CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS Shoghaken Ensemble Music of Armenia Thursday, April 8, 2004, 8 pm Wheeler Auditorium Gevorg Dabaghyan, duduk, zurna Tigran Ambaryan, kamancha Aleksan Harutyunyan, vocals Hasmik Harutyunyan, vocals Karine Hovhannisyan, kanon Kamo Khatchaturian, dhol Grigor Takushian, duduk Levon Tevanyan, blul, shvi, tav shvi, pku This performance has been made possible, in part, by members of the Cal Performances Producers Circle. Cal Performances thanks the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Wallace Foundation, and the Zellerbach Family Foundation for their generous support. C AL PERFORMANCES 1 PROGRAM PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM Armenian folk music is one of the world’s cy to Central Asian and Middle Eastern musi- richest musical traditions, burgeoning with an cal instruments. Armenians’ cultural autono- Tsamerov Par extraordinary array of melodies and genres. my in the region was buttressed by theology Janoy Since the 1880s, ethnographers and musicolo- and literacy—they adopted Christianity in gists, most famously the Armenian priest 301 AD and an alphabet in 404, leading to an Shatakhi Dzernapar Komitas, have traveled to remote villages and extraordinary monastic culture that churned towns in Anatolia and the Caucasus collecting out countless manuscripts, many gloriously Karabakhi Horovel Armenian songs and dances. Currently, there illuminated, that preserved both the classical are over 30,000 catalogued in various archives, heritage (some original versions of Plato are Zangezuri Par each with rhythms and modes characteristic of only available in Armenian copies) and a Gorani both broad Near Eastern influence and partic- received Armenian tradition. The elaborate ular rituals and dialects not seen or heard modal music of the liturgy was theorized in Hovern Enkan beyond the next mountain pass. Tonight’s pro- writing and notated as it developed, becoming gram, performed by Armenia’s preeminent tra- part of an intellectual clerical tradition that Kani Voor Jan Im ditional music ensemble, offers a rare chance remained cohesive for centuries. Meanwhile Shalakho to witness the energy and variety of this music, Armenia’s remarkably stable feudal courts and which for centuries was so integral to large towns and cities supported professional Ororotsayin Armenians’ rites of passage and daily lives. bardic ashughs, who prospered especially Popular dances and troubadour (ashugh) between the 17th and 19th centuries, traveling Saren Gookayi melodies are interspersed with more unusual from town to village singing of Armenians’ Armenak Ghazariani Yerk emigrant- and work-songs, medieval epic historical feats and forsaken love. verse, mournful wedding dances (a peculiarly Armenian folk music, forged over cen- Yes oo Yars Armenian oxymoron), and exquisite lullabies turies in the language and rituals of everyday (numbering in the hundreds and renowned life, traditionally accompanied everything for their haunting lyricism). from family celebrations to sowing fields to INTERMISSION This wealth of folk material was honed funerals, and remains a rich brew of historical and passed down over many generations, its elements. Pagan ritual can still be traced in depth a result of the Armenians’ long histori- songs foretelling a maiden’s future retained as cal presence at a remote, biblical crossroads of part of the Christian festival of the Ascension, Karabakhi Harsanekan Par the world. It was as early as 7000 BC that the not to mention the beloved circle-dance, with Mokats Mirza Armenians settled in the eastern Anatolian its prehistoric and Zoroastrian antecedents in highlands, the land coursed by the Euphrates the Near East. The folk repertoire is in many Naz Par and dominated by Mt. Ararat, on which cases highly differentiated—specific songs, Noah’s ark is believed to have set down. each with distinct modal characteristics, are Sev Moot Amber Speaking their own Indo-European language tied to dozens of moments in the wedding cer- and following their own kinship and religious emony, from blessing the wedding tree to the Aparani Par traditions, they formed a unique culture that entry of the bride to male-only dances. Im Khorodik Yar thrived through centuries of conflict and As in much of the Middle East, Armenian usurpation. Sandwiched between the Greco- music is modal, based not on an octave with Tuy-tuy & Ghazakhi Roman and Persian empires in the classical major or minor notes, but on an untempered period and the Ottoman and Russian empires scale. Still, repertoire from the Anatolian plain Antarayin Tsayner in the modern period, and for years part of the differs from that found in the Caucasus Ororotsayin valued trade route of the Silk Road, Armenia mountains, and within these areas distinct folk was continually reconquered, divided, gov- music styles, rhythms, genres, and instru- Zurni Trngi erned, and taxed by invaders, spawning a large ments evolved corresponding both to the diaspora as early as the Byzantine era. main geographical and political division of Tnen Ilar & Jakhraki Vod Occupiers and merchants invariably intro- Western and Eastern Armenia and to the more Msho Geghen duced new customs, and Armenians were than 60 regional dialects spoken across this adept at assimilating and transforming neigh- vast expanse. In the city of Erzerum, west of Lelum Le Le & Yarkhooshta boring traditions, from Persian Zoroastrianism Mt. Ararat, one would most likely dance to a (with its worship of fire) to Roman bureaucra- 10/8 rhythm, as do Turks and Kurds in the 2 CAL PERFORMANCES C AL PERFORMANCES 3 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES area, while across the Transcaucasian region, emony of taking a bride-to-be from her fami- Black Sea; 2. Taroni Heyroor (“Lullaby of Aparani Par shared by Georgians and Azeris, a fast 6/8 is typ- ly home. From Shatakh, a region south of Taron”), from the town of Mush, historical A traditional harvesting dance in 5/8 from the ical, as you’ll hear tonight. Folk instrumental Lake Van in eastern Anatolia. Taron region; 3. Roori Roori (“Rock, Rock”); Aparan region, north of Yerevan. ensembles heard to the west might include the 4. Nani Bala (“Sleep, My Child”), from the ud, while the duduk is the main folk instrument Karabakhi Horovel town of Van. Im Khorodik Yar (“My Beautiful Love”) to the east, where melody is always accompanied (“Horovel of Karabakh”) A folk lyric from Sassun in eastern Anatolia. by a drone that holds the tonic note. Such musi- A horovel is a work song traditionally sung in a Saren Gookayi cal differences solidified in the wake of the geno- recitative call-and-response form while (“I Was Coming From the Mountain”) Tuy-tuy & Ghazakhi Par cide of 1915, in which over a million Armenians ploughing, its drawn-out free-meter lines A lyric song by the blind ashugh Sheram Dance melodies from the duduk repertoire. perished and the remainder fled either to the sometimes corresponding to the time it takes (1857–1938), the most famous modern musi- The region of Gazakh lies at the juncture of West or eastward to what would become a few to plough a length of field. Karabakh is an cian in the Armenian troubadour tradition. Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. years later the Soviet republic of Armenia (today Armenian enclave surrounded by modern an independent nation). The Shoghaken Azerbaijan and is historically one of the rich- Armenak Ghazariani Yerk Antarayin Tsayner (“Sounds of the Forest”) Ensemble, the consummate representative of est Armenian cultural regions. (“Armenak Ghazarian’s Song”) A modern showpiece for the shepherd’s flute the eastern tradition, combines the musical vir- A patriotic song from the turn of the 20th (shvi). Levon Tevanyan imitates with remark- tuosity inherited from the Soviet years with a Zangezuri Par century, written by Ghazarian, a leader in able fidelity the forest cries and singing of ani- new attention to the unscripted forms and styles A women’s dance in 6/8 from the mountain- the Armenians’ struggle for freedom from mals and birds, especially the nightingale. of lost songs and dances, from both west and ous southern Armenian region of Zangezur Ottoman rule. east—a curiosity that has become a hallmark of (bordering Azerbaijan) in which dancers mime Ororotsayin post-Soviet Armenian culture. the gestures of various female tasks, such as Yes oo Yars (“My love and I”) Two more lullabies: Taroni Oror (“Lullaby of rocking a cradle, sewing, or knitting. A spry line-dance in 6/8 called the ververi (lit- Taron”) and Oror Jojk Em Kabel (“I Bind the Tsamerov Par (“Braid Dance”) erally “up”), characterized by repeated jumps, Cradle”), from the eastern Anatolian village of A dance in the “urban folk” genre written by Gorani in which dancers traditionally break into song. Agn (near Kharpert). A jojk is a special kind of 20th-century female composer Dzovak Pagan in origin and widespread in Anatolian cradle made of woven branches and tied Hambartsumyan in which young female Armenian villages, gorani songs tell the stories INTERMISSION between trees. Hasmik Harutyunyan sings in dancers twirl their long braids. of emigrants forced to leave their homes. part: “I bind the cradle to the plum tree/My Karabakhi Harsanekan Par bundled little lamb rocks and turns/Eh, my Janoy (“Oh, My Dear”) Hovern Enkan A “wedding dance of Karabakh,” featuring darling, eh....” A wedding song traditionally sung by family (“Coolness Has Descended”) Gevorg Dabaghyan on the zurna. With its elders as they moved in a half-circle in a quiet, A traditional duduk folk melody. urgent wail, heard hundreds of yards away, this Zurni Trngi solemn dance called a govend. is a traditional opener and closer of ceremonies. A Caucasian men’s solo or pair dance in 6/8 Kani Voor Jan Im (“As Long As I Am Alive”) with intricate footwork and jumps (trnger Oh, my dear A song by the great 18th-century Armenian Mokats Mirza (“The Lord of Moks”) means “to jump”). Usually performed on the Wild, long-necked crane ashugh Sayat Nova.