Wesleyan ♦ University THE GURIAN TRIO SONG: MEMORY, MEDIA, AND IMPROVISATION IN A GEORGIAN FOLK GENRE By Brian R. Fairley Faculty Advisor: Eric Charry A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Middletown, Connecticut May 2017 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .................................................................................................... iii ACCOMPANYING CD TRACK LIST .................................................................................... v NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION OF GEORGIAN ..................................................... vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................... vii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................... xiv INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1 Scenes from a Film .................................................................................... 1 Background to Fieldwork ........................................................................... 7 Chapter Overview .................................................................................... 13 CHAPTER ONE Guria and its Place in Georgian Music Scholarship ........................................ 18 Geography and History of Guria ............................................................... 18 Early Writing on Georgian Music ............................................................. 24 Excursus: “Inventing” Georgian Polyphony .............................................. 32 Methodological Parallels in Eastern Europe and Central Asia .................... 43 CHAPTER TWO Gurian Trio Singing as Genre and Community ............................................... 49 Identifying Genre ..................................................................................... 49 Cradle of Singers ..................................................................................... 59 Singing as Moral Community ................................................................... 65 “Peaceful” Competition ............................................................................ 70 Intertextuality and the Voices of Others .................................................... 72 CHAPTER THREE Forms and Formulas in “Me Rustveli” ............................................................ 81 “Me Rustveli” .......................................................................................... 82 Strophic Structure .................................................................................... 85 Text-Setting ............................................................................................. 89 “Nonsense” Words ................................................................................... 92 Transcription and Temperament ............................................................... 95 Variant One ............................................................................................. 99 Three Cadences ...................................................................................... 107 Variants Two and Three ......................................................................... 114 Conclusion ............................................................................................ 117 i CHAPTER FOUR Approaching Gurian Improvisation ............................................................... 118 Conceiving Improvisation ...................................................................... 118 The “Frame” of a Song ........................................................................... 123 Formulas in Perspective ......................................................................... 128 Improvisation in Soviet Musical Folklore ............................................... 136 CHAPTER FIVE Blackbirds in the Archive: Recording Technologies and Genealogies of Voice ...................................... 145 Recording Technology and Ethnomusicology .......................................... 145 The Gramophone in the Pre-Revolutionary Caucasus .............................. 148 Gurian Recordings, 1907-1914 ............................................................... 152 The Recordings Re-circulate .................................................................. 155 Keeper of the Archive ............................................................................ 159 Voices of Revival .................................................................................. 167 Fidelity to the (Sonic) Past ..................................................................... 173 Epilogue: Babua’s Voice ........................................................................ 182 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 189 APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW DETAILS ............................................................ 198 APPENDIX B: TRISTAN’S SONG LIST ........................................................... 199 ANNOTATED DISCOGRAPHY ....................................................................... 200 REFERENCES .................................................................................................. 211 ii Illustrations FIGURES FIGURE 0.1 Rustavi Ensemble in There Once Was a Singing Blackbird ................................... 2 FIGURE 0.2 Still from Ancient Georgian Songs ......................................................................... 6 FIGURE 0.3 Tristan and Levan Sikharulidze ............................................................................ 11 FIGURE 0.4 Anzor Erkomaishvili, with John A. Graham and the author ................................. 12 FIGURE 1.1 Map of Georgia ..................................................................................................... 18 FIGURE 1.2 Field sites in Guria ................................................................................................ 19 FIGURE 1.3 Georgian prisoner-of-war ...................................................................................... 26 FIGURE 2.1 Tristan Sikharulidze's hand-written song list ........................................................ 50 FIGURE 2.2 Gizo Makharadze, Avto Makharadze, and Jemal Nakashidze. ............................. 65 FIGURE 3.1 Diagram of “Me Rustveli” song structure ............................................................. 86 FIGURE 5.1 Hotel “Oriental" .................................................................................................. 152 FIGURE 5.2 Gramophone Company office in Tiflis ............................................................... 152 FIGURE 5.3 Gigo, Artem, and Davit Erkomaishvili ............................................................... 162 FIGURE 5.4 Tristan Sikharulidze's autobiographical statement .............................................. 163 FIGURE 6.1 Diagram of Cultural Memory (Aleida Assmann) ............................................... 190 MUSICAL EXAMPLES EXAMPLE 1.1 Transcription of Gurian prisoners’ songs .......................................................... 27 EXAMPLE 1.2 Transcription of “Chven Mshvidoba” ............................................................... 28 EXAMPLE 1.3 First-voice part for “Ts′amok′ruli,” sung by Samuel Chavleishvili in 1909 ..... 29 EXAMPLE 2.1 Varlam Simonishvili’s “Khasanbegura” variant ............................................... 73 EXAMPLE 2.2 Besarion Khukhunaishvili’s “Khasanbegura” variant ....................................... 74 iii EXAMPLE 2.3 Kotsia Khukhunaishvili's laugh ......................................................................... 75 EXAMPLE 2.4 Short melodic formula associated with Guri Sikharulidze ................................ 76 EXAMPLE 2.5 The “Guri phrase” in “Nanina” ......................................................................... 77 EXAMPLE 3.1 First two verses of “Me Rustveli,” as taught by Tristan Sikharulidze .............. 84 EXAMPLE 3.2 Typical four-measure gadadzakhili part for “Me Rustveli” .............................. 87 EXAMPLE 3.3 Samgherisi phrases. ........................................................................................... 94 EXAMPLE 3.4 Samgherisi A passage for damts′qebi voice ...................................................... 99 EXAMPLE 3.5 Three versions of Samgherisi A, sung by Tristan Sikharulidze ...................... 100 EXAMPLE 3.6 First-voice formulas in Samgherisi A section ................................................. 104 EXAMPLE 3.7 Cadence in the second verse of “Me Rustveli” ............................................... 108 EXAMPLE 3.8 Cadence in the third verse of “Me Rustveli” ................................................... 109 EXAMPLE 3.9 Cadence in the fourth verse of “Me Rustveli” ................................................. 110 EXAMPLE 3.10 Tristan's Variant Two .................................................................................... 114 EXAMPLE 3.11 “Nanina” variant (Variant Three) with Guri and Tristan Sikharulidze ......... 116 EXAMPLE 4.1 “Me Rustveli” performed by Vladimer Berdzenishvili’s trio ......................... 134 EXAMPLE 5.1 “Sajavakhura Naduri” opening, Gigo Erkomaishvili's choir, 1907 ................. 174 EXAMPLE 5.2 “Sajavakhura Naduri” opening, as taught by Artem Erkomaishvili ................ 177 TABLES