Jonas Löffler

Jonas Löffler: Studying Armenian and Georgian Cultures

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YEREVAN/VIENNA — German musicologist, musician and translator Jonas Löffler, 36, studied classical guitar and musicology at the Conservatoire and the University of Basel, in Switzerland, as well as at Oxford University. He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Cologne in Germany, where he defended his doctoral dissertation, titled “Sounds of Empire: Musical Change in Tiflis/Tbilisi between 1880 and 1917,” in 2024. As a classical guitar performer, he has received various scholarships and awards. From 2006 to 2017, he maintained an international concert career as a guitar soloist and chamber musician, performing in Europe and the US. His solo album, “Terra,” was released in 2014. As a researcher, he has presented his work in numerous talks and conferences in countries including Germany, Austria, Georgia, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the US, and has published academic papers in English and German, as well as translations from Georgian to German. Currently he lives in Vienna, where he is a lecturer at the Department of Musicology of the University of Vienna.

Dear Jonas, there’s a joke that people can be divided into two groups: those who love Paris and those who love London. I’ve heard a similar sentiment about Armenia and Georgia, with few who can genuinely appreciate both. I believe you are one of those rare individuals. What sparked your interest in the Caucasus?

My interest in the region was initiated by a figure who somehow brings together both countries as he was an Armenian born in Tiflis: Sergei Parajanov. I was still in high school and saw Parajanov’s “The Color of Pomegranates” at Wiesbaden film festival in Germany. I believe the director of the Yerevan Parajanov Museum was also present at the festival. I was blown away by the film and Parajanov’s work in general in a way only 19-year-olds can be blown away. That day I decided I had to visit the Caucasus, which I did for the first time in 2010, travelling all the way from Istanbul to Goris/Syunik overland. The fascination never waned and I kept returning to Armenia, Georgia, the Russian North Caucasus, Eastern Turkey and Iran as much as I could, visiting a great number of historic sites in all countries and eventually deciding to dedicate myself to the region academically and linguistically, a decision I have never regretted.

The subject of your dissertation was the musical life of Tiflis during the late tsarist era. As a musicologist, how would you characterize the role of Armenians in this context?

Armenians were politically and, in a way, culturally, the dominant group in Tiflis at the time. Tiflis was the cultural center for the Armenians who were living in the Russian Empire and the neighboring regions and thus figured as a magnet for Armenians who wanted to achieve something in the cultural fields. Consequently, there were a great number of Armenians present in all layers of Tiflis musical culture, from Western-style classical music to newly emerging “national” forms of folk music and all the way to what I call the “Persianate” urban music tradition of Tiflis – sazandars, zurna ensembles and ashughs. While figures like the Pitoev (Pitoyan) brothers (Isai and Ivan) were crucial in the establishment of Western-style art music and opera in the city and Vasilii Korganov (Ghorghanyan) almost single-handedly established (Western) music criticism and scholarship in the local (and imperial) press, others, like Kristapor Kara-Murza were focused on establishing decidedly national forms of music making. Both among Georgians and Armenians, the first steps within these national musical endeavors were made in the forms of choirs that were seen as representatives of their nation. Armenians were also central in lower-class entertainment culture. Ashughs like Hazira (Abram Abramov/Abrahamyan), who sang in both Armenian and Georgian (mostly the latter, though), were superstars in modern terms and could publish their songs in countless editions and print runs that outnumbered those of the poets of the local intelligentsias like Hovhannes Tumanyan, or the Georgian Akaki Tsereteli.

You have a working knowledge of dozens of languages. When we first met in 2019, you barely spoke Armenian, but a year later, during our meeting, our conversation was entirely in Armenian, and you continue to write to me in Armenian. How did you achieve this proficiency?

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I love learning languages and it is true what people say: The more (different) languages one learns the easier it does get. Regarding Armenian, I was lucky to be with an absolutely fantastic teacher during my first research stay in Yerevan. Tereza Hovhannisyan — who now teaches at UCLA — was probably the best language teacher I’ve ever had. What also helped, psychologically, was that I had learnt Georgian and Russian before Armenian (in that order). After Georgian, which as a non-Indo-European language poses many difficulties to native speakers of Indo-European languages, Russian already felt like a relief. Armenian, even though coming with a whole new set of vocabulary, felt rather easy afterwards. Even though I’m a fluent reader of Modern Eastern Armenian (and Western Armenian, to a lesser degree), I’m lacking practice in speaking. I hope I’ll be able to spend more time in Armenia in the future!

So, did your knowledge of the Georgian language help you to learn Armenian, even if they belong to different language families and use entirely different alphabets?

Yes, I think it somehow did, even though only marginally and mostly in terms of “learning a language that is less commonly taught in Western Europe.” Besides, it helped mostly with regard to the lexicon of the languages. There is a shared vocabulary among the (big) languages of the South Caucasus that’s mostly of Persian or Arabic origin (even though a lot of this tends to be dialectal in Armenian if it’s not part of an older layer of Middle Persian vocabulary). Also, there is a rather great number of Armenian loanwords and cognates in Georgian, including very central words such as the word for “speaking/talking” (laparaki), which apparently derives from hraparak, or the word for “tomorrow,” which is khval in Georgian – a cognate of the Armenian vagh(e). With regard to grammar, of course, both languages are very different. One has to start from scratch with both of them, unfortunately.

Having visited both Armenia and Georgia periodically, you’re quite familiar with both cultures. I always wish for a strong friendship between Armenia and Georgia. However, American researcher Asbed Kochikian titled his paper on Georgian-Armenian relations “Neither Enemies, Nor Friends.” What is your opinion on this issue?

It’s complicated. From an external, non-involved perspective, it seems odd that there are no deeper connections between Georgians and Armenians, two people who seem to share so many things on the surface. But I assume almost two centuries of Russian-backed “divide and conquer” policies in the South Caucasus added additional layers to earlier animosities that are just really hard to overcome. Speaking to Georgians, I was often baffled how little they knew about the Armenian presence in Tiflis and other parts of modern Georgia — Armenians, on the other hand, mostly seemed to care about the Armenian parts of Georgian history. Of course, that’s a generalization and there are many great experts on Georgian history and culture in Armenia and vice versa. But it would be great if people were focusing on the interconnections of Armenian and Georgian history and culture, of which there are so many. Linguistic abilities are certainly a central issue here. A good start would be normalizing the status of “minority” languages in Georgia, widely offering Armenian language teaching in secondary schools, also to Georgians, and doing the same thing with Georgian at least in the northern regions of Armenia bordering Georgia. School exchanges work wonders, too, at least in my personal experience. Maybe that again is a very Western-European perspective on these matters…

I assume your interest in Armenian music regards not only to the past, but also present?

My interests are mostly focused on older music. Although I have to admit that I also love listening to therapeutic doses of rabiz music from time to time as some kind of guilty pleasure. For me it’s one of the musical remnants of a shared South Caucasian culture that’s almost completely lost among Georgians and only exists in some pockets of Armenian culture that are often considered to be of “lower” standing. Of course, I did not grow up with this and its specific connotations – so I’m free to just like it as it is.

What about Armenian literature? You have translated and published a collection of Georgian short stories in German. I am sure you could translate from Armenian as well. In general, after your dissertation, do you have any projects related to Armenia?

I’ve enjoyed translating Georgian literature a lot. It was a great way to get a grip on the language and delve deeper into the culture. I would love to translate Armenian literature into German! Back then, the Georgian translations happened because Georgia was the guest country of the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2018, so there was money and the necessary infrastructure, that I did not have to build up myself. After this I was too involved with my thesis and did not have the time to look for suitable Armenian texts. In general, I think there is a huge potential in Armenian literature both with regard to older works (Raffi, for example has not been translated into German, to my knowledge) and current literature (which I know far too little about). Besides literature, I will certainly remain academically attached to the Caucasus region and Armenia in the future. I have some ideas for possible research projects, all incorporating an interconnected view on the Caucasus region. It now all depends on the discipline I will eventually end up in — it could be history, musicology, or some other, related field. We will see!

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