SOCIETY

The Day of David the Builder

BLOG BY ROIN METREVELI, VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE GEORGIAN NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ACADEMICIAN

On January 26 (February 8 in the new style) the day commemorating the great political fi gure of Georgia, King David IV “the Builder” (1073-1125) is celebrated. The 12th century saw Georgia politically united and achieving great success, and is otherwise known as the country’s "Golden Age."

During that Golden Age, the state of Georgia expanded signifi cantly - from Nikopsia to Daruband and from Ossetia to Aragats. King David took care of political, economic, cultural, ecclesiastical, military, and judicial advancements, making Georgia the strongest state in the Middle East.

Georgian kings are known by various nick-names: the Fool, the Small, the Devoted, the Brilliant, the Bad-tempered, etc., and yet David was the only one in the history of Georgia to be honored with the title “The Builder.” As king of the country, “he fl ourished and built; he was God-fearing and God-loving; he was merciful to the poor, widows and orphans; he was helper of the sick; the builder of churches and hospitals..." (Batonishvili Vakhushti, Description of the Kingdom of Georgia, Life of Kartli, IV, Tbilisi, 1973, p. 163).

From the 1080s, he, as king, was able to mobilize a fragmented population, defeat the enemy, and set the country on the path of reconstruction. This was followed by great transformations, among them political, economic, and cultural revivals. Of particular importance was the founding of the Gelati Academy in 1106. David IV, was thus recognized as a builder by his contemporaries and descendants, and was canonized, with January 26 (February 8) set as the day of his remembrance.

King David took measures to centralize and strengthen the country: In 1110, he took control over Samshvilde, 1115 - Rustavi, 1117 - Kish, and 1118 - Lori Fortress. In 1118-19, he settled the Kipchaks and grew the army. On August 12, 1121, he achieved the greatest victory at Didgori - defeating a strong coalition army of Muslims. The subjugation of the old capital of Georgia and other cities was, in fact, a continuation of the Battle of Didgori: "In the second year (1122), the King took the city of Tbilisi. By the fi rst war, it had been under the rule of the Persians for four hundred years, and David thus took it and established it as a household and a house for his children forever." (Life of Kartli, Tbilisi, 2008, p. 326).

After the Battle of Didgori, almost all the lands of the South Caucasus, international trade routes, and cities came within the borders of Georgia. The government, in its religious policy, pursued the principle of freedom of religion - tolerance of law, which was very unusual for that period. David the Builder liberated Shirvan (1123) and Ani (1124). His actions "calmed the country ... fi lled and rebuilt everyone."

The king's writings includes his original work "the Canon of Repentance," which is a medieval cultural, aesthetic, ideological belief, and at the same time is a monument expressing Christian human sorrow. The multifaceted events carried out by David the Builder (also known as "King of the Abkhazians, Georgians, Rans, Kakhs, Armenians, Sharvansha and Shahansha") contributed to the success of Georgia and made it an internationally recognized state. 2023 marks the 950th anniversary of the birth of the great Georgian politician, the "Sword of Messiah," King David IV the Builder. I deeply believe that this date will be celebrated with dignity by Georgian society, government and relevant agencies, our Orthodox Apostolic Church, and everything will be done to see the anniversary of David the Builder widely celebrated around the world.

Image source: archive.gov.ge

Selector PRO International Music Forum 5 is Back! Live-Streaming this February

In 2021, British Council Ukraine and Music Export Ukraine went digital for Selector PRO, and the format worked so well it decided to go digital again in 2022. Selector PRO, Ukraine’s longest running music educational and networking forum, is turning 5 this year. Musicians and industry reps from the UK, Europe and Central Asia, mark the date, 18-19 February 2022, for an intensive schedule of professional talks, workshops and priceless networking opportunities.

Attending Selector PRO is, as always, free-of-charge, but organizers do ask you to register prior to kick-off. 2021 was another challenging year for music industry professionals, but one that also held the promise of real industry-wide transformation. Lockdowns continued to hinder the live music sector with new restrictions and event cancellations, pushing artists to reconsider and diversify their income streams just to stay afl oat. Elsewhere, growing music digitalization opportunities continued to give artists a cause to focus on their ownership rights and royalties. Streaming revenues are still low for many, and a large number of voices in the music industry are calling out for alternative approaches to be explored. Successful lobbying has meant some governments are starting to reconsider the current models of music streaming revenue distribution, which could potentially see an increase in payouts for artists themselves. We’ve yet to see where all these will lead, but it’s a positive step that the rights of artists and songwriters have become more of a priority during the past 12 months.

It’s not the fi rst turbulent year, and the industry has been actively working throughout 2021 on pandemic damage assessment. With this year’s forum moto ‘The Ever-changing New Normal’ we are shifting our focus from the more well-known issues and trends like digitalization and online presence, towards those which we feel will become more relevant in future.

This year’s forum is rooted in realworld industry issues, but committed to staying a step ahead of what’s coming down the line. We’re calling on the strength of the music community, its hard-won experience and record of mutual support, to do the work of defi ning “The Ever-changing new normal” on our terms. What does that mean? Simply, that Selector PRO 5 is bringing together dozens of industry professionals from the UK, Europe and Central Asia to tackle the big ongoing and upcoming industry questions.

What will it look like? The Selector PRO forum will have 8 moderated panels covering a range of music industry topics. The UK’s Jane Beese from The Factory and Manchester International Festival will be joined by the UK’s Paul McGivern of Playbook Artists and Beril Sarıaltun from Turkey’s My City My Voice project to discuss the pandemic years’ effect on the industry, and share their positive experiences with successful case studies and remote collaborations over the previous two years. Donna Close from the UK’s 5G Festival will discuss recent industry advances that produce engaging hybrid events. She’ll be joined by Ukraine’s Anton Volovyk from Reface, who will talk about how artists can better engage and entertain an audience. The UK’s Jyoty, a DJ from Rinse FM, will team up with the UK’s Ellie Giles from Step Music Management and Ukraine’s Anastasiya Babicheva from Masterskaya and psychologist Vera Kravchenko to tackle the topic of dealing with internet-based hate.

Shauni Caballero of the UK’s Go 2 Agency will lead the workshop of a topic of immediate impact considering the boom in the digital music market, that of copyright issues. She’ll shed light on issues like protecting your work and getting paid, the “rule book” of creative online content, and what to do when a third party uses your work without permission. We’ll also sit in on what promises to be a wide-ranging conversation between delegates from two of the most wildly distinct music markets imaginable: the UK’s Jon Dunn from Parallel Lines and Georgia’s Giorgi Kikonishvili from Electronauts / Bassiani / Horoom Nights. They’ll be talking about how they build their teams, their methods, how they’ve managed to survive the past two years and what drives DIY music in their countries. Claire O'Neill of the UK’s Greener Festival and Chair of the Green Group for the Association for Electronic Music will be joined by Feimatta Conteh, Environmental Sustainability Manager for the UK’s Manchester International Festival and Ukrainian musical activist Vera Logdanidi of Rhythm Büro to lead a talk on the role of the industry in confronting climate change. They will discuss what artists and audiences can do to better contribute to a more sustainable music sector and workable solutions for systemic change through artistry.

And if that isn’t yet enough, we’ll also be looking at new approaches to collaboration, effective time management, the challenge of online teambuilding, audience engagement, monetization in the online space, and much more.

The Selector PRO conference will take place in an easy-to-use online platform providing a handful of features such as networking environment, interactive workshops and discussions, 1:1 matchmaking rooms, and a resource library to watch streams again.

Plus, you can’t gripe about the price. The Selector PRO digital forum is freeof-charge with prior registration. The forum is free. To attend all you need to do is to register here https://forms.offi ce. com/r/kHK6jjsKfv

Prior to the start of the event, you’ll receive your login details and instructions on how to navigate the online meeting space. —

Selector PRO is a program of professional-level events run by the British Council in Ukraine since 2017. It is designed to enhance exchange between the British and Ukrainian professional music sectors, support the development of emerging industry talent, and promote effective music industry business practices.

The British Council is the UK’s international organization for cultural relations and educational opportunities. We create friendly knowledge and understanding between the people of the UK and other countries. Using the UK’s cultural resources, we make a positive contribution to the countries we work with – changing lives by creating opportunities, building connections and engendering trust.

Music Export Ukraine is an independent initiative formed to assist Ukrainian artists establish international contacts, promote their creative work, and develop their talent and career globally. The core tasks of the initiative include artist consultation, presentation of the best local talents at international business-focused events, collaborative projects, and international exchange programs.

The Little Things, Again

BLOG BY TONY HANMER

The low temperature here outside for tonight (as I write this) is 1 degree warmer than the low in my bedroom when I lived in Ushguli for two winters from 2007-2009. I had the best, closest to hibernation, sleeps of my whole life at -4 degrees C, though, so I wasn’t complaining. Winter has gone mild again, which is fi ne.

The snow, however, is a different story. As I look out of the house’s living room windows to the north, it’s been fl aking down and building up on the fences all day; the same is forecast for tomorrow. Again, for the thousandth time, I am deeply grateful that the house we bought had an unpainted roof, one of corrugated galvanized metal sheets, off of which the snow has always slid, sooner or later, saving us the huge job of shoveling it off multiple times per winter just so it won’t collapse under the extra weight!

The combination of this specifi c weather (snowfall, mild temperature and no wind) is allowing the snow to build up on those fences in ways which stun me speechless with their texture and beauty. They resemble nothing so much as waves crashing over, but fi ttingly frozen to a complete stop. I go out to photograph them in black and white, as the colors are all but gone anyway and would only distract from form and very soft, detail-defi ning lighting. No point in waiting until the fl akes stop coming down: if I risked doing so, the wind might pick up, or the melt accelerate, and what I am delighting in seeing might simply disintegrate. Instead, I take a few frames of each scene without moving the camera, and will combine the individual shots’ sets of descending fl akes into one to suggest the amount actually coming down.

Not everyone can rejoice as I do in this much snow coming down. In many ways, it IS more of a curse than a blessing for most people here. They DO have the painted, snow-sticky roofs, and must rescue them time and time again from potentially crushing weight. And many of them are old enough to remember that catastrophic winter of the late 1980s in Georgia, about which I have written a few times already. It was about three weeks of unrelenting snow, and people had to clean their roofs off in three shifts of eight hours every day. Thye had to TUNNEL out of their houses to their barns to try to give the livestock food and water. Such experiences are the opposite of the little things: The Big Things which can scar and traumatize you for life and make you despise the season and its precipitation, hate and fear both.

It is with no feeling of smugness that I enjoy winter, no superiority. I haven’t lived through the worst that the cold months can bring, or lost home or loved ones to that time. I am merely glad that I, while no winter sportsman, can revel in the simple, small beauty which comes in silence, turns the local world monochrome (greens and then all-hued fl owers will explode in spring), shows me how many different forms water’s frozen versions can take, and makes me glad to notice them. They are so fl eeting, so delicate, so pure white or clear as crystal: an otherworldly clarity.

All I can do is marvel, and try to capture in photographs what I am both seeing and experiencing. For now, this is late winter in Upper Svaneti. The seasons bracketing it are both so colorful that its blacks, grays and whites are a welcome contrast. And summer in the lowlands, while tending to the dry browns and yellows of drying-out, up here continues the themes of spring’s prelude anyway. Winter is simply unique.

Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with nearly 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/ groups/SvanetiRenaissance/ He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti

Her Royal Majesty

OP-ED BY NUGZAR B. RUHADZE

She is not only the world’s longest reigning, most popular, widely respected and universally famous monarch, but also a superb mother of four children, beloved grandmother of eight beautiful grandchildren and caring great-grandmother to twelve wonderful great-grandchildren. The darling of the public, at 95, she is still an epitome of health, vigor, action and quick decision-making. This is the year of her platinum jubilee, and I could not help but try to give my most elevated kudos and homage to her.

The world press and electronic media are literally full to the brim with stories about this greatest English lady of all time, not to mention books and albums and movies of her long and eventful life. This tiny story of mine will not even be noticed in the ocean of information about the Buckingham lioness, but I still want to have it out, especially because I was among the crowd in front of her London palace in 1977 when Great Britain was celebrating her silver jubilee. Almost half a century has passed since that evanescently happy instant of my life, but all is still alive in my nowsenescent memory: fabulous traditional pageantry, slowly passing through the streets of London, the royal hand-waving from golden baroque carriages, the cavalcade of well-groomed and trained horses, the exalted public from all over the world, loudly and excitedly greeting the eminent sovereign and her regally proud and noticeably complacent entourage, the purely British male outfi t and female garments of the time when monarchs were actual rulers of the nation, the overall mood of celebration and sincere unity of the attending people to show their love, benevolence and genuine human curiosity in Elizabeth the Second, who assumed the throne at the age of 25 in 1952, and since then has carried the imperial crown and scepter with majestic dignity and state integrity. Incidentally, she was happily relaxing in the lap of Kenyan fl ora and fauna when she heard the news of the king’s passing, and Princess Lilibet (as dad, George VI, called her in childhood) returned to England as Queen Elizabeth.

Marking the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne is not just an event of national importance, but a signifi cant international affair of high consequence. Being head of state of the spacious Commonwealth of 54 states, Her Majesty has extensively trotted the globe and scoured through the native lands with purposes benefi tting both the world and her own kingdom. The Queen has broken every possible record of reign in history unless my memory is failing me. Her role is highly appreciated in the political, cultural and social progress of humankind, and it is heartbreaking to recognize that in the duration of those 70 years of her dazzlingly stupendous time in power, some of the members of her extended family have hurt her feelings with the unbecoming model of their behavior, totally incompatible with her image and royal presence.

Unbelievably, Elizabeth Windsor was born in a regular London townhouse. Who could have known then that someday in the near future she would become an active member of the British Armed Forces? She was betrothed to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in 1947, having received, as they say, 2500 wonderful gifts from their well-wishers. The couple spent 73 years in happy royal togetherness. Notably, there were 10,000 pearls on her wedding gown, imported from the US, whose designer described it as the most beautiful dress he had ever made. Queen Elizabeth has inaugurated and put in 11 Downing Street fourteen primeministers of the United Kingdom. Being known as a lady of utmost order and law, I was surprised to learn that she’s the only person in the UK allowed to drive without a license, although at the end of the Second World War, she would drive big trucks, having the qualifi cation of a military mechanic. Speaking about her hobbies, she has quite a lot of them. According to the available information, she owns an elephant, two giant turtles, a jaguar, and a pair of sloths among her beloved corgis, and who knows what else.

The hundreds of pages I have read about Her Majesty could have given birth to uncountable curious facts and thousands of words, quenching our thirst to know more about her truly outstanding personality, but it would make no sense – all is readily available on the internet. This piece is merely a personal emotional attempt not to let the platinum jubilee pass unnoticed on my part. Now I know that I have done my best to congratulate the Grande Dame of our times on the 70th anniversary of her famous coronation, and wish her many more.