From Georgia to America
Can the Supra be transplanted from its homeland?
It’s been about three weeks since getting back from the “Georgian Supra tour”. By now, the whirlwind of monasteries, relics, mountains, and feasts has settled into a collection of memories.
The tour marked something like the beginning of Supra Dinner Society. With fear and trembling, we have decided to borrow the living tradition of the Supra from Georgia and offer it to our American society. In our estimation, the dry bones of American culture could use some wine, fellowship and feasting. To kick off this endeavor, we sojourned to Georgia with fourteen Americans who aspire to learn the art of the Georgian toastmaster (Tamada), to let them learn from the best.
On the tour we experienced a nine hour Supra (if we hadn’t shown major signs of fatigue, the host family would surely have extended the hospitality long past 5:00 am). We listened to one Tamada recite from heart multiple epic Georgian poems, with imperial grandeur. Another Tamada, whom I had never even met before, gave me a framed portrait of Saint Nino that she made out of, you won’t believe me, but spider webs. And at every Supra, the Georgians honored us with personal, heartfelt toasts, as if they were familiar with all the noble deeds we had ever done.
The trip far exceeded my expectations, but I left with a slight sense of unworthiness, like bringing this incredible thing to America was a bit of a fool’s errand.
Before the trip, I scoured the internet for books or academic articles about the Supra. As it turns out, there isn’t much written content out there, let alone in English; a fact that perhaps carries its own significance. People tend to write things down when fear sets in that the knowledge could be forgotten. Georgians don’t seem to have such a worry for this vibrant oral tradition.
The only writer I came across who I felt had some profound things to say about the Supra was a woman named Dr. Nino Ghambashidze. One particular article she wrote, “Liturgic Nature of the Georgian Traditional Feasts”, traces the Supra tradition back to the wedding feast in Cana and the agape feast in Jerusalem.1
I emailed Nino before the trip, not knowing whether the email address I found was real, or if she checked it, or even if she was still alive. Within just a couple hours she responded, and we found a time to meet in Tbilisi.
For someone who had spent the majority of her life in the turbulence of Soviet communism and its collapse, Nino’s eyes had a brightness and penetrating warmth that made me want to sit with her for hours. Nino is a Tamada herself, and she explained how instrumental the Supra was in forming her as a young girl.
I was excited to finally ask Nino the question I had been wondering for a long time:
“What are the aspects or rules of the Supra that, if we break them, will ruin the tradition? Can we even take the Supra, a Georgian tradition, and bring it to America?”
She smiled. “I think it’s wonderful that you are bringing the Supra to America. Don’t get caught up in the rules and minutiae, you will have to figure out how to make the Supra American. And you can. The only thing you must never forget, is to be authentic, and be spontaneous.”
In Georgia we saw different Tamadas, different orders of toasts, and different styles of Supra. But Nino was right – all of the Supras were marked by those two attributes: authenticity and spontaneity. May we never forget!
Giorgi Gotsiridze and Nino Gambashidze, “Liturgic Nature of the Georgian Traditional Feasts, Exultations and Festive Hymns,” in The Third International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony (Tbilisi: Tbilisi State Conservatoire, 2006), pp. 495–504.