• HEIAMO Foundation (Non-Entrepreneurial (Non-Commercial) Legal Entity – N(N)LE)
  • Director and Co-Founder
  • Cultural Studies, Art History
  • Doctor of Art History, Ethnomusicologist
  • Tbilisi, Georgia

 

 

Abstract

The topic bases on the archival examples recorded in the 1960s-70s and our own expedition material collected in 2011-2025. Circassian, Ossetian, Ingush, and Chechen folk songs are two- and three part. Two-part songs are rare in Dagestan, here single-part singing prevails. Chechen-Ingush folk songs have the closest connection with Georgian polyphonic examples – the melody, bass and chords are Georgian. There are Georgian and Azerbaijani layers in Dagestani music. Circassian music is entirely Adyghe, it has only separate melodic connections with Georgian. Abkhazian and Ossetian music is mixture of Georgian and Adyghe. I touch upon the music of Abkhazians (Abaza) and Circassians in Turkey, which is Adyghe. In the North Caucasus, vocal and instrumental polyphony has survived to this day, which needs proper popularization in Georgia and in the world. The situation is different among the Georgians of Turkey, Iran, and Azerbaijan. Folk songs in Herety, Fereydan, Lazeti/Lazistan and Tao are only single-part. Polyphony has survived only in instrumental music; however, is also degraded and largely monophonized. Two-part songs are encountered in Klarjeti (Murghuli Gorge) and Machakhela; in Murghuli Gorge two-part songs are very often performed in one voice; in near future, the same awaits Machakhla. Laz songs from Sarpi were polyphonized by local Ednar Khorava (Khialishi) and Lia Sherozia in the 1970s-1980s. Although monophonic songs today and in the recent past were only monophonic, large portion of hidden polyphony in them indicates that the musical culture of Lazeti/Lazistan, Shavsheti, Tao, Hereti, and Fereydan was just as polyphonic as in the other parts of Georgia and the North Caucasus. This is evidenced by the recordings of instrumental music from these regions, also by the signs of hidden polyphony, and references in historical and ethnographic literature from the 19th- 20th centuries. The folk instrumental music examples in the North Caucasus, Hereti, and Turkish Georgia are polyphonic, they are monophonic only in Fereydan. Panduri in the North Caucasus, and gudastviri (chiboni) in Turkish Georgia, reproduce Georgian two-, three-part harmony, but if Georgian polyphony is preserved on panduri, it is fragmented in the case of gudastviri. Today, common used is the gudastviri with 5/5 finger holes, which makes the range of both pipes the same and two-part harmony fragmented. I also discuss old type of gudastviri with 1/5 and 3/5 finger holes, which has vanished from the life mode, but by closing two or four finger holes on the pipe, the tune takes on an old look and the polyphony becomes sustained. The melodies played on the accordion are increasingly distancing from Georgian polyphony. In future, not only will polyphonic vocal or instrumental centers in Turkey, Iran, and Azerbaijan decrease even further, but even the monophonic examples that old generation still remembers will be forgotten. Therefore, it is necessary to popularize their musical creativity both in Georgia and elsewhere.