Chapter 01
Georgia Is More Than One Chorus
5 min
Start with Hamlet Gonashvili singing “Tsintskaro.” His voice enters with unusual stillness. The melody does not rush toward a chorus or display its ornament. Long tones carry a private intensity while the supporting voices create distance around him. The performance is widely recognized as Georgian, yet it is not a summary of Georgian singing. It is one singer, one song and one eastern vocal ideal.
What to listen for
Now place beside it Anchiskhati Church Choir's “Khasanbegura.” The texture is more restless. Gurian parts cross, answer and challenge one another; a high krimanchuli line flashes above the ensemble. The singers do not build a block of harmony underneath a soloist. They maintain several active lines at once.
For a third selection, hear the Svan ensemble Riho perform “Lile.” Repeated text and dense chordal movement create a weight unlike either of the first two recordings. The song belongs to Svan ritual history and language. Calling all three pieces Georgian polyphony is accurate only as a first sentence. Listening begins when the differences take over.
The map changes the harmony
Eastern Georgia, especially Kakheti, is associated with long table songs in which ornamented upper voices unfold over a sustained or repeated bass. “Chakrulo” is the most internationally familiar example. Its tension comes from the relation between two mobile leaders and the group beneath them. The high voice sometimes described as a crowing sound is not a decorative yodel added for excitement; it has a defined role within the performance.
Western Georgia contains several other systems. Gurian singing often develops through three partly improvised lines. Work songs such as “Naduri” coordinate effort through a large vocal architecture. The music can feel rhythmically driven even without a drum because entries, syllables and repeated figures organize collective motion.
Samegrelo brings Mingrelian language and its own vocal and instrumental routes. Imereti has distinct song repertories and a long urban connection through Kutaisi. Adjara's Black Sea and Muslim histories complicate any simple Orthodox national picture. Racha offers another mountain repertory. Svaneti's songs move through Svan language, ritual, dance and local memory rather than representing an untouched national past.
A language is part of the music
Most internationally circulated choral recordings use Georgian, but Georgia's musical map includes Svan and Mingrelian, both Kartvelian languages with their own histories. Armenian and Azerbaijani communities have long shaped urban and border life. Kist communities in the Pankisi Valley connect Georgia to Chechen cultural routes. Abkhaz and Ossetian music requires care because living traditions, displacement and political claims meet in the same names.
You can hear language before understanding a translation. Consonants determine how a line releases into the next voice. Long vowels allow several singers to reshape one pitch. A repeated word may coordinate labour, mark a toast or sustain ritual attention. Subtitles explain content; they do not replace the physical timing of speech.
This is why “folk song from Georgia” is often insufficient. Ask for region, language, singers and occasion. A Svan song performed by a Tbilisi ensemble remains a Svan repertory interpreted in another institutional setting. A Mingrelian song arranged for a state choir is not proof that every detail sounds as it did in a village gathering.
Supra is a social sequence
Visitors often meet polyphony at a supra, a Georgian feast organized through toasts led by a tamada. The music does not float independently above the table. A song may answer a toast, alter the room's emotional temperature or gather people after extended speech. The order matters, and so do kinship, hospitality and the reason for meeting.
“Mravalzhamier,” whose title wishes many years, can appear in festive and ceremonial contexts. Its sustained lower voices support lines that seem to open the room upward. A restaurant show, a family feast and a concert create three different performances even when the melody is related.
Do not demand a song from people because dinner feels “authentic.” A supra is not an audience-service package. When singing occurs naturally, notice who initiates, who joins, and whether the group changes posture before the first pitch. Those social cues are part of the performance.
Archives preserve decisions as well as voices
Some of the most important evidence comes from early recordings. In 1907 the Sandro Kavsadze Choir recorded “Mamao Chveno” at Kashweti St. George Church in Tbilisi. The disc preserves a named choir and place, but also the limits of Gramophone technology: short duration, constrained frequency range and a balance determined by physical distance from the horn.
Later state and scholarly recordings offered longer durations and more controlled microphones. They could also impose a particular idea of clean ensemble balance. A village singer recorded alone, a choir arranged for radio and a touring ensemble captured in a concert hall should not be compared as if the microphone were transparent.
The Anzor Erkomaishvili State Folklore Centre continues fieldwork, cataloguing, transcription and publication. Its value lies not in proving that every practice is timeless, but in preserving named people, places and variants. The best archival recordings make difference easier to hear.
Six first selections
1. Hamlet Gonashvili — “Tsintskaro”: follow breath, restraint and the space around a solo voice. 2. Rustavi Ensemble — “Chakrulo”: separate the two upper lines from the supporting group. 3. Anchiskhati Church Choir — “Khasanbegura”: hear Gurian lines compete without losing the whole. 4. Mtiebi Ensemble — “Naduri”: listen for labour organized through vocal entries. 5. Riho Ensemble — “Lile”: enter Svan ritual sound through repeated text and dense chords. 6. Ialoni — “Mgosani” (2021): hear a contemporary women's ensemble move confidently through inherited repertory.
These recordings make a better introduction than a definition. Georgia becomes audible as a field of choices: sustained and agile, intimate and public, local and institutionally arranged.
