During the 9th International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony Frank Scherbaum (University of Potsdam/Germany), Nana Mzhavanadze (Ilia State University/Georgia)  and Elguja Dadunashvili (University of Jena/Germany) presented a new web-based, long-term archive of audio, video, and larynx-microphone field recordings of traditional Georgian singing, praying and lamenting with special emphasis on Svaneti.

Since all the performers which were recorded during the 3-month field expedition which was carried out by Frank Scherbaum and Nana Mzhavanadze in the summer of 2016  agreed in writing that the recordings of their performances can be used for research, education and other non-commercial purposes, the IRCTP is happy to announce that the first version of this unique collection can now be accessed at

https://lazardb.gbv.de/search?ot=objekttyp&p=1,28

Please be aware, however, that the meta data for this archive (e.g. information about the lyrics of the songs and context information) is still incomplete and  will gradually be filled in the future.

It might also be of interest to researchers and practitioners  of Traditional Georgian Vocal music to check out the preliminary version of a new “research repository“, which provides access to a selected set of examples from the above data collection in a low-resolution, but very user friendly form.

https://www.audiolabs-erlangen.de/resources/MIR/2018-ISMIR-LBD-ThroatMics

The full data collection will also be made available in this form in the future.

Finally, researchers and practitioners of Georgian Chant might also be interested in the collection of processed recordings made at the Tbilisi State Conservatory with master chanter Artem Erkomaishvili in 1966 which are available at:

https://www.audiolabs-erlangen.de/resources/MIR/2017-GeorgianMusic-Erkomaishvili

In case you find the material in any of these archives useful for your own work, please provide feedback to the IRCTP and/or Frank Scherbaum (fs@geo.uni-potsdam.de) or Nana Mzhavanadze (nanateknada@gmail.com) to help to improve this new service in the future.