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185some extinct civilizations (ancient Middle East and Central America), andelements of archaic vocal polyphony in contemporary pop and rock music.‣ The combined cartography of the regions of traditional polyphony and anattempt to distinguish certain “families” of traditional polyphony will bediscussed;Section 1. Methodological Issues“ They sound so similar”,Or how could we compare polyphonic traditionsThere was quite an “ethnic-musical shock” in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, inthe second half of the 1980s, when the USSR Central TV program “Globus” (“TheGlobe”) broadcast a film about the singing traditions of Corsica. Georgians weretelephoning each other while the program was still on, urging their friends and relativesto watch the program and to listen to the polyphonic singing that “was not Georgian butsounded exactly like it”. A few thousand kilometers away, in the northern part of theUSSR, in Sankt Petersburg, at the very same time as the same TV program was still on,ethnomusicologist Igor Macievsky called his colleague, Izaly Zemtsovsky: “IzalyIosifovich, listen and tell me who are singing now” asked Igor with a pleasantanticipation of a wrong reply from his former teacher and world renownedethnomusicologist, holding the receiver closer to the TV set. “Sure, these are Georgians,but I am not sure which region of Georgia they are from” came the reply Igor wasexpecting. In a way, Zemtsovsky’s reply was a very good guess, because if you havenever heard Corsican polyphonic singing before, and if you know Georgian singing verywell, then Corsican polyphonic singing does sound extremely “Georgian”. Unfortunately,I myself never saw this particular program about Corsican polyphony. Later I tried toobtain the copy of this program, so after a long search for the phone number of theCentral TV officials (which was always problematic in the USSR), I called the program“Globus” of Moscow Central TV Channel and asked them if I could get a copy of thatparticular program for the Tbilisi State Conservatory archive. I got a sharp reply: “I havealready told your colleagues several times that we can not give anyone any copies of anyof our programs. ”That particular TV program did play at least some positive role in changing theattitudes of some of my colleagues (particularly Georgian colleagues) and friendstowards my work. At the time of that historical broadcast, in the second half of the 1980s,I was actively working on a search of vocal polyphonic traditions that were (in myopinion) historically related to Georgian traditionalpolyphony. In the eyes of some of myfriends and colleagues my research had the wrong aim, because Georgian polyphony wasconsidered to be too unique to have close relatives anywhere in the world. “Now that Ihave listened to that amazing Corsican singing,” one of my older musicologist friends