed- or

single-sex groups in different ceremonial contexts.Sama, sema—religious music and dance in Sufi thought and practice.Shikaste—a song played by duduki dastas in Georgia.Shuri—a Georgian baiati. Shur is a mode in the maqam modal system.Tar/tari—a long-necked lute with a body in the shape of a figure-eight.

It was widely played by the Armenian and Azerbaijanian professional andfolk musicians.

Təsnif—a metrical genre in mughamat.Zurna—a double-reed aerophone with a conical bore widely spread in

the Middle East, Balkans, and Asia; has a loud sound often used for out-door events. It usually has nine finger holes.

DISCOGRAPHY

Soinari: Folk Music from Georgia Today. Weltm, catalogue #SM15102, CD #1413401 1993.

Soinari (Ksovrelebi). Sano Studio, ETCSS-0158, 2003, Tbilisi.

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Tamarioni: Satrpialo. Sano Studio, ETCSS-0144, 2003, Tbilisi.Before the Revolution: A 1909 Recording Expedition in the Caucasus

and Central Asia by the Gramophone Company. Topic Records Ltd.,2002, TSCD921.

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