Georgian Polyphony

Why Georgia sounds like nowhere else

UNESCO inscribed Georgian polyphonic singing on its very first list of Masterpieces of Intangible Heritage in 2001, and for good reason. While most of the world’s traditional music is monophonic or built on a drone, Georgians have sung in three independent parts for at least a millennium — long before the Church codified harmony in Western Europe. The tuning is not equal-tempered, the chords include stacked seconds and fifths that Western ears hear as dissonant, and yet the music resolves with enormous physical force onto unisons and open fifths.

Three regional styles

• Kakheti (east): two soloists weave ornamented melodies over a sustained bass drone sung by the rest of the table. The classic supra (feast) song “Chakrulo” — one of the recordings on the Voyager Golden Record — is Kakhetian.
• Guria (west): the wildest style. Three fully independent parts, a yodel-like top voice called krimanchuli, and complex, almost contrapuntal motion.
• Svaneti (high Caucasus): archaic, dense, slow-moving chordal singing with round-dance songs and pre-Christian ritual texts.

Instruments

Most of the repertoire is unaccompanied, but the panduri (three-string lute, east) and chonguri (four-string lute, west) accompany lighter songs, and the chuniri bowed fiddle survives in Svaneti. Urban Tbilisi developed its own café-style repertoire with guitar and accordion in the 19th century.

Sacred chant

Georgian Orthodox chant is also three-voiced and survived Soviet suppression largely through the transcriptions made by the Karbelashvili brothers in the 1880s. The Anchiskhati Church Choir in Tbilisi led its revival after 1988.

Listen for free

• Internet Archive: the 1966 Melodiya LP Georgian Folk Songs (Rustavi Ensemble) circulates in the 78/LP collections; search Georgian polyphony or Rustavi.
• YouTube: Ensemble Basiani, the Rustavi Choir, Anchiskhati Church Choir and village ensembles from Guria such as Shvidkatsa are all well documented. Look for field recordings uploaded by the Tbilisi State Conservatoire’s International Research Center for Traditional Polyphony.
• Smithsonian Folkways: Georgia: Vocal Polyphony liner notes (free PDF).