I've always been in awe of the Caucasus: the music, the clothing, the dancing. And I've never been a fan of modern rap. Only a handful of artists from the genre ever make it onto my Spotify Wrapped, and Future never came anywhere near my repertoire. Well, this piece of art made me listen to him.
The juxtaposition of the Georgian landscape, traditional dress, and endemic choreography, set against a rap track from Future, an American rapper from Atlanta, Georgia, made me believe in people again.
It struck me that I didn't come to Future through rap culture at all. I came to him through Georgian dance. Decades of exposure to the genre never moved me, but one bold pairing did. That, to me, is the quiet power of curation: the right juxtaposition can carry someone across a boundary they'd never cross on their own. It's a lesson for anyone who programmes culture for a living, myself included.
The right juxtaposition can carry someone across a boundary they'd never cross on their own.
And perhaps the pairing works because the two forms were never as far apart as they look. Rap and Georgian dance are both physical, rhythmic storytelling, born from specific communities and sharpened under pressure. The surface aesthetics are worlds apart, but the underlying grammar is shared. Strip away the costume, and both are saying the same thing: this is who we are, and we're still here.