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8Foreword and AcknowledgmentsApril 26, 1977, Tuesday, was a sunny day in Tbilisi, capital of the former USSRRepublic of Georgia. I was coming down from the mountain ‘Mtatsminda’ (lit. “SaintMountain”), an impressive 500 metres high mountain range that dominates the verycentre of Tbilisi. I was accompanying my guest, a musicologist student from the LvovConservatory (Western Ukraine) Natalia Shvets, who happened to be at the graduatestudents’ conference, which was taking place at that time at Tbilisi State Conservatory.Walking down the narrow and steep streets of old Tbilisi, I was teaching Natalia thebeautiful Georgian healing song “Batonebo” [“Lords”]. Everything was going well,Natalia had a good musical ear and soon we were able to sing the tantalising dissonantharmonies of the healing song together. The only problem was that, as with most of theGeorgian traditional songs, Batonebo needs at least three singers to convey all threenecessary parts of the song. Well, there we were - only two of us, walking down theempty street of Old Tbilisi and singing two parts of the three-part song. And thensuddenly, “out of the blue” sky of that Tbilisi spring afternoon came the bass voicecomplementing the full three-part harmony of the healing song. We looked around andthere he was, a Georgian male in his thirties, leaning over the balcony on the second flooron the left side of the street and helping two lone singers with the bass part. We waved toeach other and continued on our way down the street, still accompanied by his bass.This is by no means a “life-changing experience” (particularly in Georgia wherealmost everyone sings in harmony), but I still remember it as one of the nice moments oflife, when a song suddenly brings together people who never met before. Actually, thereal reason I can pinpoint the exact day when this happened after so many years isbecause I have been writing a diary every (well, almost) single day for the last 30 years.My good friend and colleague, arguably the most influential ethnomusicologist ofthe Soviet Union, Izaly Zemtsovsky from Sankt Petersburg (currently at StanfordUniversity) had a somewhat similar experience in Abkhazia, the north-western part ofGeorgia. Let us listen to how he described his experience in his own words: “… I wouldlike to share with you what I saw in the hamlet of Gudauta in the summer of 1978: anAbkhazian, dozing as he waited for the bus, in his sleep immediately began intoning adrone as soon as he heard the distant sound, barely audible in the cavernous emptywaiting room, of a solo voice singing in the manner of his native land, a song thatrequired a drone.” (Zemtsovsky, 2006a). [For non-professional readers – the “drone” is along sustained sound, often (but not always) sung as the lowest part of a polyphonic song.Drone can be played on instruments as well]The following tongue-in-cheek story comes from the decorated Georgiantraditional singer and the leader of the world-renowned Rustavi Choir, AnzorErkomaishvili. Let us listen to his own words: “A big group of artists of GeorgianPhilharmony arrived from Tbilisi to our village [Anzor Erkomaishvili’s native village isMakvaneti, in Guria, the mountainous Black Sea-side region of western Georgia]. Aftertheir performance a traditional ‘supra’ [banquet-like Georgian traditional feast at a longtable with toasts and singing] was organised in the spacious room of ‘Kolkhoz’ [SovietCollective Farm] officials. We (village singers) were also invited. The guests from theState Philharmony toasted our singing and said they enjoyed Gurian traditional songsvery much, although I somehow had an impression that at that moment the guests were