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Giuli Chokheli shares her life story

By Salome Modebadze
Monday, January 10
Georgia is a country of people gifted in various fields and it won’t be a surprise for anyone to hear a few words about Georgian jazz history. Giuli Chokheli is among the famous musicians who have been named as the “woman legend” by the American people. Sharing her unbelievable emotions to the public, Chokheli used to fill the audience with joyful jazz rhythms, a dangerous task in the communist era.

She was still a small child when her mother, a famous Georgian Film and Theatre artist Elene Chokheli scolded her for joining the Catholic Church choir. “But what could Mom do when she knew that music would become my fate? So she put on the records of Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie and I became totally infected with jazz. It was after this case that I used to sit in front of the radio for hours and listen to my favorite tunes under the blanket,” the singer told The Messenger, sharing her life story.

The lady with Georgian soul and American behavior was still a young girl when she was invited by composer Edvard Sepashvili’s trio as a soloist. Then she joined the 1st Georgian Technical University jazz ensemble with musicians Soso Tugushi and Konstantin Pevzner and continued traveling around the Soviet Union. “My husband and I, (famous composer and pianist Boris Richkov) were soloists of the Georgian Philharmonic Hall with our 16-member band “Changi” (lyre) for 14 years. Our band members were experienced Leningrad musicians from the popular Iosif Vainstein orchestra,” Chokheli told us.

But the gifted lady needed a different space… Encouraged by her much beloved mother to visit the Eddie Rozner band, Chokheli amazed the famous jazz musician with her unforgettable voice and style thus receiving an invitation to his band. Winning 1st prize at the Sopot Festival in Poland where participants from 55 countries performed, Giuli Chokheli received the title of “Soviet Ella Fitjerald” and was added to the list of leading European singers. But after the emotional send-off ceremony at the airport before her departure, the successful musician was met by an old Soviet car sent by her mother from her theatre… while the Philarmonic Hall had a black inscription: “Giuli Chokheli has been given the greatest scolding for her absence from the November 7th parade,” said the statement.

The separation from her devoted husband and his death had been a terrible slash against the young lady who continued giving solo concerts in the US. Having issued several grand plates and a CD, Chokheli was also invited as a special guest at Carnegie Hall where she was given the microphone from which Willies Canover had been spreading jazz histories through the radio for 30 years. “When I arrived to Georgia I took a video camera given by my US friend working at one of Washington newspapers. I established a film studio Art Star and started making artistic-documentary films all by myself,” the talented artist shared with us.

Entering her world of amazing flower applications made from usual cocoon bags which she started in US, every visitor would feel the warmth and depth of her world. Regretting being forgotten by Georgian people, the musician shared with us her devoted love of Tbilisi, her hometown which, according to Chokheli has lost its traditional values. Explaining that a musician should be separated from all problems by preserving his/her internal world, the talented woman worried that she has been shaded in the last few years. “Everything I do, I do for the Georgian people. My voice is still performing well and I would definitely go to the US if I am invited, but why should I be forgotten by others when the young President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili gifted me with the Honor of Respect for my merit in cultural development and the promotion of jazz music. Those who forget their past have no future,” she said welcoming the new state power and hoped that the authorities chairing the country after the Rose Resolution in 2003 would manage to follow the steps of democratic development and strengthen the country.