Svan Funeral Dirges (Zär): Musicological Analysis

Year 2020, , 168 - 197, 30.12.2020

Nana Mzhavanadze , Frank Scherbaum

https://doi.org/10.33906/musicologist.782185

Cited By: 6

Abstract

This paper is a companion paper to Scherbaum & Mzhavanadze (2020). Jointly, the papers describe the results of an interdisciplinary study on three-voiced Svan funeral dirges, known as zär in Svan and zari in Georgian. In the present paper, to which we refer as paper 2, we focus on the (structural) musicological aspects of zär. Bluntly speaking, we want to obtain a basic understanding of ‘how zärs work’. Based on the results of the acoustical analysis of a new collection of field recordings from eleven different performances described in paper 1, where we developed a phenomenological description of the general building blocks, here we try to derive a simple model for the syntaxes of zär.
The complexity of the musical structure of the zär shows a very clear connection to the history of the Svans’ settlement along the Enguri River, which is obviously systematically reflected in the Svans’ music.
Finally, we see the most interesting aspects of our entire study in the implications it has for the discourse on the historical dynamics of Georgian polyphony. Thus, the results of our study challenge the generally accepted view of the development of Georgian traditional music from monophony to polyphony.

Keywords

Traditional Georgian Vocal Music, Ethnomusicology, Ritual Funeral Music

Supporting Institution

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation within the framework of the project “Computational Analysis of Traditional Georgian Vocal Music (GVM)” (DFG MU 2686/13-1, SCHE 280/20-1).

Project Number

DFG MU 2686/13-1, SCHE 280/20-1

Thanks

First and foremost, our gratitude goes to all the people during the 2016 field expedition who allowed us to be part of and record their rituals. We are thankful to Meinard Müller and his team for the stimulating collaboration as well as for hosting the web-based repository of the GVM data.

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