Brian Fairley is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, where he teaches in the Music and History departments. In his work on traditional singing from the Republic of Georgia in the Caucasus, Brian brings together approaches from ethnomusicology, historical musicology, sound studies, and media archaeology. His manuscript in progress, Channeling Voices: Media, Difference, and the Search for Georgian Polyphony excavates a series of experimental recordings of Georgian music from 1916 to today, showing how prominent scholars and scientists repeatedly tried to capture this elusive musical tradition on record. In a narrative spanning the Habsburg, Romanov, and Soviet empires—and reaching forward to Georgia’s post-independence present—this book rewrites the early history of multitrack sound technology while untangling thorny questions of race, nation, and musical identity in an intellectually vital crossroads of Eurasia. You can hear him discussing his work on the podcasts The Eurasian Knot (produced at REEES) and High Theory. He is currently at work producing a series of podcast episodes for Eurasian Knot based on the “Auditory Cultures of World Socialism” symposium held in February 2026.
Brian’s research has received funding from the Social Science Research Council’s International Dissertation Research Fund and the Wenner Gren Foundation. His doctoral dissertation at New York University received awards from the International Musicological Society and the journal Ab Imperio. His articles and reviews have appeared in Ethnomusicology, the Journal of Sonic Studies, and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, among other venues
