NEW WEBSITE: BATSAV and the batsbi ans other unknown caucasian peoples (batsav.com)

Alexander J. T. Bainbridge wrote in the last times his own blog. Some knows his blog: transcaucasian.blogspot.com. Now you have note that A.J.T. Bainbridge will slowly transferring his blog to his new home at www.batsav.com.

This new (December 2009) website initially started as a blog called "Transcaucasus", which was hosted on Blogger.com (at www.transcaucasian.blogspot.com).

I had been thinking of creating a dedicated website for my Caucasus-related "findings" (i.e. ramblings) ever since I first landed on Blogger, but for the usual reasons I never actually created such a website, and the blog just got longer and longer and longer and longer and longer... and more and more contorted and unreadable and chaotic... and then one day (summer 2009) I started noticing that images which I uploaded to my blog-posts started disappearing. This phenomenon - which Blogger i.e. Google seem to be ignoring - just got worse, and when some tables disappeared the day after I first uploaded them, I decided that I had had enough, and began to create this website.

MUSIC: One of Georgia's greatest singers, Lela Tataraidze. (transcaucasian.blogspot.com)

Here is a beautiful Georgian folk song ("You, Lion, Killed by a Lion"), performed by one of Georgia's greatest singers, Lela Tataraidze.

Born in 1952, Lela grew up in a family from Tusheti, the mountainous region of Georgia. With her sad eyes but a happy face, she is an excellent accordion and panduri player, and also a brilliant vocalist, who sings the popular songs of the mountains with a lot of emotion. She was brought up in the musical atmosphere of her family and continued her studies at the school of music and later on at the philharmonic ensemble of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. She toured in Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and France. She made her first recordings with Melodiya Records in 1988. She founded the trio ensemble of Kesane ("myosotis, forget-me-not", a flower of Tusheti) and recorded her first CD in Holland in 1999, "Janghi" ("morning fog"). Her last CD is from June 2007, it is entitled "Songs of Survival: traditional music of Georgia". Lela Tataraidze is the great lady of Georgian traditional song, a popular art coming from time immemorial and from the majestic landscapes of the legendary Georgia. Enjoy!



Lela Tataraidze is Tusheti's most famous singer. She was first described to me as Article by ALEXANDER BAINBRIDGE (source: transcaucasian.blogspot.com)

TuSeTis jeniper lopez i.e. "Tusheti's Jennifer Lopez" - some indication of her fame and popularity! She was born in Dano, a small, nearly abandoned hamlet in Pirikiti Tusheti. Like most Tush families, hers had no doubt been spending the harsh winters down in the valley of the Alazani, in Kvemo Alvani (where her house - and indeed her mother! - are still to be seen). Her haunting songs are THE music played by all the Tush, irrespective of origin (Tchaghma, Pirikiti, Gometsri, Tsova, Tbilisi Tush, etc.), and some of them - particularly "How beautiful is Tusheti!" - have come to represent the very soul of Tusheti - indeed, to the detriment of other Tush artists: Ask any Georgian (or Tush) to name a singer from Tusheti, and every single one will come up with Lela Tataraidze. But ask them to name a singer from Tusheti other than Lela Tataraidze, however, and you will most likely draw a blank. -
Here are two of her many songs: - "ra lamazia tusheti", or "How beautiful is Tusheti", and a lamentation for the death of several [Tush] people carried away in an avalanche (in the 1970s or -80s, I believe). - - For more traditional Georgian songs - not from Tusheti, however - please see my previous post on two songs by Sandro Kavsadze


Lela Tataraidze: Lomo, She Lomis Moklulo




ლელა თათარაიძე, LELA TATARAIDZE




Georgian folk music from Tusheti region. Performed by Ensemble "Kelaptari" and legendary Lela Tataraidze (accordion). The pictures by Georgian photograper, Paata Vardanashvili, website: www.paata.ge

PORTRAIT: Georges Dumezil (transcaucasian.blogspot.com)

The French cultural centre in Tbilisi, in its infinite wisdom, and as part of its "Francophonie 2009" program, has organized a conference on Georges Dumezil - philologist and mythologist, and the father of modern French caucasology - to be held at Tbilisi's Ilia Chavchavadze University on March 26 2009.

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The speaker will be Bernard Outtier, who teaches Armenian language and literature at the University of Geneva, and Old Georgian at the Catholic Institute in Paris, and is the author of over 200 contributions on the Armenian, Georgian, and Syriac languages.

full article >>>

Another blogs by the great man Alexander Bainbridge:

Traditional Sounds
Larger Photographs from my Collection
The work of Alexnader Bainbridge

BLOG: Travels in Tusheti. By Eka Chvritidze

In facebook.com I find even this nice Blog travelsintusheti.blogspot.com. This is the third blog about this amazing region from Georgia. Eka Chvritidze helped arrange your trip around Tusheti and her sister Irma was our trusted guide and good friend.

Eka works from the US and has enough enthusiasm and passion for Tusheti to make up for a whole army of Georgians.

If you want any assistance in traveling around Georgia, Eka is your girl.

Try contacting Eka on inanycase23@yahoo.com or visit her web site www.wildgeorgia.ge/tours.html

Another exclusive guy for tour-organizing is my good friend Hans Heiner Buhr. He founded the first blog about Tusheti tusheti.blogspot.com. Many readers of my blog know his Blog kaukasus.blogspot.com. The second blog is the fulminat blog transcaucasian.blogspot.com. Alexander Bainbridge is a realy expert for the culture of the people there.

SCIENCE: Review from Alexander Bainbridge about the Caucasian Peripheries

Caucasian Peripheries
von TransCaucasus von Alex JTB

Shorena Kurtsikidze & Vakhtang Chikovani, Ethnography and Folklore of the Georgia-Chechnya Border - Images, Customs, Myths & Folk Tales of the Peripheries, LINCOM Studies in Anthropology 09, 2008

"The aim of this book is to acquaint a wide audience with the traditional culture of the Christian and Muslim highlanders who live on the border of Europe and Asia in the central part of the Caucasus Main Mountain Range.

Under one cover, the publication features unique materials on visual anthropology, ethnography, mythology, and folklore of the region.The book portrays the mysterious subgroup of Georgian highlanders, the Khevsur, who are considered to be the champions of Georgian patriotism and at the same time, according to one popular theory, are believed to be direct descendants of the last Crusaders.

Featuring 158 black and white original photographs and accompanying explanatory texts, the publication gives a detailed description of the exotic religious institutions and examples of material culture of this group of highlanders, illustrating the closeness of their lifestyle to the ways of the Frankish crusaders. The emphasis is on the spheres of folk culture that bear clear traces of centuries of confrontations between two ethnic groups: Christian Georgian highlanders and their neighbors, Muslim Vainakh or Chechen and Ingush.

The authors attempt to show how the traditional mode of life of the highlanders affects the contemporary ethnic and political situation in the region. The publication includes original translations of Georgian folk tales and myths. The latter are narratives representing mythologized chronicles of “holy wars” of old times once carried out on the border of Europe and Asia by the ancestors of the Khevsurs.

Shorena Kurtsikidze and Vakhtang Chikovani are cultural anthropologists and natives of Georgia. They have been teaching the Georgian language, culture, and folklore courses at the University of California, Berkeley. Both authors are affiliates of the Institute of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies at the same university and regularly give talks and public lectures about Georgia and the Caucasus."

This book sounds like a truly amazing read, and can be bought here on the Lincom website (164 EUR).

There is also an extremely interesting online gallery of photographs taken by Vakhtang Chikovani in the Arkhoti, Shatili, and Gudamaqari temebi (regions) in the 1970s - Images from the Georgia-Chechnya Border 1970-1980

Visual Anthropology of the Peripheries - which can be seen here on the website of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Vakhtang Chikovani and Shorena Kurtsikidze are also the authors of the excellent Georgia's Pankisi Gorge: An Ethnographic Survey, which is available online as a pdf.

SCIENCE: "malar-erda" – the god of intoxicating drinks (i.e. the god of alcohol)

Alexander Bainbridge posted a new list of gods from the caucasian mountains. The Gods of the Vainakh is a list was copied from Mariel Tsaroieva's amazing Anciennes Croyances des Ingouches et des Tchétchènes ("Ancient Beliefs of the Ingush and the Chechens", published in 2005).
Ms Tsaroieva is of Ingush origin, and holds a PhD in History of Religion from the prestigious Institut National des Langues et Civilizations Orientales in Paris. A former teacher of romance linguistics at the state universities of Chechnya-Ingushetia and Kyrgyzstan, she has published many articles and books on folklore and "geolinguistics", both in Russian and in French.

Here is the list >>>

The Bats People

LECTURE: Alex Bainbridge posted some great articles "for the Christmas Time"

Alex Bainbridge is an interesting man. The last time he lived in the Caucasus. Now he is in London for a few months (He left Georgia in September, told Hans Heiner Buhr). I was to late to meet him in Tbilisi. I know him only from his great blog, where he had a lot of material to publish:

www.transcaucasian.blogspot.com

Some days ago he sent me a email with two recent posts:

1. an itinerary for getting to georgia from europe by rail
Brussel-Koln-Wien-Budapest-Bucuresti-Sofia-Istanbul-Trabzon(bus)-Batumi(bus)-Tbilisi(train) takes a week!
http://transcaucasian.blogspot.com/2007/12/from-europe-to-georgia-without-flying.html

2. and two very old (c.1909) recordings of Georgian songs
http://transcaucasian.blogspot.com/2007/12/two-songs-by-sandro-kavsadze.html
- "O Mountain, let me pass freely!", "mtao gadmishvi" in Georgian.
- "urmuli" - A song a Kakhetian cart-driver might have sung on his way home.

He expect to return to Georgia in a month's time.

Keep up the good work! Best Regards from snowless Germany, Ralph Hälbig

I hope we will meet us in the NEW YEAR 2008 !!!

PHOTOGRAPHY:

More Old Photographs of the Mikeladze Sisters - posted by Alexander Bainbridge on his fabulous blog

These photographs here courtesy of the Mikeladze sisters, who generously brought out several African carrier bags of old photographs and let me pick out these (and other) pictures to copy them at my leisure during my latest stay in Zemo Alvani (27-30 August). All of the photographs are numbered on the back, and many of them are labelled, as they were destined to be exhibited in a small museum in Zemo Alvani dedicated to Batsbi history and culture, which – alas! – never saw the light of day for lack of funding. The Author was also shown several old examples of traditional Batsbi carpets and some undatable funerary urns, all duly photographed, the photographs being destined to appear on this website very soon.

This photograph was taken as a record of the Batsbi/Tsova-Tush men who fought on the Russian side against the Ottoman Turks during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8. Note that many of the Batsbi fighters are still wearing chain-mail! (See also this photograph of two warriors.)

Historically, Batsbi men who left Tsovata to fight – against the Persians down in Kakheti, for example – each left a white stone on a mountain pass close to the source of the Alazani River. (The Batsbis in Tsovata could muster around 500 fighting men, approximately a third of the total population.) When they returned from the war, each man removed a stone; thanks to this system, rapid tallies could be made of how many men left, and of how many returned.

More old photographes >>>

SCIENCE & CULTURE: The Tsova-Tushs ( the Batsbs). By Roland Topchishvili

To the eastern side of the Black Sea, in the central and western parts of the southern Caucasus there is a country of Georgia (Sakartvelo), which was created by the Georgian people (under the leadership of the king Parnavaz) before the birth of Christ on the verge of the IV-III centuries. The country was sometimes unified, sometimes broke up into the separate feudal entities, it even lost the territories but has still maintained the statehood and sovereignty up to date.

Georgia, like a certain number of European countries, consists of historical-geographical parts. These parts are inhabited by the relevant ethnographical groups, who also speak the dialects of the Georgian language. However, historically, one thing was characteristic for Georgia: to certain extent, this ethnographical group spoke not the dialect of the Georgian language but its own language. These languages were spoken only in the families. So, from the socio-linguistic point of view they were equal to the dialects of the Georgian language (It is true even now!). These groups are: the Megrels (on the Black Sea Coast), the Svans (on the southern slopes of the Caucasian mountains, in the north-west part of the country). Both the Megrels and Svans speak the languages closer to Georgian language.

Historically, the same can be said about the Dvals who live in the mountains of central Caucasus. The Dvals used their own family-spoken language, too. They speak one of the Georgian languages which were between the Svan and Zan languages but had more proximity to Zan. The part of the Dvals scattered in the mountains and lowland, part of them were assimilated with the Ossethians in the XV-XVI centuries. As for the fourth, most interesting group for us – the Tsova-Tushs or as they are known in the science, the Batsbs, they speak one of the Vainakh languages. They lived in Tusheti - the historical-ethnographical part of the mountainous Georgia. Today they live in Kakheti - the lowland of eastern Georgia. The Tsova-Tushs (the Batsbs) are the inseparable and linguistic part of the Georgian people.

Thus, the Georgian ethnos that was formed centuries ago, besides the Georgian language speaking historical-ethnographical groups, also united the groups which spoke other languages. As mentioned above, from the socio-linguistic point of view in the general ethnological literature their languages are equal to the various dialects of the Georgian language (Arutynov, 1989, p. 45; Jorbenadze, 1995, p. 20; Oniani, 1997; Putkaradze, Kikvidze, 1997; Kurdiani, 1997). Throughout the whole history of Georgia the Georgian language was the state, literary and church language for the Megrels, Svans, Dvals as well as for Tsova-Tushs. They were not passive in the Georgian ethnical structure and contributed respectively to the development of the Georgian language and culture. The fact that all the documents of the XIII-XIV centuries in Svaneti were created by the local inhabitants will serve us as an example. The linguists have several arguments to confirm it.

A Russian ethnographer S. A. Arutynov wrote the following about the Svans and Tsova-Tushs (the Batsbs): “in the mountainous Georgia the Batsbs and Svans, according to all ethnographical measures, should be considered as special people by their peculiar manners, absolutely solitary languages, and it is required to recognize them as the Georgians” (Arutynov. 2002. p. 437). The author is right when he writes that both the Svans and Tsova-Tushs (Batsbs) consider themselves as the Georgians. Regarding the fact that as if they required to be recognized as the Georgians, is not true. Whether the Svans and Tsova-Tushs were the Georgians or not has never been at issue. It was only in the interests of Russia to declare them as the different ethnos. In the XIX century both the Tsova-Tushs (Batsbs) and Svans certainly required to be considered as the Georgians. S Arutynov even mentioned that by the ethnographical sign, the Batsbs as well as the Svans, should be considered as special people. We would add that the Tsova-Tushs (Batsbs) and Svans cannot be thought as special people from this particular ethnographical point of view. Ethnographically, they are not different from other Georgian ethnographical groups. If there is something that makes them different, it is caused by the natural-geographic circumstances. We will speak about the Tsova-Tushs (Batsbs) below and we will be able to see that from the ethnographical point of view (economical activities, material culture, social relations, spiritual culture), they almost were not distinguished from the same Georgian-speaking Tushs and the other ethnographical groups of Georgian eastern mountains.

Full Text >>>

more photos & text by Alexander Bainbridge:
* The Bats People
* WHO ARE THE BATS PEOPLE?

BLOG: A view of Tbatana, taken in the 1960s-70s.

When the Bats moved down from their mountain homeland Tsovata to the Kakhetian plain in the early 1800s, this was their mid-way or transitional point. They settled here for a few years, before definitely moving to Zemo-Alvani, the village where they reside now.Originally, they lived here in felt tents. The houses visible on the main photograph were built as summer "dachas", cottages, in the 1960s and '70s, and although almost all of them fell into ruin a long time ago, the place is apparently still a popular summer destination.

The grass in the central (no doubt originally purely black-and-white) photograph seems to have been hand-tinted green.

Source is this great blog: http://transcaucasian.blogspot.com/ by Alexander Bainbridge

The work of Alexander Bainbridge

Thanks to Hans Heiner Buhr: http://kaukasus.blogspot.com/