Princes of Lazica is a journey into the fascinating musical world of the Pontian region, bordering the black sea. Native Greek communities have lived their for centuries, developing a unique music landscape, that, whilst deeply connected to that of the rest of the Greek world due to its roots in Byzantine modal music, has developed its own unique peculiarities.

Chief among them are the unusual, asymmetric rhythmic signatures of Asia Minor. Whilst they are also present in Greece proper, some of those rhythms are unique to the Pontian communities, such as this 5 beat rhythm that can often be hard to dance to for a Mykonian or a Cretan Greek.

The melody itself is a traditional Laz air, Furtunashen Gevulur.

Laz music, whilst of the same Black Sea musical ecosystem as Pontian Greek music, is differentiated by its ties to the Kartvelian peoples of Georgia. Indeed, the Laz are Kartvelians, and speak a language closely related to Georgian. Due to this cultural proximity, their tradition involves vocal polyphony, which in this case, is of the same Ison style as found in other parts of the Greek world: the drone vocals maintain the tonic and drop to the subtonic in moments of cadence to create a feeling of descent towards melodic conclusion.

The links to Georgian music cause Laz music nowadays to use properly Georgian instruments, such as the pandouri, which serves as the basis for the ison-drone accompanying the whole song.

The bagpipe heard here is the touloumi, the powerful bagpipe of the Black Sea, characterised by its unequal second interval, rendering it a microtonal instrument.