The Georgian pro-democracy, anti-corruption movement is still in the streets, month after month. Music remains a way to connect those demonstrations with supporters at home and abroad. Tbilisi/Berlin artist Mess)Montage joins as we put together sounds from Georgia (and I write this from soundcheck for a fundraiser tonight).
Mess)Montage aka Tornike Margvelashvili joined the protests in his home country, but as also been organizing support from here in Germany, including tonight’s program at Ballhaus Prinzenallee in Wedding. I’m more than happy to join, as I think now more than ever we need to think of these struggles as connected. Here’s our full radio program from earlier this week on Berlin community station Refuge Worldwide:
While much of the world has been fixated on the USA’s tariff regime, the news continues. Yesterday was a somber date in Georgian history – National Unity Day, the anniversary of the massacre of 21 people, mostly young women, in 1989 during anti-Soviet demonstrations. Just this afternoon, as we were preparing here, news came in that the UK will sanction members of the current Georgian Dream-backed, Russia-aligned government, which protesters (and a lot of the world) view as illegitimate. Here’s the scene from yesterday.
The reason to talk about this context and not just the music is that, for so many artists, the political and the artistic are inseparable. So with that in mind, here’s what Tornike and I played and some of my colleagues on for tonight.
From Tornike – a lot of this unreleased:
Levan Maisuradze – Faz um tempão
Metastasis – The Kármán line
Mess_Montage – Possible Worlds/Rustaveli Metro Installation
Ani Zakareishvili – Second
Nina Simonishvili – Noisy Within
Nino Davadze – Agora
Irakli Choladze/Tsredi – Non Compos Mentis/Not of Sound Mind/არა საღი გონებით
Mess_Montage – VaiVai (From Album Artefacts)
And from my playlist additions:
Rati Eradze – Ertkhel (via Community Radio Tbilisi)
Sample of protests from December 2024
Irakli Abramishvili – position N 2
Natalie Beridze – Honk Section
ISOTROPÍA – “Auto-da-fé Of The God”
Aleksandre Kiladze’s Jazz Choral – Gurian
Ambience Sound Library – Nariqala Castle, Tbilisi, Georgia
My selections are all up on Bandcamp and released, so go grab them – some beautiful releases. And looking forward to these others coming out.
The film portion of the event tonight is A State in a State, an experimental documentary by Tekla Aslanishvili, examining the railway infrastructure in the region after the fall of the USSR. From 2022, an interview with J Cut:
jd_j tonight is known for his own exquisite curation via Tbilisi’s Mutant Radio project, which I’ve talked about regularly here:
Kuji Davituliani is playing live/solo and – love what I just heard in sound check. But to check out the awesome Meastasis band, of which he’s a member:
And for something a little more on the pop end of the spectrum, there’s the awesome nana.ios – in a fab video (more where that came from on her account):
I’ll be the one non-Georgian person on this bill, but this whole crew is hugely inspiring to me musically.
Oh yeah – one more musical selection for you, which didn’t quite fit into the radio program, but for some political punk from Tbilisi: