Performance Practices of the Music of Georgia

The Georgian vocal polyphony was maintained for eras by village singers, mostly local farmers. In the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century a great number of gramophone recordings of Georgian village composer were made. Anzor Erkomaishvili was top in recovering these recordings and re-issuing them on a series of CDs. In spite the poor technical quality of the old recordings, they often serve as the model of high mastery of the performance of Georgian folk songs for current groups.

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During the Soviet era from 1921 to 1991 traditional music was highly praised, and revered traditional artists were awarded with governmental prizes and were given salaries. At the same time some genres were forbidden (particularly Christian church-songs), and the tendency to create huge regional choirs with big orchestra singing each melodic part damaged the improvisatory nature of Georgian folk music. Also, singing and dancing, usually closely interconnected in rural life, were separated on a concert stage. From the 1950s and the 1960s new pattern of groups (Shvidkatsa, Gordela) brought back the tradition of smaller bands and creativeness.

Since the 1970s, Georgian traditional music has been introduced to a wider spectator in different countries around the world. The groups Rustavi and later Georgian Voices  were particularly active in presenting rich polyphony of various regions of Georgia to western audiences Georgian Voices performed alongside Billy Joel, and the Rustavi Choir was featured on the soundtrack to Coen Brothers' film, The Big Lebowski during the end of the 1960s and 1970s an pioneering pop-ensemble Orera, featured a combination of traditional polyphony with jazz and other famous musical genres, becoming arguably the most well-known group of the Soviet Union in the 1970s. This line of union of Georgian folk polyphony with other genres became popular in the 1990s, and the Stuttgart-based ensemble Shin became a popular representative of this generation of Georgian musician.

From the middle of the 1980s, the first groups of Georgian music comprising of non-Georgian performers started to appear outside of Georgia (first in USA and Canada, later in other European countries). This process became particularly active after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when the iron curtain vanished and travel to the Western countries became possible for Georgians. Now, it is a common practice for Georgian bands and traditional singers to visit Western countries for concerts and workshops.