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101Ex. 42. Suliko. Urban love song. (Garakanidze, Jordania, 2004:8)Araqishvili wrote at the beginning of the 20 th century that the urban singingtradition was having a negative influence on Georgian traditional polyphony. Thisinfluence was mostly felt in the increase of parallel thirds between the two top melodicparts (instead of the traditional more adventurous and often dissonant coordinationbetween the melodic parts).Scale systemsBefore starting to read this section, I would advise non-musicians to skip thissection due to its excessive technical nature. Although, if you can follow the argument,you need to know that although scales generally are a theoretical abstraction, they are asimportant and as interesting “building blocks” for musical styles, as perhaps DNA is forgenetic studies. So let me briefly discuss the scale systems that are used in Georgianpolyphonic songs.Scales were traditionally one of the most popular topics for Georgianethnomusicologists. Starting from the works of Araqishvili (1905, 1954), followed byAslanishvili (1954), and particularly by numerous publications by Gulisashvili, M.Jordania and Chokhonelidze, scales were always of special interest to Georgianmusicologists and ethnomusicologists. In the 1970s scales were the leading topic ofresearch, overshadowing even the studies of traditional polyphony. Scholars noted theexistence of several most important diatonic scales (Araqishvili, Aslanishvili) and somerare scales, like anhemitonic pentatonic, tetratonic, Locrian, altered (chromatic) scales(Jordania, M, 1959, 1971, 1971a, 1979), or Locrian, Hypolocrian, Lydian andHypolydian scales (Gulisashvili, 1971, 1971a).In my opinion the biggest contribution in the studies of scale systems of Georgiantraditional polyphonic music came from Vladimer Gogotishvili, a purely “armchair”music theorist, who has never conducted a fieldwork. In his few publications (forexample, see 1983, 2003) Gogotishvili put forward the idea that Georgian scales are notan octave (octave meant “eight”, and octave scales have eight note repetitive structure)