Ored Recordings, an Ethnographic Label for Traditional and Local Music

Bulat Khalilov and Timur Kodzoko, the founders of Ored Recordings, discover traditional music performers through ethnographic expeditions to the towns and villages of the North Caucasus, the South Caucasus, and the south of Russia. They record them in the field and release the work in digital and physical formats.

By using the methods of ethnography and anthropology, Ored Recordings reveals the artistic potential of the traditional music of various regions and is involved not only in identifying and preserving musical culture but in forming new contexts.

The label’s residents have performed at key independent music festivals in Russia and Europe, including Bol, Fields, Arkhstoyanie, Awaz, Moscow Music Week, Le Guess Who? Unsound, and Urvakan.

The label is also involved in curatorial and educational activities, as part of which the founders have worked with Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, the project Eshkolot, the educational portal Arzamas, and many other organizations.

Today, Ored Recordings is particularly focused on questions of decolonization, horizontal connections, and regional self‑organization. Recordings from expeditions and ethnographic recordings of the past are used to create new readings of the music of the past by contemporary musicians from the Caucasus.

The main residents of the label are the Circassian storyteller and musician Zaur Nagoev, the post‑traditional groups Jrpjej and Myst, the accordionist from the Circassian diaspora in Syria Alan Shawdjan, the Karachay collective Gollu, the Ossetian ensemble Ragon, and the Chechen women’s group from Georgia Pankisi Ensemble.

Ored Recordings is a label, a non‑academic research institution, and a production center that is the basis for new collectives and projects.