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In 1989 Tbilisi State University Press published my book on traditionalpolyphony (“Georgian Traditional Polyphony in the International Context of Polyphoniccultures: the Problem of Origins of Polyphony”). The book was published in Russianwith an English summary. There is no doubt that the intervening 15 years have broughtvery dramatic changes for many regions of the world, and particularly for the formerUSSR where I came from. The fall of the Soviet Union and the creation of newindependent states (including my native Georgia), the breakdown of the Iron Curtain andcommunist governments in East Europe, the advent of the Internet and emailcommunications has drastically changed the world and opened up revolutionary newpossibilities of interaction between peoples and cultures. Global confrontation betweenthe different models of the future of humanity (capitalism vs. communism) changed intothe confrontation of the future with the past of humanity (secular democracy vs. religiousfundamentalism).Ethnomusicologists were among those who benefited from the new possibilitiesof interaction between the cultures and scholars. In the wake of the increased interactionbetween the cultures of different regions of the world, the role of ethnomusicology isincreasing in the contemporary world. Freedom of travel and new possibilities forfieldwork in most regions of the world, new cooperation between scholars and researchinstitutions, and the migration of scholars (mostly from the former communist countriesand the Third World countries to Western countries) created a new global stratification ofethnomusicological research and resources.Traditional polyphony has been one of the most actively developing spheres ofresearch activity in ethnomusicology in the last twenty years. New national andinternational bodies, dedicated to the coordination of international research in the sphereof traditional polyphony, have emerged (Polifonies Vivantes in Paris, France;International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony at Tbilisi State Conservatory,Georgia; European Centre of Study of Polyphony, Vienna, Austria). Conferences andsymposia fully dedicated to the problems of traditional polyphony have been held atdifferent national institutions (Georgia, France, Russia, Taiwan, Austria).It is not surprising that in the context of radically increased means ofcommunication a major body of new data on traditional polyphony has emerged. Thenew data and continuing research brought about a set of new ideas on the distribution andmechanisms of the evolution of traditional polyphony. In my 1989 book I tried tosummarise the situation to that moment, mostly without access to the major Westernlibraries and without the help of the Internet and email communication. Attempts weremade to translate and to publish the revised version of my book in English (I am verygrateful to Lynn Newman-Bertrand from the Emory University in Atlanta for her efforts),and for some time I was diligently preparing all sorts of additions (new materials andideas) to upgrade the text of my first book for its new revised (and translated intoEnglish) publication. The accumulation of new data and the development of new ideaswere going so rapidly that by the mid-1990s I realised that the book I wanted to bepublished was quite different from the one that I had published in 1989, both in the scopeof the materials and in the suggested model of evolution of traditional vocal polyphony.The idea of writing a new book arose.13