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Speech made by the president Salome Zourabichvili on the opening ceremony of newly reconstructed hall at the Folklore Centre

I have a wonderful feeling, your report is stunning and encouraging. Our folklore is everything we come from, something that`s a lifegiving. Strength of our future lies on Georgian folklore, foundation of the Choirmasters` Schools is a wonderful start and it has great importance in terms of regional development. Although we all know that Georgian chant is our treasure, we still don`t take care of it properly as we have to do, I have a great responsibility in this approach and promise to be its great supporter whenever I`m needed.

Today I`ve taken a childhood friend of mine from Paris, we used to attend the lessons of Georgian dance and chant at church together, if I didn`t use to do that, I have no idea what kind of Georgian should I become. It`s important to reinforce the choirs and dance groups in Georgian diasporas to preserve Georgian folklore together with our mother language, as they are inseparable.

This is our identity we have to preserve and pass it down from generation to generation. Folklore isn`t just a past for us, “Chakrulo” sent in space is a symbol of spreading our cultural traditions in future. We are facing several dangers in the modern world nowadays but anyway, we have enough encouraging reason to survive and deal with them all and the answer of the globalization processes can be found through Georgian culture, traditions and polyphony. This is our language while communicating with the world. We need to have a uniting language to understand one another and obviously we are able to attract the world`s attention with our culture as we are a very interesting nation with having the ancient treasure like our unique and numerous polyphony.