Caucasian Folk Music

Caucasian folk music gathers the traditional musics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, three neighbouring cultures with sharply distinct systems. Georgia is known for three-voice polyphonic singing over drone, Armenia for monodic song and the mournful duduk oboe of *Djivan Gasparyan*, and Azerbaijan for mugham, the modal improvisation art sung by a khananda such as *Alim Qasimov* with tar and kamancha. Village dance tunes, epic and lyric song, ashug minstrelsy and Sufi-inflected devotion complete a region where music marks feasting, mourning and national identity with unusual intensity.