Ajam Podcast #3: Musical Dialects of the Caucasus

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In this episode, Kamyar and Rustin talk to Stefan Williamson Fa, co-founder of Mountains of Tongues, a project documenting and promoting musical dialects in the South Caucasus.

Mountains of Tongues showcases traditions that defy normal categorizations of “national” or “folk” music through the use of non-conventional instruments, multiple languages, and a blending of different musical genres. Stefan shares three songs from the Mountains of Tongues archive and from his most recent fieldwork in Georgia: a Georgian-Azeri bilingual Kamancha song by Sergo Kamalov, Aşıq Nargile’s rendition of the Aşıq Qərib story, and a Azeri electric guitar solo from a wedding in Qaçağan, Georgia.

Stefan Williamson Fa recently received his PhD in Anthropology at University College London. His research focuses on performance and lamentation rituals in Turkish-speaking Shi’i communities in Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus.

(Image Credit: Mountain of Tongues LP, design by Lucy Duncombe and Kenneth Wilson)