Traditional Sounds: 6. Hamlet Gonashvili

Hamlet Gonashvili is THE voice of Georgia, and arguably the most famous Georgian singer of all time. Born in eastern Georgia in 1928, he began singing at a very early age, and his highly-praised interpretations of Georgian songs (particularly those of the Georgian regions of Kakheti and Kartli) won him many awards and prizes. He became the star soloist of the renowned "Ensemble Rustavi", with whom he recorded many of his best-known songs. He died at the height of his fame in 1985, when he fell from an fig tree... (Fig trees are reputedly dangerous in Georgia, apparently; they are easy to climb, but their branches easily snap or droop.)

(Gonashvili's demise must rank among the strangest and most tragic in the world of music, on a par with that of the brilliant French composer Charles-Valentin Morhange - known as Alkan - who supposedly died at the age of 74 when he was crushed under a bookcase in his home whilst reaching for a copy of the Talmud. This apocryphal story was later disproved by one of Alkan's pupils, who wrote that the composer actually met his end when he became trapped beneath a falling porte-parapluies.)

The following YouTube video is a (very silly) music video made for Georgian television of one of Gonashvili's most famous songs, an interpretation of the Georgian song "tsintskaro", "before the [water] spring" sung by him and the Ensemble Rustavi.