weaving Voices 01.04.2025 issuu - Flipbook - Page 54
In November 2022, during our first approach to this song, it was very difficult
for the participants to memorise or even simply pronounce the lyrics in
Georgian. At our second meeting in Reichenow (Germany), in January 2023,
we sang the song again and Laurent introduced the idea of keeping the
melody and structure of the song, but allowing us to improvise our own
words. The lingua franca of our group, the one that allows us to communicate
despite our eight different nationalities, is English. The idea was to improvise
in English so that the group could repeat what the soloist was saying.
It is likely that doing these two activities (singing and weaving) at the same
time enabled us to develop a range of complementary skills: listening,
improvising, having a tactile relationship with the materials, being
aware of each other and each other’s work, keeping an overview of the
collective work being created, taking into account colours and patterns
in particular… Isn’t it incredible to be able to do all this at the same time?
Another question is whether the singing influenced the weaving, and if so,
in what way?
Singing Khert’lis Naduri while we were weaving and improvising the lyrics
in English made us understand and feel the song in a very different way.
Or perhaps it would be better to say: the perfection of the structure of this
song to serve this purpose imposed itself on us. The way in which this song
is conceived allows each weaver to participate and to be listened to and
valued by the others, who repeat the words they have just heard. Of course,
it was difficult to improvise in English, which was not the mother tongue of
the participants in this session in Amsterdam, with the exception of Teresa
Brayshaw. No doubt it would have been easier for us to count the syllables
in our own language before launching our solos to the group, but that would
have made things too difficult for those who had to repeat the phrases in
Swedish, Hungarian etc. And it was clearly part of the fun of immediately
understanding what the partner was saying, before repeating it, as we were
also talking about the activity we were doing:
These work songs were of course present in all regions of the world before
labour was industrialised. It might be interesting to examine this question
of the reciprocal influence of song on work and work on song by looking
at what was happening in other countries. To take just one example, in the
Italian film Riso amaro, directed by Giuseppe de Santis in Italy in the 1950s,
there is a passage in which we see a very large group of mondine, the
women who worked in the rice fields. They plant rice shoots while singing,
with their feet in the water. It is clear that singing helps with this eminently
repetitive work, but it also provides a space for these women to say things
to each other, some of them personal attacks in this case.82 Singing proves
to be a formidable meeting place for collective and individual issues.
“Do you think I can continue with this colour on the next row?
Show me again how to tie this knot!”
It was also striking how pleasant and stimulating it was to engage in this
double activity. The moment was so magical that time seemed to stand
still: the exercise lasted almost two hours, but it didn’t feel long at all! The
challenge spread to everyone present, and even the photographer who was
there to document our afternoon was able to sing some of the solos with
the weaving group answering her. This is probably another aspect of these
traditional activities accompanied by songs: working and singing together
makes the work lighter because you are constantly in contact with others. We
are not just working as our hands grasp the strands of wool to weave them,
but also weaving bonds of connivance between ourselves. Without going so
far as to say that the work gets done better when it’s done while singing, we
can say that our work progressed very well that day!
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The freedom to change the text of a traditional song while singing raises
a very important question. Namely, there is an extensive debate among
traditional music fans about the issue of authenticity. The fact is that
music is constantly evolving, constantly incorporating new influences. It is
impossible to get everyone to agree on an absolute point of reference, a
precise era that needs to be copied to be ‘authentic’. As far as Georgian
songs are concerned, the very first sound recordings date back to 1902
and we can assume that the country was much more sheltered from
outside influences at that time, since neither radio nor television had yet
penetrated homes. When we listen to these recordings from the early 20th
century, our ears perceive dissonances.83 These are not errors on the part
of singers who are singing out of pitch since the same intervals are always
sung by the different groups recorded at that time. This means that tuning
82 Bitter Rice (1949) Full Movie - Vittorio Gassman, Doris Dowling, Silvana Mangano | Italian - English subs
(2023) Dailymotion. Available at: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8naz2l [Accessed 22 Apr. 2024].
If you follow this link to watch the whole 昀椀lm, the scene in question takes place 20 min 40 sec after the start of
the 昀椀lm.
83 Tsamokruli registered in 1909: Tsamokruli - Choir of Guria Province (2014) YouTube. Available at: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZurEF5bSjoI [Accessed 17 Jun. 2024].
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