This week our class takes us to one of the world's “roughest neighborhoods” – the Caucasus Mountains. Though we tip our toes into Azerbaijan and Armenian music – we sing songs this season from both – we're really going to put our focus on Georgia.

The country Georgia is located in the Caucasus Mountains beside Azerbaijan and Armenia, between the Black and Caspian Seas, and also between three empires -- the Persians, the Ottomans and the Russians -- which were quick to conquer. The countries of the South Caucasus are now independent. Each of the three nations of the Southern Caucasus has its own language, its own culture and its own history. Each also has its own long list of historic struggles, and each has had to face them and press ahead in its own unique way. The three have often had the inclination to unite, first in an unsuccessful attempt after World War I to form the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, then, within the USSR, as part of the Transcaucasian Federation, which disbanded in 1936--but unfortunately, as of late, each of these little countries has had a hard time living beside its neighbors in peace.