Bela Mutoshvili, Pankisi, Georgia © Onnik James Krikorian 2014
Last Friday wasn’t just my birthday, but also the day I ventured out into the regions of Georgia with the Sayat Nova Project, a Kickstarter-funded initiative to record the minority musical dialects of the Caucasus. I’ve already posted quite a few entries on the project as it documented ethnic Armenian, Azeri, and Avar traditional music last year.
This time saw them pay return visits to Tsova-Tush musicians.
The Tush divide themselves into two groups, the Chagma-Tush, who speak the local Georgian dialect and Tsova-Tush, also known as Bats or Batsbi, who speak the Bats language, a Nakh language (cousin of Chechen and Ingush). Most Bats also speak Georgian, to which there is a continuing trend of linguistic assimilation. Despite differences in language and culture (to a degree), both Chagma- and Tsova-Tush consider themselves to be part of the larger group of Tush, which in turn is considered a subgroup of Georgians.
Meri Jikhoshvili, Zemo Alvani, Georgia © Onnik James Krikorian 2014
Abo Baskhajauri, Zemo Alvani, Georgia © Onnik James Krikorian 2014
Kists and Chechens were another focus.
The Kist people’s origins can be traced back to their ancestral land in lower Chechnya. In the 1830s and 1870s they have migrated to the eastern Georgian Pankisi Gorge and some adjoining lands of the provinces of Tusheti and Kakheti. Named “Kists” (ქისტები) in Georgian, they are closely related culturally, linguistically and ethnically to other Nakh-speaking peoples such as Ingushs and Chechens, but their customs and traditions share many similarities also with the eastern Georgian mountaineers.
Visiting Pankisi was particularly interesting and not least because last week the BBC ran an interview with Teimuraz Batirashvili, the father of Omar al-Shishani, one of the main commanders in the Islamic State (of Iraq and al-Sham). Born Tarkhan Batirashvili, the militant fighter hails from Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, itself already trying to overcome its reputation as a haven for Chechen insurgents.
Pankisi, Georgia © Onnik James Krikorian 2014
As diverse as Georgia is, especially when compared to Azerbaijan and particularly Armenia, minority culture nonetheless remains unsupported and under threat. That’s what’s made the work of the Sayat Nova Project so important. Al Jazeera America also ran a story on the Kists in Pankisi last month.
The residents of Pankisi have historically been Kists, ethnic Chechens who migrated to the region in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the aftermath of the 1999 Second Chechen War, however, an influx of Chechen refugees — estimates put their number at 7,000 — temporarily doubled the region’s population. Today, between two and three hundred refugee families remain.
Most Kist Muslims identify as Sufis, practitioners of a mystic brand of Islam. Of these, most consider themselves to be Hadjiists, followers of the 19th-century Chechen Sufi mystic and pacifist Kunta Hadji-Kushiev, who preached a doctrine of brotherly love and nonviolent resistance. Their religious rituals center around the Hadjiist version of the zikr. Literally translated as “remembering,” the zikr is an ecstatic communal recital of the names of God that takes the form of song, dance and, here in Pankisi, the call for “marshua kavkaz”: peace in the Caucasus.
And peaceful it was. We were particularly lucky to be hosted by two of the members of the region’s Pankisi Ensemble, a Kist musical group I was lucky enough to see perform at TEDx Tbilisi in 2012. Interestingly, Bela Mutoshvili — the matriarch of the household — is Tsova Tush and married into the Kist community. She was also the main focus of the Sayat Nova Project’s visit.
Unfortunately, because of the poor economic situation in Pankisi, Bella will likely move to Chechnya to find work. Given the problems facing Kist culture — Wahabists, for example, are reportedly trying to prevent music from being taught in the schools — such a reality is unfortunate. It is precisely majority and minority culture in Georgia that is one of the country’s main strengths.
I’ll be writing something on the Sayat Nova Project again soon. Until then, my article from last year for Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso is here.
Bela Mutoshvili, Pankisi, Georgia © Onnik James Krikorian 2014
