Ored Recordings preserves Circassian music as TAL prepares decade compilation

Ored Recordings, co-founded by Bulat Khalilov and Timur Kodzoko to document Circassian and North Caucasian music, now operates from Göttingen in Germany. Düsseldorf-based label TAL will release Music from the Caucasus – The Archive of Ored Recordings 2013–2023 this month. The founders describe their work as "punk ethnography": recording religious chants, laments and displacement songs at family gatherings, local festivals and in people’s kitchens to resist the erasure of Circassian culture.

Khalilov recalls that at a May 2022 demonstration in Nalchik a policeman approached him and said, "Are you from Ored Recordings? I follow you on Instagram. You’re doing great." The label began in 2013 and issued its first record in 2014, documenting a festival for the folk musician Aslanbech Chich, and since then has released a record each year on or around 21 May, the Circassian Day of Mourning, foregrounding diaspora voices.

The music Ored documents centres on solo or small-group singing — laments, mourning songs, historical narratives, ritual chants and songs about work, resistance and displacement — relying on modal melodies, sustained tones and subtle ornamentation. Instruments such as the pkhachich and shichepshin typically support the voice rather than lead it.

The founders travelled with the French film-maker Vincent Moon in 2011 for a documentary, Circassia: Sonic Exploration of an Ancient Land, which captured some of this variety.

Key Topics

Culture, Ored Recordings, Circassia, Bulat Khalilov, Timur Kodzoko, Tal