Polyphonic Lullabies of Kakheti is the latest addition to Hugo Zemp’s collection of ethnographic films shot in Georgia (Caucasus), joining The Feast-Day of Tamar and Lashari (1998), Funeral Chants from the Georgian Caucasus (2007), Duduki of Tbilisi (2012) and Table Songs of Kakheti (2016). Focusing primarily on the region of Kakheti in eastern Georgia, the film offers valuable insights into the ways in which songs traditionally sung by women in domestic and ritual settings continue to hold meaning in contemporary Georgian society. We also see how their performance has been recontextualised by a new generation of singers in a way that reflects the different performance aesthetics that co-exist in today’s Georgia.

The film is structured around a sequence of loosely related scenes featuring performances by, and conversations with, different groups of singers. Additional commentary, as well as translation, is provided by means of English text overlaid on the footage, while Zemp’s trademark slow-moving style allows the viewer ample time to reflect on what is not made explicit. Effective use is also made of cutaways featuring a combination of archival images and shots of present-day landscapes and cityscapes to provide broader context.

The opening sequence of a young grandmother singing to her baby grandson while feeding him milk from a bottle cuts to an all-male ensemble on stage, its members sporting the traditional costume typically worn by professional and semi-professional male ensembles: a black chokha (tailored woollen coat) with rows of fake bullets across the chest and a dagger hanging from the belt. This juxtaposition neatly points to a series of shifts: from female to male, from monody to polyphony, from home to stage, from maternal nurture to a more heroic mode of protection, and from the baby as an intimate audience-of-one to an often international concert audience.

The practice of mothers singing lullabies to their children may have declined in modern times. As the film reveals, however, multipart lullabies have been part of the choral tradition since at least the end of the nineteenth century, when the lullaby was one of the first genres to be performed on the concert stage by Georgian male-voice choirs. As Anzor Erkomaishvili (founder and artistic director of the state academic ensemble Rustavi) explains: “People started adapting it [the lullaby], and the song started a new life on the concert stage.” Among the most popular today is the lullaby known simply as “Kakhuri Nana,” or ”Kakhetian Lullaby.” “This Nana now has a beautiful stage version,” says Erkomaishvili. “Whoever first adapted it for several parts, did it very well.” That the polyphonic versions of these songs came into being only in connection with organised choirs may be open to debate – some Georgian ethnologists (as mentioned in the film) believe that multipart ritual songs sung by women have more ancient roots––but whatever their origins, these polyphonic arrangements now form a staple of the concert repertoire of male, female, and mixed ensembles committed to safeguarding the country’s musical heritage.

Zemp uses “Kakhuri Nana” to thread together several scenes featuring renditions of the same song by different singers. This allows the alert listener to appreciate some of the variations from one performance to the next, while also opening windows onto the different lives of this one song across time and space. Erkomaishvili tells of how, when he formed Rustavi, he asked soloist Hamlet Gonaishvili (“the voice of Georgia”) to sing the variant that used to be sung by the revered Vano Mchedlishvili. Rustavi’s rendition––exquisitely harmonised in Kakhetian style, with two melismatic solo voices moving in thirds over a drone, but with a notably refined, blended sound––then served as a point of reference for numerous other ensembles, with the result that this is the variant most often sung today. At the same time, as Erkomaishvili goes on to explain, many young singers now learn from studying the variants of songs preserved in old field recordings but make their own interpretations. “If a Georgian man is a good singer,” he insists, “he won’t sing a tune without changing it; he will definitely improvise,” such that no performance will ever be “the exact copy of the previous versions.” In a later scene, we encounter the younger men who make up the ensemble Shavnabada. Director Dato Tsintsadze explains that the singers each learned songs like “Kakhuri Nana” independently and at different times, often as members of children’s choirs such as Martve, the state-supported boys choir that served as an important training ground for many of today’s performers. They also heard different versions sung by different singers, says Tsintsadze: “we’ve picked different features from them, and have put our own interpretation on them.” Being witness to these conversations enriches the viewer’s understanding of the craft of the singer and of the process by which different song variants come into being with an equal claim to being “authentic.”

Interestingly, members of the female ensemble Iliani say that they do not have any lullabies in their repertoire but, “to please the filmmakers,” some of the women offer songs they used to sing to their own children, with some of their fellow-singers spontaneously providing a supporting drone. We learn that the nana repertoire does not consist of cradle songs alone, however. There is a parallel repertoire of healing songs, also traditionally sung by women and believed to have originated in pre-Christian times. The texts of these songs, too, include frequent invocations to Nana, thought to refer to the ancient goddess of that name who was venerated across the ancient Near East. Sung for children with infectious illnesses such as measles or chickenpox, the function of the song in this case was to appease the celestial spirits thought to have brought the disease. The broader genre of nana songs also encompasses other ritual songs sung by women at sacred places, such as pagan mountain shrines or the gates to village churches, as a form of supplication to the gods to ensure health and prosperity. Meanwhile, conversations with some of singers reveal the complex symbolism (and potential confusion) attached to a song like “Mze Shina,” a hymn to the sun, which is thought to have accompanied a devotional round-dance at ancient childbirth celebrations but might also (we are told) be sung to lull a baby to sleep, at the bedside of a new mother, for someone with an infectious disease or at a religious feast. Pressed to categorise “Mze Shina,” the members of Nelqarisi settle on the explanation that it isn’t sung as a lullaby as such: it’s a ritual song, sung at the birth of a boy. Most importantly, the interrelatedness of these various nana songs underscores the profundity of women’s ritual roles and of lullabies themselves as far more than just a song to send a baby to sleep.

A valuable aspect of the film is the inclusion of extracts from older recordings and film footage, alongside clips from other sources. An audio clip featuring a female choir from Telavi’s Music High School singing in Alaverdi monastery with accompanying birdsong that was recorded by Minoru Morita in 1983 for the Victor Company of Japan, for example, makes for some nice connections when juxtaposed with footage shot in and around Alaverdi by Zemp himself. Similarly, a scene in which the female singers of the group Nelqarisi recall a nana composed by Salome Aghniashvili and traditionally sung at the church gate is startlingly juxtaposed to a 1963 recording made by Mindia Jordania featuring Salome herself delivering what ethnomusicologist Nino Tsitsishvili describes (via a textual overlay) as “an emotionally charged prophetic incantation.” These and other scenes offer a salutary reminder of how recently some of these rituals were still performed and how quickly the old traditions can be lost, especially when they are dependent on an individual culture-bearer. Zemp includes an extract from his 1998 film The Feast-Day of Tamar and Lashari, shot in 1991, which shows elderly Pshav women singing iavnana songs at a shrine in Zemo Artani. Footage of the same festivities in 2004 shows a much-reduced group of singers making their way to the shrine but is testimony to the way in which the texts of these seemingly ancient songs are updated with topical detail. Here, lead singer Lamara Khakhutashvili intones: “Look down, blessed one, upon our tormented Georgia. ...Keep away the threat of war. May Georgia be reunited by the coming to power of Mikheil Saakashvili. Glory to his coming.” Lamara passed away in 2011, we are told, without a successor to keep her role alive.

Polyphonic Lullabies of Kakheti makes a natural partner for Table Songs of Kakheti (2016)––a connection that is underlined by the inclusion of a scene featuring a supra (feast) held to celebrate the première of the earlier film and featuring some of the same singers: Leila Legashvili and her women’s ensemble Megobrebi and revered songmaster Andro Simashvili (affectionately known as Andro Papa). In this new film, Leila sings a lesser-known nana taught to her by Andro––one that also featured in the 1983 Japanese collection referred to above, sung on that occasion by Andro’s male ensemble. The presence, at several points in the film, of tables laden with food and drink reflects the ubiquity of collective singing in the context of the legendary Georgian feast. These scenes also show that traditional singing continues to have a place in community and family life and not only in the concert hall and recording studio.

A four-minute preview of the film is available on der.org.