Link: Georgia: Where do I fit in?
May. 3rd, 2013 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soniaSarah Cobham writes about the clashing experience of Georgian culture after the ecstatic experience of Georgian singing. Georgia: Where do I fit in?
In the blog's first post, Richard says, "I came across a couple of fairly toe-curling articles about the treatment of LGBT people and women [*] in Georgia, quite by accident, and went cold as I read them. I found a few more and then when I searched for them, it became a torrent."
I felt the first stirring of a similar disquiet a while back when I read about Georgia's treatment of its few Jews. The music is gorgeous and singing it can be transcendent, but Georgia itself is even more complex than its music.
I am sitting with conflicting feelings around my own relationship to Georgian singing. It seems less and less likely that I will want to visit there, even if my health improves to allow me to travel more easily. Perhaps I will keep attending workshops. Perhaps I will keep bringing Georgian songs to the group I run. My sense of reaching toward the music has changed into a sense of not-knowing, and waiting to see what happens next.
* ETA: Got clarification from the blog author that it's meant as "LGBT people (one group) and women (another group)" who are not treated well in Georgia.
If the reality of a Georgian supra, hosted in Georgia, dominated by men who negate women, assume and expect they will break from the drudgery of endless food preparation to wash their feet as they come through the door represents all that is supposed to be noble and good about Georgia then I really don't want to be part of it – thank you.
If I can find a place amongst the women who refuse to be seen as either domestic slave or the voiceless teenage virginal bride and who are pressing forward in the struggle to establish and flourish within their own identities, find their own voices, open their hearts and sing their own songs… then count me in.
In the blog's first post, Richard says, "I came across a couple of fairly toe-curling articles about the treatment of LGBT people and women [*] in Georgia, quite by accident, and went cold as I read them. I found a few more and then when I searched for them, it became a torrent."
I felt the first stirring of a similar disquiet a while back when I read about Georgia's treatment of its few Jews. The music is gorgeous and singing it can be transcendent, but Georgia itself is even more complex than its music.
I am sitting with conflicting feelings around my own relationship to Georgian singing. It seems less and less likely that I will want to visit there, even if my health improves to allow me to travel more easily. Perhaps I will keep attending workshops. Perhaps I will keep bringing Georgian songs to the group I run. My sense of reaching toward the music has changed into a sense of not-knowing, and waiting to see what happens next.
* ETA: Got clarification from the blog author that it's meant as "LGBT people (one group) and women (another group)" who are not treated well in Georgia.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-05 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 05:09 am (UTC)There is a singing camp I'm considering, and right now I don't even know how to go about deciding whether it would be good/useful/healthy for me to go.