I don’t have much time left — I’m already 90 — but I’m waiting for victory,- said Giuli Chokheli as she stood beneath the open skies of Tbilisi Open Air 2025; a living legend lending her final years to a future she still refuses to give up on.
In a time of mounting political tension, mass arrests, and a bitter cultural standoff between artists and the Georgian authorities, the appearance of three elder legends on the stage of Tbilisi Open Air 2025 was no ordinary festival highlight. It was something more radical, more intimate, and more urgently symbolic: a generational act of witness.
Nani Bregvadze, Paata Burchuladze, and Gulli Chokheli are not just performers. They are living symbols of Georgian dignity, cultural continuity, and emotional truth. Their presence on stage during a festival explicitly shaped by resistance, against Russian occupation, against the oligarchic stranglehold of power, against the suppression of Georgia’s European aspirations, was a moment of rare clarity. These voices, seasoned by time, loss, and unwavering loyalty to Georgian culture, gave the crowds something beyond inspiration. They gave them memory.
The Ballad of a Century: Gulli Chokheli and the Power of Presence
When 90-year-old Gulli Chokheli stepped onto the main stage, it wasn’t to perform a polished set or to bask in nostalgia. She came, quite simply, to speak. And when she did, the field of thousands fell silent.
Her words — “Who could possibly defeat these young people?” — struck deeper than any slogan. Her age, far from diminishing her presence, lent her an oracular authority. She had lived through Soviet domination, the brutal 1990s, the hollow promises of the 2000s, and the slow disillusionment of recent years. Her statement was not rhetorical. It was a final bequeathal: a transfer of hope from one generation to the next.
Chokheli’s voice, frail and luminous, reminded Georgians that resistance is not only youthful but also ancestral. Her gesture of love — “I can’t kiss you all at once, but I love you so much and trust you completely” — was, in itself, revolutionary. In a time when the political elite speaks in threats and police batons, her maternal tenderness became an act of moral opposition.
The Opera Voice of Protest: Paata Burchuladze and the Gravity of Song
Opera singers rarely appear at pop festivals. But Paata Burchuladze is no ordinary bass. His presence at Tbilisi Open Air — where he led the crowd in the now-iconic protest anthem “I Am Georgia” — transformed the gathering into something approaching liturgy.
Burchuladze’s voice is known across the world, from La Scala to the Met. But on that night, it belonged entirely to his country. And when he sang, he did not perform; he invoked. The anthem, with its blend of defiance and sorrow, has become the sound of Georgia’s democratic struggle — a vocal reminder that beneath the slogans, beneath the daily grind of protest, there lies something sacred: a collective longing to live with dignity.
His involvement, moreover, was pointedly political. As an outspoken critic of the ruling Georgian Dream party, Burchuladze has long been targeted for his civic engagement. By standing on the same stage where younger artists shouted anti-regime slogans, he collapsed the artificial divide between high culture and popular resistance.
When he sang, it was as if Verdi had descended into the square, and taken the side of the people.
Mtvareo Reborn: Nani Bregvadze and the Emotional Intelligence of Elegy
If Chokheli spoke from the edge of time and Burchuladze sang with operatic gravitas, then Nani Bregvadze brought something more elusive: emotional precision. Her duet with Kordz — a reimagination of Gogi Tsabadze’s 1973 classic “Mtvareo” — was not merely a nostalgic moment. It was an act of aesthetic intervention.
Bregvadze, the grande dame of Georgian song, has always stood apart: elegant, melancholic, and exacting in her phrasing. On this night, she allowed her voice to be filtered through a new generation’s lens — through Kordz’s stripped-down, ambient production. The result was neither kitsch nor reverent. It was a conversation across decades, a gentle dismantling of time.
“Mtvareo”, long associated with the bittersweet lyricism of Soviet-era Tbilisi, found a new context — a context of civic struggle, cultural preservation, and generational realignment. In allowing herself to be remixed, Bregvadze did not lose authority; she extended it. She reminded her audience that Georgian identity, like Georgian music, survives through adaptation — not imitation.
Three Legends, One Nation: The Cultural Ethics of Testimony
What unites these three figures is not simply age or fame. It is their refusal to detach from the present. Too often, elder cultural figures retreat into ceremonial roles, confined to awards galas or official receptions. But here, at a muddy, politically charged festival — where tear gas was only months removed and where young artists risk arrest for speaking truth — they chose to show up. To sing. To remember.
Their very presence constituted a political gesture: a refusal to allow the narrative of Georgia to be claimed by censors or politicians. They stood in solidarity with youth. They lent their gravitas to protest. And they performed a collective rite of cultural survival.
In an age of disinformation, their testimony — unmediated, unfiltered — became an antidote.
The Anthem of a Nation on Fire
On the 26th of May, 2025, the fields outside Tbilisi did not just resonate with guitars and basslines. They rang with the fury of a silenced people, the cry of a young generation reclaiming history, and the aging voices of icons who had seen the Soviet shadow and lived to sing beyond it. Tbilisi Open Air 2025 — the largest music festival in the Caucasus — erupted not into mere celebration, but into a historic fusion of performance and protest. The atmosphere was electric, not with fireworks, but with something rarer: a collective act of political clarity.
This year, the festival didn’t simply coincide with Georgia’s Independence Day — it embodied it. While the government marked the date with military parades and institutional platitudes, Tbilisi Open Air turned its stage into a platform of resistance. And it was there — amid slogans, national songs, and choreographed defiance — that the very meaning of independence was rewritten through sound.
A Stage as Battlefield: Protest in Chords and Chants
Music festivals usually aim to escape politics. But Tbilisi Open Air 2025 leaned directly into it. From the first beat to the final curtain, the event was engineered not just as a celebration of musical freedom, but as an artistic counterweight to a political regime increasingly hostile to dissent.
Georgian performers exclusively graced the main stage — a deliberate choice following months of government pressure against cultural institutions. The National Ballet ensemble Sukhishvili delivered a breathtaking closing performance, culminating in the singing of the Georgian national anthem alongside indie rock icon Nika Kocharov. It was a moment of choreographed national unity — bold, elegant, and charged with historical memory. Every movement, every crescendo seemed to whisper the names of those whose bones lie under this land.
The festival pulsed with the ongoing unrest that has rocked Georgia since November 2024, when the ruling Georgian Dream party halted the EU integration process. Since then, more than 500 protesters have been detained; dozens remain behind bars. Open Air gave voice to those silenced — literally.
On the main stage, the slogans roared: “Freedom for the regime’s prisoners”, “Oligarchy to the flames.” As if the microphones themselves had turned into megaphones for the movement.
The Performance That Shook Two Nations
But the most incendiary moment came from singer Erekle Getsadze. In a furious and unapologetic performance, he threw the Russian flag to the ground — and simulated urination on it. Russian media and officials immediately responded with threats and outrage. The Russian Investigative Committee even opened a criminal case. Meanwhile Getsadze’s gesture reminded the crowd that the wounds of 1921 are still open. That Soviet shadows still linger — not only in Abkhazia and South Ossetia but in the daily political maneuvers of the Georgian elite. Getsadze’s act was vulgar, but symbolic and primal.
The Afterlife of the Performance
Tbilisi Open Air 2025 will be remembered for many things: Getsadze’s scandalous flag performance, the protest slogans that shook the stage, the mass singing of anthems once confined to protest squares. But without the presence of Bregvadze, Burchuladze, and Chokheli, it might have risked being ephemeral — powerful but passing.
Instead, the appearance of these legends tethered the event to a deeper historical consciousness. They reminded us that freedom is not only a political condition. It is a cultural inheritance, and it must be sung into being again and again.
Their voices linger, not just in recordings, but in the moral architecture of the Georgian present. In a country that has known conquest and erasure, their participation felt like a rebuke to silence.
When legends speak, a nation listens. And this time, it answered back.
By Ivan Nechaev
