“There Is No Dogma, but There Is a Frame”: Formulaic Improvisation in the Gurian Trio Song

Scholars of medieval sacred music have long recognized the important role of improvisation in the origin and development of polyphony (Ferand, 1961). Although Bruno Nettl, in a foundational article, con- sidered living practices of polyphonic improvisation “relatively rare” (1974:12), the trio song repertoire of Guria, a region on the Black Sea coast of Georgia, represents a tradition of simultaneous three-part im- provisation which has endured despite the standard- ization imposed on much Georgian music by Soviet state ensembles. For over a century music scholars in Georgia and beyond have recognized Gurian singing as improvisatory, yet exactly what this improvisation is and how it operates have largely been questions unasked or unanswered. This paper examines the genre through the work of the master singer Tristan Sikharulidze. Building upon individual study with Tristan and comparison of his recordings with over a century of sound documents, I analyze a single song, “Me Rustveli,” as a model of this improvisational practice. Bringing to bear concepts from Albert Lord’s (1960) oral formulaics theory, I propose a method of analyzing oral traditions of improvisation that combines factors of individual choice, intertextual reference, and constraints of stylistic grammar (cf. Pressing 1988; Gjerdingen 2007). The Gurian trio song, which holds a special place in the canon of Georgian folk music, is all the more remarkable as a survival of pre-Bolshevik musical practice, especially in an atmosphere of Soviet ideology that placed improvisation as a fault line in Cold War musical debates.