Table of Song

Mgzavruli and Dancing Crane

by Peter Aaron and photographs by Fionn Reilly, August 28, 2009

Drive 30 minutes off the Thruway through Orange County’s lush, rolling farmlands to Warwick and find yourself at a rustic, white clapboard farmhouse. Around back there’s some mismatched vinyl sheeting strung up between a couple of tree limbs as a makeshift canopy. Underneath there’s a table, about 12 feet long and filled end to end with one palate-tempting Georgian delicacy after another—plates of hearty kebab, juicy slices of badrijani nigvzit (seasoned eggplant), aromatic ajaphsandali (a spicy vegetable dish), and on and on. It’s a spread that makes the inside shot of Beggar’s Banquet look like a Happy Meal. Seated tightly all around this bountiful feast are 30 or so Georgian immigrants of all generations, from small children to seniors, rowdily conversing and toasting each other and all manner of occasions in their native tongue.

“Welcome to our Georgian table,” says the host, Victor Sirelson, whose wife Lia has prepared the sumptuous offerings for the gathering, which is known as a supra. “You must try the wine, it’s a tradition for new guests.” More toasts and infectious bonhomie ensue. But the revelry, however, is about to get kicked up several notches.

Native folkloric garb is donned—for the men, the lengthy, bandolier-festooned chokha coat; for the women, an arkhalig jacket and traditional velvet tavsakravi headscarf. Instruments are produced: garmoni (accordion), salamuri (recorder), panduri (three-stringed lute), duduk (double-reed, woodwind pipe), and doli (drum). Music begins, dancers rise from their chairs and take to the lawn, and four of the men form a chorus, three of their voices holding sustained bani (bass) notes while that of the fourth soars and dives above the low drones like a lonely dove. Like some kind of multi-piped human church organ, they let loose a couple more festive dance and “table songs” and finish for the moment with “Shemodzakhili,” a heartbreaking romantic lament from the Kakheti region (a translated lyric: “I don’t have wings to fly to you / Give me your shovel, I have to dig my grave”). Even for a visitor who doesn’t speak the language, the mood is both warm and very deeply moving. One feels honored and privileged just to be present.