Ketevan Music Festival

TOWARDS AWAKENING MUSIC

Who was Queen Ketevan? Why a Coexistence motto?

Ketevan´s Journey - Ketevan's fascinating life inspires our Festival. The course of her life, as a petal in the wind, travels kilometers across cultures and perfumes us with the scent of her faith, commitment and tolerance.
Queen Ketevan has traveled thousands of kilometers and varied cultures around the world. She began her journey in Eastern Europe as queen of the Kingdom of Georgia. Then fate leads her to share the kingdom with the powerful Shab Abbas I, a Persian Muslim ruler. In Iran, Ketevan dies as a martyr after long and painful torments in the year 1624. But Ketevan's journey does not end in Iran. According to legend, in 1627 her rests are then taken to India and buried in Old Goa by two Augustinian monks, who were devouted witnesses of the last years of her life.

Ketevan, then Queen of Georgia became a Martyr and was canonized as a saint by the Georgian Orthodox Church shortly afterwards her decease. An ancient Portuguese document suggested that Ketavan's bones were held in a black sarcophagus kept in the St. Augustinian Convent in Old Goa, India. The remains have been recently uncovered in the Ruins of Saint Augustine in Old Goa, India. DNA analysis suggests the remains are those of Ketevan, the Queen of Kakheti, kingdom in Georgia.

In 2004 researchers excavated the area and found one bone of an arm. Comparative DNA studies strongly suggest that the bone is of Georgian origin. Final comparison of samples with living relatives is under investigation. There is great hope that our Festival soon gets a patron Saint: St. Queen Ketevan. The main concerts of the Festival therefore will be performed near the place where the bones were discovered.

Her life, as many other lives of different saints round the world, is a lighthouse that illuminates the paths of tolerance and coexistence.