ZEDASHE
Intangible Pearls
Multaflora ECR-710
* * *
Folk music scholars generally divide those performing
traditional songs and tunes into two categories: tradition-bearers and
revivalists. Tradition-bearers are those that grew up within a specific folk
culture and learned the music in customary and informal ways; revivalists are
those that professionalize older music–it’s part of their repertoire, not their
identity, if you will. Where one classifies a group such as Zedashe renders
such distinctions problematic.
This ten-member group hails from the Republic of Georgia and
specializes in music from loads of small villages wiped out by war, Soviet
cultural hegemony, and modernity. Some of them grew up with memories of the old
ways, though most are too young to have grown up in them. I suppose technically
they are revivalists, but their approach to the music is more folkloristic than
commercial. It’s certainly not like anything you’re used to hearing.
Traditional Georgian music is polyphonic, meaning there are two or more
dominant melody lines going at the same time, not just the one found in most
Western music. This gives the music a primal, raw quality, a mood enhanced by
various voice modulations, keening, and the chant-like structure of many songs.
The closest thing in American music is shape note singing in that both styles
are stripped down, feature unusual harmonies, and sport unexpected tonal
shifts. A lot of the songs are rendered a cappella and what instrumentation
there is trends toward sparse and spare. You will hear the chongur, a sort of ukulele/lute hybrid and a button accordion
called a garmon that’s often used for
its drone-like effects. The garmon
serves drone duty because the region’s bagpipe, the chiboni, is a double-chambered affair with a bell-like chanter that
has no drones; instead it produces a shrill sound whose sound is roughly like
that of a Breton biniou. North
American audiences will thus find that even dance tunes such as those heard on
the track “Ajarian and Khorumi Dance Melodies” challenge the ear more than the
feet.
When encountering music so far out of one’s own tradition it’s
important neither to romanticize nor exoticize. You can rest easy on the first
score–even casual listening reveals that Zedashe is made up of enormously
talented musicians. As for the second, the music is indeed exotic and unusual
for Westerners. The CD is 25 tracks long and that’s probably too many for most
listeners for one sitting. I recommend that you dip in and out of this one so
that you can appreciate it more thoroughly. And it doesn’t hurt to Google some
of the things you encounter so you can learn about Georgian history and culture
as well. --Rob Weir
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