Research and Publications - Nino Tsitsishvili

The Origins of the Love Song: Sexual Selection or Sexual Frustration?.

Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Editor's page

The book offers a radically new perspective on the origins of the love song and human sexuality in an evolutionary context. By comparing different human societies and animal species, past and present, it reveals that love songs, romantic love and exclusive pair-bonds are not the original evolutionary features of Homo sapiens. One of the key findings of the book is that early humans practiced multiple-partner sexual relations, similar to our closest relatives bonobos and chimpanzees, but, with the emergence of culture and sexual taboo, their behaviour had to adjust. It contends that, since the exodus from Africa and the rise of culture, humans started to distance themselves from the rest of the animal kingdom, drastically restraining their innate sexual nature. The book will appeal to both scholars and laypeople with an interest in evolutionary theory, socio-biology, anthropology, and the origins of culture.

Detailed contents.

ISBN: 1-5275-9069-0. ISBN13: 978-1-5275-9069-4

“Sexual Taboo and Love Song in Understanding Human Evolution.” Chapter in: Friedmann, Jonathan L. (Ed.), Music in Human Experience: Perspectives on a Musical Species, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 119-138. 2022

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A historical examination of the links between Georgian polyphony and central Asian-transcaucasian monophony.

The International Research Center for Traditional Polyphony of Tbilisi  State Conservatoire published an English language collection of  ethnomusicological works “Echoes from Georgia: Seventeen Arguments on Georgian Polyphony” in 2010. the project was realized with the support of Nova Science Publishers  (USA), with the participation of Mr. Frank Columbus (President of the Publishing House) and Mrs. Nadya Gotsiridze – Columbus (Vice President),  for this Georgian ethnomusicologists are grateful to them.

National Unity and Gender Difference in Georgian Singing.

Lambert Academic Publishing. 2010. Nino Tsitsishvili.

How gender differences are evolved, sustained and embedded in social and  political structures

and how they vary across cultures and times are  long-term questions of the humanities, social, cognitive and biological sciences. The book examines traditional polyphonic song performances as a  marker of national identity and unity in Georgia, Caucasus. However,  dominant gender ideologies and power relationships have shaped the different ways in which women and men have traditionally approached  singing. While individual women have practically challenged patriarchy  and redefined gender roles in Georgian music and society, symbolically,  at the level of value system, men are still seen as central to Georgian  traditional polyphony. The book sheds light on the ways in which gender differences are ?performed? (to use Judith Butler's concept) and should be especially useful for gender and feminist scholars, ethnomusicologists, students of Georgian and Caucasus cultures, and  anyone interested in related topics. The book includes listening examples of song performances.

LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing ISBN-10: 3838341287 / ISBN-13: 978-3838341286

Follow this link for details.

Cultural Paradigms and Political Change in the Caucasus.

Lambert Academic Publishing. 2010. Nino Tsitsishvili (editor)

Situated between Europe and Asia and affording classic example of the  "clash of civilizations", the Caucasus contains socio-cultural and  ethnic complexities which have often created contradictions between  official political allegiances and the cultural practices of local communities. Perhaps this can explain why Christian Georgians and Muslim  Chechens and Kists of the Caucasian highlands have considered each  other brothers, worshipped the same deities and celebrated the same  religious holidays, despite the political and religious dissent between  their representative political organizations. It is too simplistic to  see the Caucasus in terms of the rigid political oppositions between  East and West, U.S. and Russia, Christianity and Islam, modernity and  deep-rooted tradition, socialism and post-socialism. Through their  exploration of cultural archetypes and political change as interrelated  categories, the authors interpret the past and present of the Caucasus  and envision its future, reflecting upon the prospects of building liberal democracy, free will, modernity and freedom of expression.

LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing ISBN-10: 3838388569 / ISBN-13: 978-3838388564. See details.

“Synthesis” and “Fusion” as the Two Forms of the Relationship Between Different Musical Cultures.

Conference Paper

The Tenth International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony, held at the International Research Centre of Traditional Polyphony at Tbilisi State Conservatory on October 20-24 October, 2020 (proceedings), eds. Rusudan Tsurtsumia and Joseph Jordania. Tbilisi State Conservatory, pp. 428-430.

On the Origins of Social Behaviour in Culture and Nature

Conference Paper.

2018-2019.

Managing Musical Diversity within Frameworks of Western Development Aid: Views from Ukraine, Georgia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Conference Paper

39th World Conference of the International-Council-for-Traditional-Music. Yearbook or Traditional Music. Vol 40. International Council for Traditional Music.  (Co-authored) Adriana Helbig; Nino Tsitsishvili and Erica Haskell. pp.46-59, 2008.

National  Ideologies in the Era of Global Fusions: Georgian Polyphonic Song as a UNESCO-sanctioned Masterpiece of Intangible Heritage.

Music and Politics, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1-17. 2009.

This article examines the effects of UNESCO’s 2001 proclamation of Georgian polyphonic song as a “masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage.” Related ideas about tradition and the safeguarding of  traditional cultures are examined, as is the impact of globalization, its perceived threats and  the opportunities it creates for cultural diversity, cultural exchange  and dialogue.

By analyzing paradoxes and contradictions arising  from UNESCO’s definitions of and action plans towards “intangible cultural heritage,” the article  demonstrates that the features selected by UNESCO as characteristic of “intangible heritage”—oral traditions and expressions, performing arts,  social practices, and knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe—are also found in modern  Georgian popular music genres such as pop, rock, and rap, though these  genres are not viewed as cultural heritage. The article thus argues  that, while the long-term nationalist cultural policies endorsing the primacy of Georgian traditional  polyphony have found a new ideological endorsement within UNESCO’s  discourse of culture, the reality of the country’s cultural life is not  accommodated.

You can listen to the three Audio Examples in Media

Social  and Political Constructions of Nation-Making in Relation to the Musical  Styles and Discourses of Georgian Duduki Ensembles.

Journal of Musicological Research, Volume 26, 2007, Issue 2-3: Music and Ideologies. pp. Pages 241-280. 2007.

The  study of the relationship between music and ideology in recent decades  has revealed multiple expressions of national sentiment and helped us to  understand those political-historical contexts in which the aesthetics  of musical style are interpreted in close relation to the dominant  ideologies of nation.

The aesthetic perceptions of musical styles in  Georgia have been influenced by monoethnic nationalism and pro-Western orientation. By supporting selected rural polyphonic singing styles of  ethnic Georgians to become the symbol of national identity during the  pre-communist, communist, and post-communist periods, the state's and  elite's cultural discourses and policies have attenuated the status of  the duduki ensembles and related urban musical styles derived from the Middle Eastern maqam/dastgah modal systems and the art of wandering ashugh/aşik minstrels

Funeral Chants from the Georgian Caucasus by Hugo Zemp.

World of Music. Vol 49 (3), January. pp. 39-140, 2007.

“Funeral Chants from the Georgian Caucasus is an important ethnomusicological project and a rare video  ocumentation of music and  social practices in the Caucasus ... The film will also interest scholars  who study the genre of lamentation as an expression of social protest,  gender ideology and cultural identity, especially in wider Mediterranean  scholarship.”

— Nino Tsitsishvili.

You can watch here a preview of the Hugo Zemp Film.

"A man can sing and play better than a woman": Singing and patriarchy at the Georgian Supra feast.

Ethnomusicology. Vol. 50, No. 3 (Fall), pp. 452-493, 2006.

This article explores aspects of gender relationships in Georgian singing, as expressed in the setting of supra, a traditional feast where participants propose toast-speeches, drink alcohol and sing polyphonic songs. Two distinct levels emerge among the multiple practices, discourses and symbolic  expressions of men’s leadership and patriarchal social order at the  Georgian supra feast. The first includes forms of observed behaviour and  ritualised structural-formal components and rules such as the formal conduct of supra—practices of toast-speeches, constructive drinking of alcohol, performing songs and conversing in  between songs and toast-speeches, in which men hold an exclusively  central role.

The second level includes verbal discourses as articulated in standard toasting formulas  and song texts as well as implicit gender-coded demeanours expressed in  the difference between men’s and women’s singing styles. The verbal  discourses and demeanours of the second level contain spoken and unspoken messages about the ideals of male  authority and women’s acceptance of male power, both in the physical and social domains. While the ideal gender role distribution is  occasionally altered by women’s adoption of men’s formal practices and rules of proposing toasts, drinking and  initiating songs (the first level), these alterations do not seem to  challenge the ideology of male precedence as articulated in the standard  toasting formulas, song texts and singing style that constitute the second level.

Music and State of Mind: Towards an Evolutionary Model of Gender.

Context, Vol. 35/36 (2010/2011). pp. 39–57. 2011.

A considerable portion of the general population, at least in the western world, would endorse the principle  of gender equality. According to this opinion, men and women have an  equal, innate potential for political action, leadership, invention, and  creativity in the arts and sciences. A similar attitude is shared by scholars of the humanities, including ethnomusicologists. Differences  between the sexes, and specifically men's greater share in the fields of  science and artistic creativity, are controversial matters. Some  believe that differences in performance between the sexes are the result  of social conditioning and the patriarchal social order prevalent in most known societies; others, mostly led by evolutionary psychologists,  offer an explanation based on the process of human evolution and sexual  selection. The topic, one would agree, inevitably leads to a politically  and scientifically charged polemic.

Review: "Empire of Song: Europe and Nation in the Eurovision Song Contest". Dafni Tragaki (Ed.). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810888173.

While the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), Europe’s most popular musical institution and spectacle, asserts its immunity from politics, Empire of Song: Europe and Nation in the Eurovision Song Contest demonstrates that this is not the case; Eurovision involves politics and ideologies as well as constantly fluid and contested national, cultural, and gender identities. The book reveals that behind the kitsch and the sentimental and eccentric essence of Eurovision is a political institution that promotes common European awareness through culture. Eurovision and the EBU (European Broadcasting Union), reinforced by the European Union’s discourse of harmonious unification, promote hybridity and inclusiveness; but they also act as superiors, utilizing their assumed role as cultural trendsetters to incorporate the more “peripheral” countries into a collective  “European” identity.

Audio Examples from "National Ideologies in the Era  of Global Fusions: Georgian Polyphonic Song as a UNESCO-sanctioned  Masterpiece of Intangible Heritage" Music and Politics - III, no. 1 (Winter 2009)