Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at the opening of the folkloristic festival of Gjirokastër “Argjirofest-on” 2015:
I apologize, but it’s impossible for me to welcome with a speech this festival that celebrates the spirit of our nation, without asking everybody, in the name of the spirit that connects us with each other ever since we exist, to have a minute of silence for the innocent victims of the tragedy of Kumanovo.
I thank you with gratitude.
Dear Gjirokaster, beautiful and welcoming, very dear friends who have come here today, Albanians and friends of Albania,
This will be the stage where the big heart of the nation will beat for days and nights, where its deep soul will be poured and where its sublime spirit will be unfolded.
Thousands of people have descended in Albania’s cradle of stone and other hundreds of thousands are sitting in front of the screens to behold the majesty of the great nationwide spiritual monument, our folklore.
As an artistic creation, it sheds a light on the endless depths of the soul of our people, which is as nice as its beautiful songs and poems, as are its beautiful costumes and dances, tunes and stories, myths and legends, its dialects and idioms. It is this light of beauty that we admire and it often happens to us to fall in love with it in order to not forget it in the ballads, bourdons, kabas, laments and the lullabies. This is a light that absorbs us and we absorb it within ourselves as part of the energy that recreates us as a people, creating and recreating our identity in the endlessness of generations that come and go and which are connected to each other through this light.
A folk festival allows us to feel part of the immensity of time, while looking like at a huge mirror the spirit of the people to whom we belong. A part of each of us will necessarily appear in that mirror, made one with the wholeness but also quite distinct in the eyes of our soul, through the unprecedented spectacle of colours, voices, sounds, rhythms and movements. There will be surely for each of us a moment when something will suddenly awake for us to live within us like a big dream and make us feel part of a spiritual wholeness, of a timeless and limitless nucleus which, precisely because it has never responded totally to the laws of history and of everyday life, it has succeeded in keeping us together as Albanians. The laws of this nucleus are unwritten and intuitive, they talk differently, they walk by means of improvisation, contrast, dynamism, conciseness, and build continuously a culture which is as complex and diverse, as it is unifying and identifying.
From this nucleus were conceived and to this nucleus remained loyal our great Renaissance men who felt that everything that would speak and sing to Albanians was internalized in their Folklore, was inherited with fanaticism, with human dedication and artistic zeal transmitted from generation to generation. The same as it bequeathed the land to its own children, the nation nurtured them with its memory, not only through dates and documents that speak to the mind, but through discourses, sounds, forms and colors that render service to the life of the spirit, which is the memory of wisdom but above all a genetically aesthetic memory.
Inherent and abstemious, the prevalence of beauty of the soul in the Folklore became for the Renaissance men the new spiritual face of the nation, the aesthetic and conceptual model on which their major works were raised as new pillars of a free and modern culture. Emerging naturally from the deep foundations of the folk creation, those works became light and salvation for the nation during the deep dark times of Albanians.
Therefore, it is impossible not to mention today with honor on this stage the names of the tireless collectors of the folklore, starting from the first attempt of Frang Bardhi (1635) and the “Albanian Bee” by Thimi Mitko, to Spiro Dine, Stavro Frashëri, Palokë Kurti and Ghjon Kujxhia, to Thoma Nasi and Kristo Kono, Vinçenc Prenushi and Shtjefën Gjeçovi.
It is also impossible not to mention today De Rada and Naim Frashëri, Zef Skiro and Gjergj Fishta, Ernest Koliqi and Mitrush Kuteli, Lazgush Poradeci and Musine Kokalari, the wisdom daughter of this city, Ali Asllani and Çajupi, enlightened people of this land who knew how to convey us beautifully the spiritual and intellectual marvel that they had experiences themselves through the manifold fascination of the folklore. This fascination was masterfully written for us all by the most famous son of this city, Ismail Kadare, who transmitted it from ballad to ballad and gave not only us but the whole world the opportunity to experience an aesthetic resonance with the fragile tragic majesty of human fates discovered by him in the infinite labyrinths of our folklore.
Many of these works by Kadare, in the heart of which beat the perfect lyric and song of our folklore, are today part of world literary heritage, as this extraordinary city for its architecture, life and heart has been declared world heritage by UNESCO.
This stage, the festival, with the beautiful name “ArgjiroFest-on”, is for us today a “legacy” that is unfolded on a “Heritage”. It is our beautiful and great celebration of pan-Albanian beauty, with groups coming from every territory or place where people sing Albanian songs, not only in Albania and Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia, but also the Arvanites and Arbereshe, Albanians of Turkey and Switzerland, because such is the big map of the soul of this small nation that knew how to live through its song and language, beyond any political and historical cartography. “I found it as a song and as such I sang it”, quotes the brilliant verse of the Songs of the Frontier Warriors. And this is how is going to be on this stage and in this city, when our best folk artists will convey through their souls and bodies exactly the best and essential thing they have inherited from the line of light that binds them to their fathers and to the fathers of their fathers, and so on, in the highest of history, in order to convey it to their children and their children’s children and beyond, on the road to the future.
And they will amaze us, as they have amazed in the past their ancestors, travelers, diplomats and foreign scholars who never stopped giving testimony of their deep admiration for the impressive variety and particularity of the traditional costumes of the Albanians, from the Illyrian xhubleta to the white kilt that used to be worn throughout Arbanon, and then the embroidered costume of Lunxheri to the tirq, a typical male costume of the northern area of Malesia. Not to mention the vertiginous and impulsive plastic of our epic dances, as well as the elegance, restraint and nobility of the lyrical dances, the majesty of the game and musical knowing, and the rare harmony of voices and timbres.
The variety of this folklore, of particular quality, is a rare characteristic attesting not only the circumstances that created it, but also a natural tendency in the heart of the community, to respect and eternally and inherently research our best values, in order to know and appreciate change and the different. The experience and the best ethical qualities of Albanians have taught and guaranteed us throughout the centuries the meaning and acceptance of the other as an indispensable part of life. Therefore, that part that belongs to us and that the values of others have enriched emerges spontaneously and harmoniously in this folk festival, as do the elements of the folklore of Dropull, Macedonian, Aromanian, Gorani, Egyptian and Roma, with their songs, dances, melodies and customs, in their festival, with their priceless asset without which we are not and cannot feel complete.
And as we carry in us this gracious and inherited characteristic of diversity, we feel as modern as any other European.
This exchange among peoples and communities, cultures and traditions is the true essence of the Balkans.
Nowhere more than here has the common history and long coexistence engraved similar anthropomorphic, psychological and communicating features. We have exchanged, the way only we know, through love and hate linguistic and cultural materials, legends and ballads, representations and myths that have travelled together with the peoples of the Balkans and have come here today, through the extreme vitality that characterizes us all together, in one of the most interesting expressions of our Balkan identity.
From the bottom of our ancient past, where Europe’s name has its very origin, the precious richness of folklore across the Balkans makes us say proudly “Yes, I’m Balkan” as I am Albanian, Greek, Turkish, Montenegrin, and as we are altogether Europeans and citizens of the world.
Citizens of a world that moves faster every day, maybe in a big hurry, but also of a world that becomes every day more conscious of the undeniable importance and values of the intangible cultural heritage of mankind. The identity values of the folklore, its role in the history of nations, but also in our contemporaneity, its existence as a living culture with the power of tradition but also with the extreme fragility of its traits, have made institutions all over the world to take care of them with special dedication. Because of their history and unique architecture, Butrint, Gjirokastra and Berat are part of the UNESCO heritage, while our wonderful polyphony of voices has been unanimously chosen as one of the 50 most attractive intangible features in the spiritual heritage of peoples worldwide. Who hasn’t been enchanted by the polyphony of Laberi or Gjirokster, who hasn’t shivered while listening to the songs of Yanina, or hasn’t been enchanted by the impressive harmony of the song “Under the plane tree in Mashkullorë”? The mysterious performance of our polyphonic groups is worth any stage in the world.
And success in such stages has always been guaranteed. But in this festival, in “Argjirofest-on 2015” the reverse will happen. Relatively young and famous artists on the world stage will come on this stage to merge their talents and their performance with the folkloristic treasure. And they do it reverently and with humility, as used to the most honored artists of our music, Tefta Tashko and Marie Kraja and later Mentor Xhemali, who rose to unknown yet always profoundly original stages the most successful parts of our folkloristic treasure.
For the people whose hearts sing are beautiful people, and we the Albanians are beautiful people, because our hearts sing. Let’s have our hearts sing throughout the days and nights of this Festival and let the hearts of the sons and daughters of this people sing and come on the stage of this Festival to sign to Albania as it was and as it will be!
