Premiere of Transkaukazja music album!
2015-06-23
We proudly present - the first music collection of Transkaukazja: "Caucasus+. Collection vol.#1: Georgia+". Premiere during Warsaw concert of Transkaukazja - on Saturday, 27th June!9 bands & 3 individual musicians that represents various music genres, coming from different countries (Georgia, Poland, Senegal, UK, Jamaica, USA & Nigeria) in 10 unique joint music projects.
This result of our 10-year work in framework of Transkaukazja you will find on the first music album of our program.
The world premiere of the album will be held on Saturday, 27th of June during Transkaukazja concert (Warsaw, Krakowskie Przedmieście st. - next to Warsaw University). Facebook event page.
Tracks list
01. Gordela [Georgia] + Pako Sarr [Senegal/Poland] - “Perxuli”
02. Chveneburebi [Georgia] + Psio Crew [Poland] + Mamadou Diouf [Senegal/Poland] - “Sissa”
03. ZumbaLand [Georgia] + Pako Sarr [Senegal/Poland] + Ifi Ude [Poland/Nigeria] - “Chrelo Pepela”
04. Chveneburebi [Georgia] + Vołosi [Poland] - “Nena, Nena” (Live @ TRANSKAUKAZJA 2014)
05. Chveneburebi [Georgia] + Mamadou Diouf [Senegal/Poland] + Warsaw Horns [Poland] + Clive Brown & The Shekinah Singers /rhythm section/ [Jamaica/Great Britain] - “Game Mtashi” (Live @ TRANSKAUKAZJA 2014)
06. Chveneburebi [Georgia] + Clive Brown & The Shekinah Singers [Jamaica/Great Britain] - “We Shall Overcome” (Charles Albert Tindley) (Live @ TRANSKAUKAZJA 2014)
07. Gordela [Georgia] + Pako Sarr [Senegal] - “Teylou”
08. Natural Born Lovers [Georgia/USA] + Warsaw Horns [Poland] - “Hard Way” (Grover McDaniel / T-Bone Walker)
09. 33A [Georgia] + Vołosi [Poland] - “Raodenta” (Live @ Tbilisi Concert Hall, 2011)
BONUS TRACK:
10. Clive Brown & The Shekinah Singers [Jamaica/United Kingdom] + Warsaw Horns [Poland] - “Holy, Holy, Holy” (Reginald Heber) (Live @ TRANSKAUKAZJA 2014)
The story behind the album
For the first Transkaukazja concerts in Warsaw, we invited artists like Pincet, a female punk rock band from Armenia; a group of excellent drummers from Azerbaijan led by Natig Shirinov, and a Polish-Georgian-Ukrainian formation named Z'umba, led by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Gia Bezhuashvili, who participated in Transkaukazja 2005 and 2007. Gia also invited Polish-Senegalese artist Mamadou Diouf for a joint performance on this occasion. The success of these events strengthened our belief that this is the perfect format for our Polish-Caucasian musical projects.
Building on the concept of Transkaukazja, we organized the first "alternative" Polish Days in Georgia, the ArtZona Festival, 2008 / Tbilisi, in September 2008. To diversify the line up we decided to a create a collaboration between the Polish group Psio Crew and the Georgian band Chveneburebi. Our plans were thwarted by the Russian-Georgian war for some time, but the musicians finally met and played together a few months later in December 2008 in Warsaw. After three days of workshops, the bands played a sold-out and critically acclaimed joint concert in Palladium, a popular Warsaw club. Some of the collaborative works they performed in concert were later recorded in music studios in Tbilisi and Bielsko-Biała. One such piece is the interpretation of a traditional Georgian song named "Sissa", featuring the aforementioned Mamadou Diouf.
The next ArtZona Festival was held in 2009 at the legendary 33A club in Tbilisi. We presented a Polish-Georgian-Senegalese music project starring famous Polish saxophonists Grzegorz Rytka and Alek Korecki, among others. After the festival, the musicians visited a club in the center of Tbilisi where they saw The Natural Born Lovers, a Georgian-American blues group led by American artist Paul Rimple. This meeting turned into a highly successful jam session, which gave birth to the the idea of creating an all-star Polish brass section named the Warsaw Horns. In the Transkaukazja spirit, The Natural Born Lovers and The Warsaw Horns later played several joint concerts and recorded a classic blues song "Hard Way" in music studios in Tbilisi and Warsaw.
One of the most remarkable achievements of the decade of Transkaukazja’s existence was the start of the collaboration between the legendary Georgian band 33A and Polish string quintet Volosi at ArtZone Festival, 2011 / Tbilisi. Despite the differences in their musical roots and styles, these artists put together an outstanding joint concert. On the heels of that success, Volosi and 33A subsequently performed together on numerous occasions, including a jubilee concert of Niaz Diasamidze at Tbilisi Philharmonic Concert Hall in Georgia in 2011, an appearance at the United Islands Festival in Prague in the Czech Republic in 2013 and in concerts at Transkaukazja in Warsaw, Poland, at the Songlines Festival in London, UK and at Transakaukazja 2013 in Kiev, Ukraine. On this album we present their track "Raodenta”, recorded during their performance at Philharmonic Hall in Tbilisi.
One of our early projects was a gospel concert in Azerbaijan by Clive Brown & The Shekinah Singers of the United Kingdom and Jamaica. We then invited this group to perform at Transkaukazja 2013 in Warsaw, Poland, where they performed with the Georgian band ZumbaLand and the Polish brass section Warsaw Horns. The next artistic meeting involving Clive Brown & The Shekinah Singers took place during our One Caucasus Festival held in 2014 in Georgia, where Clive Brown also led the first-ever gospel workshop in the Caucasus region. The classic protest song "We Shall Overcome" that was practiced during the workshop became the unofficial anthem of the festival. Clive Brown & The Shekinah Singers also took part in the Transkaukazja 2014 concert, alongside Chveneburebi, Warsaw Horns and Mamadou Diouf.
10. (Bonus track) Clive Brown & The Shekinah Singers [Jamaica/United Kingdom] + Warsaw Horns [Poland] - “Holy, Holy, Holy” (Reginald Heber) (Live @ TRANSKAUKAZJA 2014)
In 2013 we added a piece of Transkaukazja to ArtGene, the biggest folk festival in the Caucasus region. On this occasion, we provided the main event which featured a joint performance by the Georgian band ZumbaLand, Senegalese artist Pako Sarr and a Polish singer of Nigerian origin named Ifi Ude. Together, they interpreted a traditional Georgian song "Peppela". Zumbaland and Pako Sarr performed on stage together two more times, at Transkaukazja 2013 in Kiev and at Chwila Klub in Warsaw in 2014, with another guest appearance by Ifi Ude). During their last meeting in Warsaw, they recorded "Peppela" at NADstudio music studio.
In accordance with the Transkaukazja spirit , many things happened "for the first time ever" at the inaugural One Caucasus festival in Georgia in 2014. For example, this event was the setting for the first musical collaboration between aforementioned groups Volosi (Poland) and Chveneburebi (Georgia). Despite the fact that both groups come from geographically and culturally distant places, it turned out that they easily found a common language. (Maybe because they are all mountaineers…) The effect of their artistic collaboration was electrifying that we decided to combine them again at the Transkaukazja 2014 concert. As a result, we present a live recording of their joint tune "Nena Nena".
On this album you will also meet many other performers who cross various cultural borders -- like Pako Sarr joining forces with the girls from the popular Georgian folk group Gordela. This is another artistic mashup that has continued long after we initiated their collaboration at our festivals and other Transkaukazja events. We present two songs that are the result of the ongoing collaboration between these artists; "Perxuli",which opens the album, and "Teylou".
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