boris kuthelia - keeper of abkhazian music (digital, ored recordings)

bowed raw string circular shapings harmonious with reaching microtone-like near-note vocals, oldest of folk tunes sung like their climbing on top and riding in the back of the truck's bed, bending and turning and wrapping around corners and hills of simplified poetry, working as working class prayers, in constant statement, the strangest of melodies new to my ears, stated and re-phrased and free from pause or silences, a waterflow of subtle rippling, controlled and led, never loud or abrasive, ceremonies for listening spaces. tints of sadness and joy fill the memories being passed around, they seem to be pure and introspective and offer insights or perspective on places and beings and age. 

carrying more weight and complexity than the basics of the delivery might disguise, rich with history and storytelling, a cultural mirror and archive in oral tradition/purpose, this is living music communing with the now, bringing wisdom, ringing metaphoric bells of separate eras, rhythms skipping up the scaled ethos, and descending on the same roads, it's full language covering minimal/literal ground yet completely engulfed in a greater global landscape, if we pay attention. 

save from a few claps and shaker sounds, the lonely performances by kuthelia are intimate and special, and reveal a celebratory guidance, we're listening into the transparency, we're hearing how it would be presented in a crowd with make-it-through-the-night dancing and drinking, but it's bare here and secretive, extracted and ready to be adapted, new voices/ghosts can bring it with them into the future for him as he had received this at an earlier time, if they pay attention. the wick is now the flame.