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Left: Michael Church (centre) with the Chanters of St Panteleimon in Tbilisi, Georgia. |
Distant voices
The music of the Caucasus reflects a history of struggle and oppression. Simon Wroe hears how Michael Church has made it his business to bring their songs to the West
BEFORE 1920 nothing in the Chechen language was written down. All of the country’s proud heritage and its many struggles were sung. Mother would pass it to daughter, father to son in a long, echoing line down the generations.
Sometimes the words would be changed, when fresh trials and tribulations swayed the farmers and herders who populate the country. So they might sing about the evils of Yeltsin and Putin with the same tune used to sing of the brutal Count Yermolev in the 1820s.
These songs preserve the Chechen culture through their own preservation. They are part of an enormous musical tradition which Muslim invasions, Stalinist purges and MTV have all failed to break. And yet, for all the music in Chechnya – much of which is breathtaking – none of it reaches the West. Most of the singers are amateurs. They are families and mosque-attenders; they do not have agents or producers.
Michael Church, a music journalist and broadcaster who lives at the Angel, has spent much of the past decade recording the music of Kazakhstan, Georgia and the Caucasus mountains, in an attempt to bring these ancient and original musical forms the recognition he believes they deserve.
“What interests me are sophisticated civilisations somewhere in the past, that are still making sophisticated music,” he says. “I’m attracted to all these places that are now not considered or talked about.
“The musics of Mali and Cuba are great, but they’ve been done to death. The Andean pipes – all very sweet – but so what? Georgia’s male polyphony is one of the musical wonders of the world. Like Indian raga music, it is evolutionarily complete. It cannot evolve any further; it is perfect in its form.”
Mr Church’s obsession was triggered by his frequent travels abroad while writing for The Independent’s arts section. A friend in the BBC World Service (to which Mr Church also contributes) suggested he begin recording the sounds of the countries he visited.
It was a slow and painful process, he says: “Although my primary passion was always music, I’d always seen it as a private pleasure. I learned to record by trial and error, just with a very basic stereo microphone. I have lost several irreplaceable recordings – which seemed seriously terrible at the time – but very gradually, over the years, I have learned how to record well.”
Over time, his other writing was overshadowed by his musical pursuits. He went to Georgia to cover a theatre festival, but wandered into the cathedral, where he heard “the most amazing polyphony”, and spent the remainder of his time there recording. He was sent to Kazakhstan to judge a Beethoven piano competition, but begged time off to root out local, traditional musicians.
“People could not understand why I wanted to record their music. They would say, ‘Why do you want to hear that old stuff? We have Mozart and Beethoven.’ And I would say, ‘Yes, but the whole world has Mozart and Beethoven.’”
In fact, the idea that a westerner has come half-way across the world just to hear some folk songs is met with strong suspicion by most. In the volatile republic of North Ossetia-Alania, while recording a people’s choir with an armed bodyguard by his side, Mr Church was arrested by the secret police for recording without government permission. (True to character, the only thing Mr Church was scared of was losing the tape of recordings – he feigned illness and headed off to the toilet where he substituted the tape for a blank one.)
Even the musicians view him askance, demanding their money up front.
“There’s deep mistrust,” Mr Church admits. “But I think mistrust is appropriate. I’m from the rich West; I’m presumably going to make a fortune out of their voices.
“Of course I’m not. I pay them out of my pocket and I don’t make a penny, but I am extracting something from them, which is a great gift.”
So far, Mr Church has made just £20 in royalties from his CDs, less than the $50 standard fee that he pays for each track.
Contracts are also required for each group, which causes even greater mistrust. Mr Church says: “North Caucasus people don’t like contracts of any kind. They feel they are being drawn into something they can’t control. And the BBC contract sounds absolutely vicious towards the people being recorded. It’s not just lack of trust, it’s full of threats too.
“I’ve had people who wouldn’t sign, which I’ve had to get around. You have to win people over in all kinds of ways.”
These elements of danger and struggle are something Mr Church freely admits to courting in his search for what he describes as “the real world music”.
“If a thing’s easy it’s not worth doing,” he shrugs. “I’m attracted by places that are a little bit dangerous, because it guarantees that the music will be special. When life is difficult, the music is better. It’s worth taking the risk.”
But the paramount reason for his musical journeys is conservation.
“I feel the music needs to be caught before it goes.
“In places like Vietnam, the only audience that traditional groups have now are musicologists, and that is very sad. There are dozens of languages dying out every year, and musical languages can die too. Once a language stops being used for its social purposes, then it’s dead.
“Those that are keenly aware of the tradition they want to preserve are glad to see me. But there are also many that collude in their own destruction, amplifying everything; trying to make the sort of ‘global pop’ the BBC calls world music.
“World music is a commodity, defined by what sells in shops. The real music of the world is just festering out there.”
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