Note: I posted this interview last year when my dear friend Corinna was still in cancer treatment. She recently died peacefully at home, in hospice, surrounded by family. Hundreds of people will miss her. I’m just one of them.
She and her medical team tried everything, including an experimental treatment. She suffered, then she found relief, then suffered again. Through it all she kept singing the Balkan music she knew and taught to so many people, including me. When she first got sick, my friends Carl Linich, Willa Roberts, and I recorded a Georgian healing song for her. She said it made her feel seen and cared for. I hope she felt that way until the end.
I’m reposting in her honor, and to remind us that removing sickness isn’t the only aim of healing treatments. They soothe and connect us, they make us feel seen and loved. I’m reposting to ask, how can we show up for each other with healing, no matter the prognosis? One way is music. There are countless others.
Your child is lying in bed, ablaze with measles, shivering under covers. The doctor can do little. This is before antibiotics, before vaccines. Your child hovers between life and death. It is time to sing a healing song.
J. Bond Francisco, The Sick Child, 1893. Courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum.
This is what I imagine it was like not so long ago in the Republic of Georgia. Families would have sung a batonebi song, a ritual healing song. Below, I share a recording with you, plus an interview with Georgian music scholar Carl Linich on the origin of these songs and what makes them so unique.
Carl Linich has been studying, singing, and conducting Georgian choirs for decades. He told me Batonebi probably date back to pagan times. That's saying something for Georgia, which was one of the earliest regions to convert to Christianity.
The songs are meant to appease the "lords" making a child sick.
"They would try to charm the spirit with beautiful music," says Carl. "They would try all sorts of things that would cause the spirit to have sympathy for the child and leave."
What strikes me about these songs is not only how haunting and beautiful they are, but that they are a kind of subterfuge. See, we welcome you. Come in, lords.
My friends Carl, Willa Roberts and I recorded this Batonebi, Ia Pat'nepio (ee-yah-bat-uh-neh-pee-oh), arranged by Carl, for a friend who was sick. We were in different parts of the country and this was during the pandemic, when no one could sing together. Recording it, in itself, was healing for all of us. Carl also played the chonguri, a Georgian fretless lute.
Here's a translation, courtesy Carl:
1. Violets, Lords. Violets are scattered for you and roses. My couch and your bouquet - violets, Lords - make your ill one feel better. Violets, Lords.
2. Violets, Lords. Welcome, Lords. Her rose and her bouquet - I have a golden adorned couch. Violets, Lords.
3. Violets, Lords. A guest is coming, darling. Violets, Lords. Let’s sing, darling. Violets, Lords.
I spoke with Carl for more context. Here’s our interview. Most importantly, we talk about our shared belief that music itself, sung with others, in any language, is healing.
Listen to my interview with Carl here:
May music appease the lords of illness in your life and leave you healthy and safe.