Founded twenty years ago, Zedashe is one of the first performing groups attempting to preserve and share the traditional music and dance of the Republic of Georgia. Our Earth and Water is their seventh album. It contains over an hour’s worth of music, comprising 26 tracks, many of them less than two minutes long. Most of the pieces are vocals, rendered in the distinctive three-part polyphonic harmonies for which this culture is known.
I did not know much about the Republic of Georgia when I started this review. I knew that it had been part of the former Soviet Union, that the man known to the world as Joseph Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis Dze Jugashvili) was born there, and that the country fought a brief war with Russia in 2008. I learned that, in the aftermath of this conflict, the Russian military still occupies two regions of the country. Bordered by the Black Sea on the west, the country is bound on the north by the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range, on the south by the Lesser Caucasus. Russia lies to the north, Armenia and Azerbaijan to the south. Off to the east, through Russia and Azerbaijan, lies the Caspian Sea. Given this geography, it’s not at all surprising that the region often experienced domination by conquering armies, or that several different ethnic groups, including the Svans, Mingrelians and Laz, inhabit the territory.
When I started doing my brief, web-based research on the Republic of Georgia, I quickly noticed that the Georgians have their own very distinctive language and scripts. It is not Indo-European, Turkic or Semitic in origin. The album cover, shown below, includes both the band’s name and the name of the album in the Mkhedruli script. Founded and still directed by Ketevan Mindorashvili, the Zedashe Ensemble is based in the medieval fortress city of Sighnaghi, where the music for Our Earth and Water was recorded live at a local winery. This locale is particularly significant because the band takes its name from earthenware jugs (literally zedashes) that were filled with wine and buried in the earth, to be tapped once a year at a ceremony venerating the ancestors.
My review is based on a download of the tracks provided by their US promoter, Rock Paper Scissors. While the forthcoming CD apparently has no liner notes per se, their publicist sent us a few song descriptions written by someone in the band, most likely Mindorashvili. Track 1, “Supruli,” is described as a feasting song, but features melismatic singing, elision of syllables across multiple notes, of the sort I associate with Gregorian chants and other liturgical singing. Track 3, “Dzveli Abadelia,” is based on a 12th century Georgian poem written by a revered poet, Shota Rustaveli. Track 22, “Orovela,” is a work song, more specifically a farming song, in which male voices provide a droning background while the females sing the melody. The list of songs on the Zedashe website reveals that they offer a mix of themes, including hunting and feasting, work and war, love and marriage, along with a few liturgical chants. The latter represent one of the unique forms of Georgian music that were nearly lost during the many years the region was part of the USSR. Traveling from village to village, members of the band learned song and dance traditions from their own region of Kiziqian, as well as from Rach’a-Lechkhumi, Guria, Kartli and Abkhazia.
Although the recording is live, this is definitely NOT a field recording. The recording has been professionally mixed and mastered and has a very clean rich sound. Nine artists perform on the album. In addition to Mindorashvili, three other women and five men are credited. Everyone sings; in fact, most of the songs feature both strong male and female vocals. While several of the band members also play traditional instruments, including the garmoni (accordion), panduri (lute), doli (hand drum), and chonguri (bagpipes), group singing is the dominant sound on Our Earth and Water.
Most of the artists are also dancers—although of course that doesn’t show on the audio recording. I did find a number of their dance videos on YouTube. The Highland Love Song is a good example. The women’s moves are very graceful; the men carry small swords and shields that they brandish about with great skill and vigor. While I found their recorded music challenging to listen to, because the tonal qualities are so unfamiliar to me, I noticed that when I watched the dances, I could easily feel the connection. About the closest comparison I could make to any band I know would be to Ilgi, which has played a very similar important and longstanding (nearly 35 year) role in the preservation and promotion of the folk music of Latvia. The main difference is that the members of Ilgi play modern instruments: electric guitar and bass, violin and rock drums.
Zedashe has toured extensively in Europe and the United States. They are just starting their fifth US tour in support of Our Earth and Water, with nearly fifteen gigs at churches, college campuses, and folk festivals in the Midwest, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. I’m sorry that none of the venues are close enough to where I live—I would love to see them perform. At several of these venues they will also be holding music and dance workshops. Members of the band also operate a music and dance school for children in Sighnaghi; a choir of children from the school was featured on the earlier album Intangible Pearls.
If you are interested in listening to Our Earth and Water, you can order the album in either digital or limited edition CD format. You can find their earlier recordings on the usual retail sites.
(Living Roots Music, 2015)
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