Written from the perspective of a non-professional musician, this text is the production of a visual artist who likes poetry and who’s trying to understand how different cultures can share common grounds in the way they express their relationship to invisible things. I simply wish here to underline existing bridges and to remind the reader that I am not a professional in the fields I am exploring.

My first encounter with Armenia was made possible because I was following the path of a special plant, the reed, that is involved in the fabrication of musical wind instruments such as the saxophone, clarinet, oboe, but also zurna, duduk… It had been a while since I had been fascinated by this plant, which grows where I live, in the region of Marseille, south of France, and all around the mediterranean basin, and guess what ? Also in Armenia. It’s a type of grass that looks like bamboo but is way lighter and more versatile in its various usages. Historically, it has been used for weaving baskets, creating calamus for calligraphy writing, making flutes, and, what interest us today, reeds (those tiny thin pieces that consist of the wind instrument’s mouthpiece). The reed hence vibrates with the air that the musician is blowing, enabling the sound to be heard. Can you imagine that the most beautiful pieces of music have been created thanks to a simple species of grass ?

I then met an ethnomusicologist who explores this plant for research purposes and who told me she was working on an exhibition for the Komitas Museum, so I decided to book tickets and there I was, April 2024, lending feet on Armenian ground.

Uncovering Armenia’s Cultural Heritage

Traveling at first for a plant, it happened that I began discovering Armenia’s fascinating heritage in terms of traditional music, dances, instruments and poetry. I started reading Nahabed Koutchak, Sayat Nova, Daniel Varoujean, Yeghiché Tcharentz, among others. In this poetic discovery, I didn’t focus on any specific area in time because I wanted to dive into Armenia’s culture to grasp a general mood firstly. I realized step by step how much this place was not only rich in poetry but also the birthplace of so many cultural foundations, alphabets and languages, religions, paintings, miniatures, music… I was so honored to finally meet its mountains and breathe its air.

“At the heart of every poem the same question throbs, but it’s the terrible question that has no answer.”

This quotation comes from a book that was written after a lecture from Federico Garcia Lorca in 1922, about the “cante jondo” – “deep singing”, an old form of song and poem in Andalusia, namely in Granada, Spain, that he linked with the influence of eastern ways of singing and writing.

The beauty of this sentence, which has been leading my research so far, along with the mention of Lorca brings me to an old latin language which was spoken not only in Spain, but also in Catalonia, and the north of Italy, but mostly in the south of France, in this place called Occitania.

This occitanian language has for instance been used for writing poetry and songs in the Middle Ages, and has gradually decreased being spoken in the modern era, except from some grandparents and minor local populations. But it’s still alive, thanks to a recent revival of interest in it, especially in the traditional songs which I have started to discover, by entering a community of persons curious of this culture, as well as its related dances and music pieces. I’m exploring and learning about the different ways through which humans try to connect to the invisible – however they wish to call it – so it’s no surprise that it is through poetry, which could be considered a form of prayer, and songs that I pursued the discovering of Armenia, thus embedding myself in this territory by the means of its poetic and musicological culture.

The friends I made when I first went to Armenia had told me about AVC and I thought volunteering would be the perfect opportunity for coming back and pursuing my explorations. It is through this volunteer program that I came to get involved with the research department of the Komitas Museum. With my colleagues there, we started drawing parallels between Armenian and Occitan traditional folk songs, based on a common theme : birds.

I discovered that you can see many types of birds in both singing traditions. Different species are mentioned, each of them bearing a specific significance. The swallow often comes along with spring, the nightingale is usually a good messenger between two lovers, the quail symbolizes grace and love…

It turns out that I’ve been following the figure of birds for some time now, seeking for their appearances in myths, folk legends, poems… This is actually how I started discovering the persian sufi tradition of poetry, hence carrying me more and more often towards eastern poetry and, later, Caucasus. I suppose it’s no wonder that birds are present in so many cultural works. Afterall, it’s such a special animal that one could argue there’s nothing relevant in finding such links, since humans have, for a long time, explored and been inspired by this animal in all fields : art, dance, colors, paintings, stories or poetry.

However, I am not a scientist, nor a musicologist, or anthropologist, or historian.

I am an artist, an illustrator and a lover of stories.

And if I find a thread that can weave a carpet between such different cultures and areas of the world, I follow it.

An Artistic Journey of Discovery

Firstly interested in poetry, I followed a grass, then discovered Armenia and Caucasus, then met acquaintances with birds, and all of this made me pursue my explorations of traditional songs, both from Armenia’s culture but also from where I’m from.

This is just the beginning of the carpet, of the exploration, and maybe will I find along the way that it doesn’t look how I thought it would, but in any case, it’s always worth finding a carpet, especially if it can take you to new places, people and discoveries.

Don’t forget to knit from time to time.

……………….

Alice Durot is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer based in Marseille, France. Since 2022, she has worked with children, creating workshops that encourage a creative awareness of their surroundings. Passionate about the stories that shape our connection to space, she explores tales, legends, and poetry, integrating them into her visual work. Currently, she combines cartography and storytelling to craft sensitive, subjective maps. Active in local cultural and educational initiatives, she also participates in a music and dance group exploring traditional and contemporary sounds. In April 2024, Alice joined the Junior Corps of AVC.