It’s time to take a break from talking about the election. Take a deep breath, and let’s immerse ourselves in some wonderful music — but there’s more to it than that.
Berklee College of Music’s annual Middle Eastern Music Festival took place on Tuesday, Nov. 5. And the festival is about so much more than music. It’s a powerful gathering for intercultural understanding and a reminder of music’s role in uniting us during heightened tensions here and across the world.
Christiane Karam, the visionary founder of the festival, and Giorgi Mikadze, a Georgian-born pianist and composer, led this year’s festival. They joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to discuss the event. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Arun Rath: Christiane, let’s start with you, because you founded this festival 16 years ago now as a way to bridge cultures and offer a counter-narrative to what we often associate with the cultures clashing in the Middle East. Tell us about how the festival has evolved over the years, especially in terms of its mission.
Christiane Karam: Absolutely. Well, the idea for the festival came after 9/11 — and I hadn’t been in the U.S. for a long time when 9/11 happened — and I was struck by the negative media that Arabs, in particular, got at that time. It was a stark contrast from what I know is true for those regions in terms of ancient cultures and so much wisdom and beauty that so many people, I realized, didn’t know anything about.
So, I pledged to create a platform that would bring hope and beauty but also educate so many people that are longing for this beauty and this information and know more about these cultures. And this is how it came to be.
Our first edition was in 2009, and we’ve seen so many wars since then — so many difficult, very tragic and violent conflicts around the world — and it has always been a space where we came together. We learned so much about ourselves and about one another, and we provided so much beauty, which can feel very futile in times like these.
But it’s actually so essential and so nourishing for the soul, and so I feel very blessed that we’ve been able to continue doing this over the years, and we’ve portrayed so many different cultures from across the pond or from across that entire region of the Middle East — the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Mediterranean, wherever — so [we are] blessed to be able to gather today on a day like today, but also at a time like this, to be able to join our voices and bring a message of unity and hope.
Rath: Hearing you talk about it, it reminds me about what, for me, is so exciting about Middle Eastern music because it mixes all of these. It’s so syncretic, whether it’s from the Balkans or the Mediterranean. I mean, for people who are of mixed cultures, it kind of has a certain good feeling about it.
Karam: Absolutely, absolutely. And I always say, you know, when you want to mix cultures or languages, you need to pay your dues and learn enough about each language before you attempt to translate them or before you attempt to mix them.
There’s a lot of surface-level — I’m sure Giorgi will agree with me — there’s a lot of surface-level work that is done, with mixing a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. It really takes mastery and a lot of years of paying a lot of dues before we’re at a point where we can be very mindful about how we bring these cultures together in ways that let the soul of each shine.
It’s not always something we see a lot of, but it’s very, very precious. And these cultures from that region, a lot of them share many things, and I love that over the years, we’ve learned so much about how they connect, but also what makes them different, right?
So, the bigger message is: our differences don’t necessarily have to be divisive.
Rath: So, Giorgi, let’s talk about this in terms of the music. I think people who aren’t familiar, who haven’t heard Georgian music and perhaps maybe not familiar with geography, might be surprised to see Georgian music in this context. Can you start us off by giving us a sense of where Georgian music sits on that boundary of East and West?
Giorgi Mikadze: Thank you very much. First of all, I’m so honored to be invited by Christiane [to] this festival. The festival has widened the musical borders, and this year, we are going to feature Georgian music. Georgian music is famous [for] its own polyphonic — or the most advanced polyphonic music, I would say — especially the western part of Georgia.
Rath: The gorgeous choral music.
Mikadze: Choral music, yes. And, I mean, it’s already been proven that, pretty much before Gregorian chants, we’ve been already singing in a polyphonic way. Unfortunately, a lot of things were lost. But we have this amazing choral music, sacred music, folk music, that still, yet, the U.S. and the world do not know.
My mission is always to create projects that [are] regarding Georgian music, promoting the culture. And not only music, you know — I mean, the whole cultural aspect. Could be the wine tastings, it can be anything about Georgia pretty much. … and music-wise, I would say it’s very different.
We do have some influences, but I think Georgia itself influences others more in that region. It’s my mission to show the world what Georgia can offer in the future to different cultures because of cultural collaboration — that’s when the amazing, amazing music is born.
Rath: And the collaboration — there are Berklee students and faculty involved in this.
Mikadze: Yes. Students from different countries — this is very important — that it’s so multicultural. We have an amazing choir that had to learn this music, and one of my compositions that I rearranged for the choir and the fusion band. And we’ll have our faculty members as well. So many people will be part of this show.
Karam: And also, a lot of guest artists and renowned Georgian musicians that Giorgi has invited, both from Georgia but also from New York. We’ll also have artists from the Boston community that will be joining us as well.
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
