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88During our 1999 fieldwork in Georgia we (Nino Tsitsishvili and myself) speciallyrecorded one of the most popular and not-so-difficult songs “I am going to Guria” fromtwo of the brilliant improvisers of the Gurian song, Anzor Erkomaishvili from the famousErkomaishvili family (leader of famous “Rustavi” choir), and Vazha Gogoladze fromChokhatauri. Nino and I provided two parts and the Gurian master-singers were asked toperform a few versions of each part of the song: easier, moderately improvised and veryimprovised versions. For those particularly interested in the improvisational techniques ofGurian singers, a comparison of all these versions could be highly interesting. Here is thevery simple version of the song to give the reader an idea of it:Ex. 34. Mival Guriashi. [I am going to Guria] Simple version (transcribed byJoseph Jordania)Here are only four versions of the bass part that can be performed with this song.Although we did record the variations of two top parts as well, it is obvious that the basspart has the biggest improvisational freedom, biggest number of versions (here are onlytwo from each singer), and the biggest differences between the versions: