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278style sutartines used polytonality much earlier than Ives, Bartok or Stravinsky. Georgiancomposers Dimitri Araqishvili and Zachary Paliashvili recorded but never used complextraditional polyphonic songs from Guria, western Georgia, because Gurian songsharmonic language was too dissonant and too complex for them. For the same reason oneof the greatest pioneers of the contemporary professional music Stravinsky openlyadmired western Georgian polyphony.In this “Case Study” we will concentrate on the musical language of arguably themost creative band of the history of popular music, the Beatles. I will try to trace theorigins of the several elements of the Beatles musical language, revolutionary for theEuropean popular music and Rock-n-Roll. I’ll try to argue that some of the mostrevolutionary elements of the Beatles musical language have interesting parallels with thetraditional polyphonic cultures of the archaic polyphonic Europe. Some of these topics,concerning the closeness of the Beatles legacy with traditional musical cultures(particularly of British peoples) are known from more than 400 books, published aboutthe Beatles, but some will be discussed for the first time. I organized this “Case Study”into separate sections.• Unity of the music creator and the performer. Strictdivision of all the functions across the society was one of the cornerstones of theprofessional music in Europe. This division included whole range of professions, rangingfrom the composer, performer or performers, and conductor, to the music copier andmusic critics. Even listeners were supposed to follow the strict rules of the game (forexample, how to behave, or when to remain silent and when to clap). This tradition wasso strong in European music, that even R’n’Roll mostly followed the trend. For example,“King of R’ n’Roll” Elvis had not written any of the songs he performed. On the otherhand, in a traditional society a performer is a creator (or at least co-creator) of the musiche (or she) performs. By establishing the trend of writing their own songs, the Beatlesbrought back this ancient tradition of unity of the creator and the performer.It became a standard after the Beatles for the rock bands to write their own songs.They were certainly not the first rock musicians to do this, of course, but theirphenomenal success gave a strong message to the existing or the new bands to write theirown material, and therefore, to be not only the performers, but creators of their ownsongs ( it was difficult for me to believe that even such a “self-contained” rock band asRolling Stones were not writing their own songs before they had a positive example fromthe Beatles).• Writing music together. Maybe one of the biggest differencesbetween the professional and traditional polyphonic cultures is the process of creatingmusic. Composing music professionally is a very much individual enterprise. On thecontrary, composing music in a traditional polyphonic society is a group activity. Readersmight remember the examples of creating new compositions in western Georgia,Polynesia or among Bushmen from the first part of this book. Sitting together for hoursand putting different part together to come up with a shared polyphonic composition isusual for the traditional singers.