Polyphonic Songs from the Christian East

Walking through Canterbury, I saw a small flier stuck on a gate in the High Street, advertising a concert, to be held in the Eastbridge Hospital – a hospital in the sense of a place offering hospitality since the twelfth century and still active as a place of worship and Christian mission in the city centre.  I called and booked a ticket and last night, enjoyed one of the most profound evening of music and thought-provoking commentary I have ever experienced.

Arriving 10 minutes before the start of the concert, I was surprised to see a crowd outside the Hospital.  I thought perhaps it was overbooked, but no, we were asked to wait outside until the start time, when we were invited into the undercroft.  Apart from a few benches against the walls, it was standing room only and hot and crowded, when a young blonde woman to my left, thin, wearing thick tights and pretty lace-up shoes, stretched long fingers in front of her, as if weaving or touching air as some do when they are dying, opened her mouth wide like a gargoyle’s and released a sound that was heavenly and human simultaneously and which, like a wave on the sea, merged with the voices coming from people I couldn’t see dotted through the crowd in the dim cellar.  It was like swimming, or almost drowning, the way the sound dissolved barriers and created a medium in which I was sinking and floating, being held and released all in one rich moment of song.

We heard three songs, without commentary, people leaned uncomfortably against pillars, each other or on sticks.  The blond woman’s eyes focused on something beyond us and her hands pushed and pulled, as if skeining wool, stroking an animal, or making love as the sounds wove through the crowd.  A member of the audience, dreadlocked and pale, fainted and was carried to the steps near the entrance. We were ushered out of the undercroft and upstairs, past the pilgrim’s refectory and into the chapel.

I was one of the last to come in and the space was full but then someone told me to sit at the front, which I did, just squeezing onto the pew next to two women and a man holding a large hardback book, which I think was by Peter Matthiessen, but I couldn’t see the title. I am reading, now and slowly, PM’s classic, The Snow Leopard, in paperback with a cover that shows just snow, as the leopard of the title is never seen.  Those stories of journeys and Matthiessen’s buddhism seemed appropriate to this setting, this music, these performers. A contemporary icon of St Thomas looked down on us and a huge tapestry of Christ as salvator mundi surrounded by the gospel symbols was the backdrop to the group of nine singers.

Their songs and fragments of songs were mostly liturgical, mostly from Svaneti.  Some had recognisable words, Christ is risen, kyrie eleison … others were so ancient, that they were now just ‘sound’, the ancient Svanetian language being lost.  There was a magnificent meeting of cultures in a piece from the Sioni Cathedral in Georgia, merging the Russian and Orthodox traditions, something that’s now disappeared with the rise of Georgian nationalism.  Some of the songs, we were told, go back directly to Byzantium, I assume when it moved East from Istanbul to Trabzon.

Dotted in between were pieces from Sardinia, Corsica and Bulgaria, marginalised places, ancient places, where the harmonies and polyphonic angelic blending, mixed with the sharp and rocky landscapes of peasant farmers, the scent of rosemary and oregano on hot hillsides, the stench of goat.  In one piece, the five women took centre stage, the four men standing behind in the manner of a motown backing group, and the women each in turn seemed to riff in the jazz manner where pain and pleasure merge in a way that’s spiritual and sexual, each of them becoming herself, whether soft faced or strong, stocky or wiry, dark or fair, those hand, always those hands, reaching, yearning, touching the air that all of us breathe.

Then back to Svaneti and ‘Zar’, the name for the funeral songs that are said to create a ‘column of sound’, presumably to connect heaven and earth in the way that the death of those we know and love connects us to eternity and our own mortality.  These are sung by woodsmen and were flinty like axes, rooted like mountains, strong, convinced and powerful, as songs should be at funerals,  an antidote to the banality of our modern way of denying tradition and the deep knowledge of people still singing with the whole of their body and souls.

Into the refectory, and a toasting song from Georgia, joy and abundance, pain forgotten around a table laden with broken bread and the velvet tastes of red wine, an encore, and they file out, nine young performers, their voices, talents, bodies, discipline, huge eyes and those hands, reaching, searching, touching.

The warmth of the heart

We were in Tbilisi over Easter, the main festival in Georgia.  Like Christmas at home, it's a time for visiting, feasting, opening the home to friends and relatives.  It struck me that in every home we visited, there was an elderly mother, living with her children and grandchildren.  Sometimes she was helping, bringing dishes and glasses to the table, sometimes she was barely seen, slipping from bedroom to kitchen or bathroom, then disappearing like a shadow back into her own room. 

We heard many conflicting stories about this living arrangement.  Sometimes the mother, or more commonly the mother-in-law, was a nuisance, vetoing home improvements or complaining about the absence abroad of a son or daughter.  Usually she was a much-loved and natural baby-sitting, looking after her grandchildren so that daughters and daughter-in-laws could work.  When people talked about these women, there was a mix of love and exasperation but never a question of changing the status quo.

When I came home, I read, after hearing some of it on R4's Book of the Week, Marie de Hennezel's The Warmth of the Heart Stops the Body from Rusting - a polemic about aging and how it is dreaded in our culture.  Without wanting to romanticise the Georgian approach, it seems to me that living with the extended family, joining in the singing at an Easter feast, then slipping away into one's own room when one wants, wouldn't be an unpleasant way of getting old.

Dogs in Tbilisi

This is a sign advertising Caucasian Mountain Dog puppies which, according to our taxi driver, sell for $500 each and are, of course, completely inappropriate for a city flat.  I hear a story of one suffering from rickets from too little exercise.

When we visit the wonderful Georgian artist, Tina Bukia, we are greeted by two dogs, a cat and a kitten.  Her flat has no doorbell but Tuka and Daisy immediately know when someone is at the door of the third floor flat and raise the alarm accordingly. Daisy is an elderly prize-winning Dalmatian and Tuka is a Hairless Mexican Dog - or a possibly a Mexican Hairless Dog. Both breeds are slightly other-worldly. It's impossible to see a Dalmatian without thinking of Pongo and Perdita. The HMD (or MHD) is a new one on me - she is somewhere between a little dark humanoid and a teradactyl, scampering around the flat, flying up on to our laps or squeezing behind us on our chairs.  Wierdly, Tuka is hot to the touch and stroking her skin, not entirely smooth, feels like running a hand up the hairy leg of a woman who has taken to shaving (yes, I've done that).  She has soft, floppy, pointy ears, intelligent eyes and a little top knot that apparently requires coming with a special comb.

At the other end of doggy life in Tbilisi, are the wild dogs that live on the streets.. As Nata and I crossed a city centre park, we met a pair of indeterminately ferocious breed having a stand-off. The one backed into a corner was baring a row of pointy fangs and snarling in a caricature of a truly terrifying dog.

Bakhtrioni Street is patrolled by a gentler wild dog who, with his shaggy coat and waving white fan of a tail, seems to have retriever blood.  His side-kick is a partly Alsatian bitch with a diseased tail and teats that suggest puppies somewhere.  Together they criss-cross the busy road and purposefully case the bins and wasteland round about.  They seem oblivious to the human life in their midst, ignoring pedestrians and at night, howl and bark to their canine compatriots in inner city Tbilisi.

Transparency

In Georgia, the President has declared that police stations should be transparent, to reflect the honesty and transparency of the police force.  This giant structure is on the way to the airport in Tbilisi. The one below, is on the road out to Avchala, the area where Zura lives.

This literal way of translating abstract concepts into bricks and mortar is fascinating. The policemen at work behind their panes of glass are exposed, illuminated and dazzled.

Zura won a prize for Book for the Year in 2010.  As well as a cash sum, he received a table and chair from the Ministry of Culture.  This is another way of translating the abstract 'writing' into something we can see. Nata and I were shown this new furniture, in the hall of Zura's otherwise sparsely furnished home. It sits, black and shiny, ready to play its part in the translation of Zura's imagination into literature.

But what of the translation my friend and I are setting out to do?  It is a simple case of word for word, but more than that, we need to translate one world into another, so that the words themselves become as beautifully transparent as a Georgian police station.

That our services are necessary, I think is shown by the way the title of  Zura's Book of the Year has been translated in the press release online.  I find it hard so far to get a picture of Child's Bite on Goldcrest in October.  We will visit the Bakur Sulakauri publishing house on Tuesday and may get some idea.

In the Beginning

I know no Georgian. To me, the alphabet looks like a series of abstract designs for crochet hooks and vases, although I understand it is phonetic.  I think I might just be able to make out the syllable 'pop' as the local mini-market on Bakhtrioni Street, Tbilisi, where I am staying this week, is called Populis.

So why am I here? How do I come to be sitting eating cake and drinking brandy with a writer called Zurab Lezhava in a little house in an orchard, not far from an area of the city known as Eve's Arsehole?  The answers lie in Cornwall where I met my collaborator, Natalia Bukia, who is a native Georgian.  Further back, the connections were made in Greece and New Zealand where we met our respective Cornish husbands.

Zurab spent sixteen years in prison for 'hooliganism'. That's where he became a writer and also developed his skills in wood carving and embroidery.  Nata and I accept another glass of murky, delicious 'new wine' that he's made himself from his own vines and wonder at the circumstances that brought us together.