Ajam Podcast #3: Musical Dialects of the Caucasus

Ajam Media Collective Podcast

In this episode, Kamyar and Rustin talk to Stefan Williamson Fa, co-founder of [Mountains of Tongues](https://www.facebook.com/mountainsoftongues/), 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.