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104The general popular perception of Georgian traditional polyphony is that it isexclusively a men’s tradition. Men sing the most complex polyphonic songs – fromeastern Georgian “long” table songs to western Georgian complex contrapuntal songs,including the four-part harvest songs “Naduri” and the incredible “Trio” songs. As youwould expect, women sing family-circle songs: lullabies, dirges, and some older ritualsongs. Georgian women’s singing is polyphonic as well (two and three-part dronepolyphony), although not as complex and technically developed as the men’s tradition.Because of this concerts of Georgian traditional music are always heavily dominated bymen’s ensembles, some of my non-Georgian friends have even had the impression (afterlistening few of Georgisan CDs) that only men sing polyphonic songs in Georgia.The strict gender division in Georgian singing is generally considered to be anancient trait, but there are facts that should be taken into account as well. (In familysinging occasions, of course, mixed performances were usual for most of regions, but weare talking now about major social events and ritual performances.) Most importantly, themost archaic musical dialect of Georgia, Svaneti, displays mixed performances oftraditional polyphonic songs and round dances. Both Araqishvili and Paliashvili noted inthe very beginning of the 20 th century that Svanetian men and women always sangtogether. In mountainous Racha the same occurs. So why should we consider the strictgender segregation of the mostly plain regions of Georgia more archaic than the mixedperformances of the most isolated, archaic and mountainous regions? Would it not bemore plausible to propose that social factors (and most importantly – the pressure of theChristian religion) had the greatest role in segregating the singing traditions of men andwomen? We must also remember, that men were almost the sole carriers andbeneficiaries of the professional medieval tradition of Georgian church singing, andwomen virtually did not have access to this, the only available professional education ofthe epoch (Tsitsishvili, 2004). Musically talented women were mostly appreciated as thecarriers of good musical genes for their children (Erkomaishvili, 1988:11-12), whereasmusica lly talented men would become professional musicians. Even by the end of the20 th century you can still come across the attitude when the father pushes his son’sprofessional musical education despite the fact that, according to his (father’s) ownwords, “the daughter is much more talented” (Tsitsishvili, 2006).ConclusionsTo conclude this section about Georgian music, I would like to say that despitethe huge amount of research still needed in different areas of Georgian traditional music,Georgian traditional polyphony is perhaps among the best-researched polyphonictradition of Europe. Several generations of Georgian musicologists andethnomusicologists from the end of the 19 th century, as well as non-Georgian scholarscontributed to this process. Some of the works of European scholars will be discussed inthe second part of this book, when we will talk about the comparative aspects ofGeorgian traditional polyphony. More than 20 years of scholarly tradition of organizinginternational conferences and symposia on traditional polyphony, held in Georgia (from1984 onwards) and the establishment of the International research Centre of TraditionalPolyphony (with the help of UNESCO) in 2002 greatly contributed to the flow offinances, technical equipment and renowned international scholars, experts in traditionalpolyphony, to Georgia.