Polyphonic Lullabies of Kakheti

Despite its title, Zemp does not limit the films subject matter to the nana lullaby in its polyphonic translation for the stage, but incorporates valuable historical and ethnographic material pertaining to the traditional women's solo genre in the form of interviews with local singers, archival photos, and footage of actual rituals, including some material recycled from his 1998 film The Feast-Day of Tamar and Lashari. Polyphonic Lullabies considers the Georgian nana not only as a traditional cradle song, but as part of a constellation of related womens genres - among them, songs for the healing of a sick child and supplicatory incantations in contexts of pseudo-Christian, syncretic religious worship. [...]the title of the film, which indexes the performance-centred, masculine appropriation and reconfiguration of the nana genre, is woefully inadequate to describe its much more heterogeneous contents. According to Erkomaishvilis own account in this interview, it was the Rustavi Ensemble and its venerated soloist Hamlet Gonashvili who originated the concert performance of the polyphonic nana.