Doukhobors from Javakheti
Why are you a Doukhobor?
We serve God with our spirit, choose with our spirit, stay aware with our spirit, we raise a sword in a spiritual battle,  recognizing the word of God.

For two hundred years now, these words of the Spiritual Psalms have been heard. Back in 1785, Archbishop Ambrosius, having exhausted all the arguments in a dispute with these stubborn heretics, angrily retorted in their face: “Doukhobortsy” (“Doukhobors” in Canada), which means Spirit Wrestlers, and they adopted the meaning of this name and proudly carried it as a title, never, even in the most difficult years of persecution, renouncing it.  This Christian-Protestant teaching arose in the middle of the 18th century and quickly spread among the peasants of the southern Great Russian provinces and the Don Cossacks. “The Doukhobor teaching” denied the church and its rites, the divine origin of tsarist power, and therefore was immediately classified as a "particularly harmful" heresy and was brutally persecuted by the authorities.  They were walled in stone pillars, overgrown with moss. This is how today's Doukhobors talk about those times. The history of Doukhobors is  one full of   bitter deprivation, wanderings and triumphs of the human spirit. At the beginning of the 19th century, by decree of Alexander I, the Doukhobors were all settled together in the Taurida province, but the peace which prevailed was short lived: in 1841 - 1845, in order to avoid the spread of their teaching, they were resettled in a remote region of the Caucasus to the lands of  Javakheti, nicknamed by them for the harsh climate, a " second Siberia." But here these hardworking and persistent people became engaged in cattle breeding and agriculture and created rich villages. 

In the 1880s and 1890s, the “Doukhoboria” was shocked by social cataclysms: in 1886 they split into two groups - the “small” one, which consisted of the residents of the village of Gorelovka, and opposed to it was the “big” half, which embarked on the path of social and religious search and united the members of all the other Doukhobor villages. In 1898 - 1899, after the repressions that hit the "big" half for refusing to serve in the army, the most radical part sought refuge in Canada
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Living in Taurida, and then in the Caucasus, on the basis of Russian traditions, the Doukhobors created a unique type of culture that reflected their world view, and were able to convey it to our present day. Until now, they maintain a sense of community, veneration of  "peace": they roll noodles together for funerals and weddings, together they send off new recruits to the army, celebrate holidays together. As in antiquity, they decorate their homes with  towels - utirki  with  beautiful woven patterns at the ends, and the old people wear traditional Doukhobor clothes. In the village of Gorelovka, the Orphans’ Home   is carefully preserved, which  served as a religious and administrative centre, the residence of the Doukhobor leaders and at the same time a shelter for orphans and lonely old people.  And now, on Sundays,  Doukhobors of Gorelovka, mostly people of the older generation, come here to pray together: to read and sing psalms, and bow to the divine nature of man with  the Doukhobors’ threefold bow.
 
The Doukhobors created a unique singing culture. Its originality is determined by an intricate mixture of styles of different folklore cultures that underlie it and the conscious activity of the Doukhobors themselves to create a new musical culture. 
In the song culture of the Doukhobors, three layers can be distinguished. These are psalms that set forth religious and ethical doctrine, songs representing examples of traditional folklore, and hymns, which, in terms of content and musical style, are an intermediate link between psalms and songs. The volume of verbal and musical memory, which can be called collective, is amazing: there is a naturally established distribution in the repertoire, and each singer contributes to the common treasury. 

This album contains records of psalms, hymns and songs performed by residents of the villages of Gorelovka, Spasovka and Orlovka in the Bogdanovsky district of Georgia. 

The first eight musical  items in this collection are psalms. The totality of all the psalms that set forth the teachings of the Doukhobors about the world, God and man, makes up the “Living  Book” (the Book of Life), which has been transmitted orally from generation to generation. Children began to “repeat” the psalms from early childhood. The Living Book, written down and published by V. D. Bonch-Bruevich at the beginning of the century, included about 380 psalms. Some psalms are only read, others are sung, and then read. Sources of these verbal texts are very diverse. Psalms could come from the slightly altered Gospel texts; some others were created by Doukhobor leaders, and spiritual songs could also turn into psalms.
 
The album opens with the "evidence" psalm "Confession of the Doukhobors". It belongs to the category of the dogmatic psalms. It relates the foundations of the Doukhobor doctrine of the Trinity and of the divine nature of man.   Man’s memory is likened to God the Father, reason – to God the Son, and will – to God the Holy Spirit. This psalm is read by Evdokiia Ignat’evna Priamorukova, and it clearly creates the musical intonation of oscillation: the psalm seems to be floating on the waves. 

The rest of the seven psalms  are sung. Listen to the singing - you will not understand a single word. Why? A special manner of singing with an almost closed mouth and unusually long chanting of a syllable was worked out quite deliberately - so that outsiders could not  understand the meaning of the psalms. Thus a peculiar secret language was formed. This manner of singing, performing a protective function, provided a powerful artistic effect.

Usually only two or three  “segments” of the psalm are sung. A  “segment” is  is a musical stanza: as a rule, it corresponds to one line of a poetic text or one sentence of a prosaic text (though not always). Each psalm has its own melody although in different psalms there are many repeating elements. The main voice is supported in unison by other singers, there is also an upper sub-voice: the voices diverge by three or even four, then merge into one. Free rhythmic structure, lack of tonal chord progressions create a soaring effect;  a singing style which is solemn, steady, and deep. The Doukhobors value singing very highly. One psalm says: "What did the Lord first create for himself? - Words and singing." And another says: "The singing of psalms is the adornment to our souls . . . it enlightens man, releases feelings, terminates any evil”. 

Psalms are sung at Sunday and holiday gatherings, at funerals and commemorations,   while sending off recruits to the army. The three psalms  “Who Is He,” “We Ourselves Don’t Know,” and “When Will The End Of Time Be . . . ” - are imbued with the eschatological idea of  the end of the world and the posthumous fate of man. The psalm "We Ourselves Do Not Know" is close to the Old Believer verse with the same name. The choir of the village of Gorelovka sings the psalms. 

The psalm Tsar David Aseevich is performed in two voices. This is a version of a famous spiritual verse from the Dove Book, which reflected the most ancient mythological ideas about the emergence of the universe from the divine flesh. The idea of the unity of man, God and the universe permeates many psalms, and if the “Dove book” psalm says that “the white light is from the heart of the Lord, the red sun is from His face, the  bright moon is from His eyes, the stars are numerous  from His speeches”, then another psalm poses the question "From How Many Things Are People Composed?" and provides answers: "flesh from the earth, bones from the stone, veins from the root, blood from water, hair from grass, eyes from dew, the soul is the image of God." Almost no one now sings the psalm Tsar David Aseevich.  It is possible that  Melaniia Fedorovna Trokhimenkova and Evdokiia Andreevna Miroshnikova from the village Spasovka were the last performers of this unique psalm. The next three psalms are again sung by the Gorelovka choir. The Psalm, “As He Seeks The Child” consists of one “segment”, it lasts more than seven minutes, this is truly endless music . . .

The next psalm - “Who Loves The Sorrow of the Lord” - represents an interesting case of rethinking the text. Initially, it began with the words “Who loves the seal of the Lord”, and the seal of the Lord was opposed to the seal of the Antichrist. However, the "seal of the Lord" was replaced by "sorrow", then the words “uncomfortable to live in the world and be defamed”, became clearer. 

The theme is concluded by one of the most popular psalms – “The Great Deed.” 

The second part of this collection is devoted to hymns, songs and ballads. Hymns, like psalms, are works of a religious nature and are performed in the same situations, with the exception of prayer meetings. 

The hymn "And You, Doves" is a variant of a widespread spiritual verse Upon A Time There Were Two Dear Brothers” - also introduces us to the common Russian stream, this is a variant of the famous verse about two Lazaruses, but  it sounds so Doukhobor in this soulful performance by two residents of the village of Orlovka – Praskov’ia Nikolaevna Kalmykova and Polina Grigor’evna Terekhova! 

The poem "A Young Man, He Walked, He Passed By" is sung at weddings. This is a Doukhobor version of the Old Believers verse about a meeting of a monk with God. The monk lost the keys to the church and the golden book, that is, deviated from the righteous path. The last hymn "What Is Hidden To My Soul" is not tied to ritual situations. In musical style, it moves quite far from the psalms. It is known to both Doukhobors and Molokans. The second part of the collection also represents songs and ballads.

In the Doukhobor culture, there is a powerful layer of traditional folklore: various incantations,    prayers, lamentations, children's folklore, lullabies, weddings, love, recruitment, and dance songs. The latter, however, were condemned by strict Doukhobor law. 

Three songs are connected with seeing off new recruits. The Doukhobors denied the killing and the war, but since 1887, when conscription was introduced in the Caucasus, the Doukhobors were forced to bear the burden of recruitment. For the Doukhobors, military service has always been a difficult test, and perhaps that is why the ceremony of seeing soldiers off was solemnly grave, sad and very touching. To the singing of psalms and hymns, the recruit says goodbye to his family, the whole  community and the Orphans’ Home, bowing to  them with  a bow to the ground. The album includes two recruits’ songs - "From The Wide Yard", which is close in musical style to  hymns, and "They Take My Brother  to the Soldiers" (a variant of the South Russian ballad about a soldier and three sisters), and the lyrical song "I Saw My Friend Off As Far As Petersburg," known in numerous versions. 

The album ends with a truly unique work - the ballad "King Dadon Had a Daughter Alëna." This is a ballad about incest - the incestuous marriage of a brother and sister, dating back, according to scholars, to the Old Testament story related to King David. The text of the ballad was recorded for the first time more than a century and a half ago and is attributed to songs of literary origin. Doukhobor spiritual culture gave us an option that is not artistically inferior to the published one. Unfortunately, only one performer was able to sing the ballad to the end - this was Polina Grigor’evna Terekhova from the village of Orlovka. Here we give only a fragment of the ballad, because its entire volume is very large. 

Alëna is not married in the church to her brother Saveli and she, finding herself in a remote steppe, returns to her dear home: