Culture sounds the alarm: Tbilisi at the crossroads

This fall has been a season of momentous elections—and not just in the United States. Over the past several weeks, after two rounds of voting, Moldova voted to return to office its pro-EU President, Maia Sandu, as well as (despite noted Russian interference) narrowly approving a referendum in favor of Moldova joining the European Union. By contrast, in the Republic of Georgia, in a parliamentary election held on October 26 dogged with similar claims of internal and external vote-rigging, the ruling Georgian Dream party claimed a majority of the vote. These results have been strongly contested by Georgian opposition parties as well as by non-governmental observers within and outside of Georgia, who have provided numerous pieces of evidence of fraud and stolen votes. The Georgian president told multiple new outlets: “We were not just witnesses but also victims of what can only be described as a Russian special operation – a new form of hybrid warfare waged against our people and our country.” She also said, “So this is an election that has been stolen.” As a result, since the election, there have been a few protests in Tbilisi, with promises of more to come. The groundwork for these results and these events was laid well in advance: starting, arguably, in May 2024 (if not March 2023).

May 2024 was a pivotal month for the country of Georgia, marked by significant cultural events interwoven with the political and social upheavals of the time. The events that we witnessed in Tbilisi during the ongoing protests and other collective actions against the so-called “Foreign Agents Law” offer another case for testing music’s political valence. Although scholars have often discussed the politicization of music during the USSR (and, in Russia, after), Georgian music and cultural life has never been approached from the perspective of its political dimensions, even as after 1991 each successive Georgian government has continued Soviet political paradigms of music and culture.

In March 2023 the ruling Georgian Dream Party, which first came to power in 2012, first introduced the “Law about transparency of foreign influence,” colloquially known as the “Foreign Agents Law” or “Russian Law,”—legislation that aimed to require that any organization receiving more than 20% of its funding from non-Georgian sources register with the Georgian government as a Foreign Agent. A similar law had been introduced in Russia in 2011 and was one highly visible marker of that country’s recent slide toward authoritarianism. Yet in Georgia in 2023, under pressure from large demonstrations and rallies against it, Georgian Dream withdrew the law. Moreover, they promised never to bring it back.

The calculated reintroduction, at the beginning of April 2024, of this law ignited a powerful response from the Georgian people. Large, at times unprecedented, numbers of protesters took to the streets of Tbilisi, engaging in near-constant, daily demonstrations (see video 1, shot by Nana Sharikadze at the Woman’s March on April 20, 2024). Once re-introduced, the law sparked a series of events that threatened the very foundations of Georgian society, both its fundamental values and its generations-long aspirations. Once again, Georgia was forced to reckon with its colonial past, specifically with the tensions between that past, the decolonizing wishes of much of its citizenry, and its potentially recolonized future, yet again in the shadow of its dominating northern neighbor. As the Georgian president, Salome Zourabishvili remarked at a concert on May 9, 2024, “Georgia is at the crossroads between its European future and its Russian past.” As Georgia stood at this crossroads, the voices of its people, amplified through music and protest, made it clear that their fight for a democratic and European future was far from over.

The political amplifications arose largely through coincidence: no one could have predicted that concerts planned well in advance would overlap with such a political and social crisis. Prime examples were concerts in Tbilisi by the Berlin Philharmonic on May 1 and 2, 2024 along with a Europe Day concert on May 9, 2024, featuring assembled dignitaries from both Georgia and the European Union. (And note that this day is celebrated by Russia, and previously by the USSR, as Victory over Fascism day, the end of World War II.)The Berlin Philharmonic visited Georgia as part of a pan-European tour of cultural and historical landmarks; the concert in Tbilisi, the EuropaKonzert, was its final destination. The orchestra played at the well-known Tsinandali Estate in Eastern Georgia on May 1. The next day they repeated the concert at the Tbilisi Opera House. These performances illustrated how established musical pieces, with their multifaceted, often contradictory historical connotations, can gain deeper and additional meanings during times of profound crisis. I (Nana Sharikadze) attended the concert at the Opera House and found it difficult to remain purely professional. By that time, I had already participated in 20 days of protests, and as I sat in the opera house, I was surrounded by many friends, acquaintances, and even strangers who I had frequently seen in the streets during those protests. The music on the program by Schubert (“Die Zauberharfe,” Overture, D. 644); Brahms (Violin Concerto, op. 77, played by Lisa Batiashvili); and Beethoven (Symphony no. 5) acquired additional resonances in such a context. (The conductor was Daniel Harding, who substituted for Daniel Barenboim.) And not just for me. The powerful, triumphant motifs and message of fate in Beethoven’s symphony drove the audience at its conclusion to shout out, in one voice, “No to the Russian law.” Their chanting filled the hall of the Opera Theatre, symbolizing the dramatic social disruptions and the enduring impact of these events on Georgian society today.

At that time in Tbilisi, nearly every event carried extra significance. Another such landmark was the gala concert held a week later on May 9, 2024 a few steps down the street from the Opera Theatre, at the Rustaveli National Theatre, in celebration of Europe Day. This concert featured a diverse, all-star roster of Georgian musicians from such genres as classical music, jazz, and various traditional music genres, among them jazz pianist Beka Gochiashvili, violinist Lisa Batiashvili, mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili, cellist Lisa Ramishvili, violist Giorgi Tsagareli (wearing a Georgian soccer jersey), the Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gory Girl’s Choir, pianist Giorgi Gigashvili, and pianist and composer Tsotne Zedgenidze. The concert included, among other selections, a jazz arrangement of Giya Kancheli’s “Herio Bichebo” (ჰერიო ბიჭებო, an important patriotic song, whose title is difficult, if not impossible, to translate); the Habanera from Bizet’s “Carmen”; and Nikoloz Rachveli’s “The Way Back Home” (გზა შინისაკენ). (Rachveli was the organizer and conductor of the entire concert). Again, a program of works selected long before the concert spoke profoundly to the present circumstances, using nostalgia, for home and a sense of European classicalness. And it is important to know that in the days before the concert, the violence against protesters had escalated: prominent figures found their residences defaced with graffiti labeling them enemies of the state; others were assaulted. Furthermore, just a day earlier, on May 8, the government had announced the establishment of an online registry of its enemies. (Just before the concert, one of the other audience members said to me [Peter Schmelz] in passing, “This is a bad time to visit Tbilisi.”)

We both attended this Europe Day concert and recall vividly the electric energy in the hall. It was part group therapy, prayer, and requiem, for a dream, for the hope of European integration. The press gathered in front of the building and the European delegates and Georgian President greeted concertgoers in a receiving line as they entered. Significantly, several rows of seats had been reserved for members of the government, who pointedly did not attend. Zourabishvili was the sole Georgian government representative in attendance and its sole voice. She was then, and continues to be today, a prominent voice publicly supporting Georgia’s pursuit of European values. These visibly empty seats in the center of the hall were a constant reminder throughout the concert of the tensions gripping the country over the proposed legislation, highlighting the deep disconnect between the government and the people in attendance at the concert, and by extension, large numbers of Georgian citizens. The “Ode to Joy,” the anthem of the European Union paired at the start of the concert with the Georgian anthem, formed an audible symbol of Georgia’s alignment with European values, standing in stark contrast to its Soviet past and its Georgian Dream present.

In order to reach more citizens than had been able to attend the concert, Zourabishvili organized an outdoor event with the same artists that was held immediately after the Europe Day concert in front of the Orbeliani Palace, a landmark in central Tbilisi. Unlike the concert before the more elite viewers at the theater, this one involved more audience participation. The gathered listeners became part of the performance itself, whistling in approval, and joining in song at several moments, among them, yet again, the “Ode to Joy,” when the building energy of the concert reached a peak. Before the Orbeliani Palace the diversity of contemporary Georgian society, and pointedly its youth, was on full display, unified under the idea of a European Georgia.

An essential new element also emerged in Georgia during this period of turmoil: protest music. Koka Nikoladze (b. 1989), a Georgian-born, now Oslo-based sound artist, composer, and inventor, created a piece called People. His music, an urgent, desperate cacophony, served as a powerful auditory representation of the collective plight. When I (Nana Sharikadze) first heard the sample of the music (see, esp. from 4:48 and 8:11 onward) on Facebook on May 17, I commented: “This is Georgia in the last month. I don’t know when you started working on this or what concept you have, but the whole country feels like this. This is an alarm, we have reached the point of screaming, and yet they still do not hear us. Their doors are deaf, they have welded shut, not opening; The silence of some is even more deafening.” Koka created it in April, and noted: “I was born, grew up, and have become exhausted in this environment [i.e., Georgia]. I have never felt such a sense of helplessness. I am sitting here (in Oslo), my thoughts are not responding anymore, thinking but unable to communicate.” The piece is a scream, as Nikoladze said, composed of recorded natural voices sourced and sequenced with care.

The final, third vote by 84 deputies, a majority of parliament, in favor of the bill, ensuring its passage, on 28 April 2024, felt like a betrayal of generations of long devotion and centuries of resistance, while in the streets we, including my colleagues and I (Nana Sharikadze), were screaming to be heard. The law went into effect on August 1, 2024.

Yet as a result of the mounting crises of 2024, and especially after the October 26 parliamentary election, Georgian society is confronting dramatic, uncertain times. The country has a clear, existential choice: between the colonial past and the decolonial future. It is a choice about surviving as a country, about whether we want to live where we belong (in the country of our birth) or emigrate. I (Nana) refuse to become an emigrant. Artists, musicians, writers, and other members of Georgian society are seriously concerned about their future in a country that has already demonstrated its intolerance of critical opinions or, indeed, of any sort of dissent. Culture and politics, despite the dreams and wishes of many, remain closely intertwined. That is why culture, artists, civil society, and all who value our democratic future are unifying on different platforms in support of Georgia’s European path, for developments free from the shadows of our colonial Soviet past.

_{Featured image by Jelger Groeneveld via Wikimedia Commons. CC-BY-2.0.}