The Issue of Spiritual Revival in Post-Soviet Georgian Music (Drawing on the Example of Eka Chabashvili and Maka Virsaladze)
The Issue of Spiritual Revival in Post-Soviet Georgian Music (Drawing on the Example of Eka Chabashvili and Maka Virsaladze)

Summary/Abstract: The article analyzes the consequences of the Russian annexation of Georgia in post-Soviet Georgian music. In the relationships with Russia, Georgia saw a chance of re-integration with European culture, viewed as its natural intellectual environment, but this was rendered impossible by Russian and Soviet policies. As Georgian Ortho- dox chants were driven out of the Georgian church, this layer musical tradition was unknown to the first Georgian composers, which prevented the opportunity to explore this source as a symbol of national identity when new professional music appeared. The second Annexation of Georgia at the time of the establishment of the Soviet socialist regime, along with the ensuing isolation of the country from the Western world, precluded any further integration with contemporary European music. Geor- gian composers remained within the limits of the tonal language of Romanticism (1920s-1950s). The generation of the 1960s and especially the 1990s had to overcome the backlog and detachment from recent developments in European music. Post-So- viet Georgian music reflected not only secondary Soviet traumas but also all the pain inflicted on the nation by the Russian annexations, usually accompanied by a fear of an uncertain future. All of that gave rise to the need for a more mystical perception of the world and, as a result, religious themes dominate post-Soviet Georgian music.

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