Joseph Jordania & Rusudan Tsurtsumia 
Echoes from Georgia 
Seventeen Arguments on Georgian Polyphony

This new and important book was compiled under the auspices of the Vano Sarajishvili Tbilisi State Conservatoire, International Research Center for Traditional Polyphony in Tbilisi, Georgia. This collection is aimed to those who are interested in Georgian traditional polyphonic singing. It contains seventeen works of seventeen authors, both foreign and Georgian scholars, written throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Eleven of these works had been published before (but not in English), and six of the articles were written by contemporary scholars for this collection. Problems of the origins, distribution, ethno-cultural interaction with other cultures, identity, scales, harmony, issues of vocal and instrumental polyphony are discussed in these articles. Georgian traditional polyphony has long since become a symbol of the complexity that traditional musical culture can achieve in creating sophisticated forms of multi-part singing. In 2001 UNESCO proclaimed Georgian polyphonic singing a "Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity". Earlier, in 1977 Georgian song Chakrulo was included among the very limited amount of information about the Earth and its diverse cultures that was launched into space. Georgia is becoming one of the international centers of the study of the traditional polyphony.