For over thirty years The Rustavi Ensemble, under the artistic direction of Anzor Erkomaishvili, have been painstaking in collecting and sometimes recreating the songs, instrumental music and dance of all the regions of Georgia which were the domains of separate tribes and therefore unique musical traditions. The songs on this recording were chosen from an anthology entitled '100 Georgian Folk Songs' which had been commissioned by Melodiya, the Soviet recording company, in the mid 1980's. The compiler was Ted Levin who, with Anzor, picked a wide stylistic representation of the three part polyphony which is unique to the area. The music sounds Eastern and Western, religious and secular, modern and archaic all at the same time. Among the singing techniques on this disc you'll find a unique, high-register, sustained yodel called krimanchuli to be a completely original sound found nowhere else in the world. It is amazing!