Where is folk music played

Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Kim Ruehl. She is also the Community Manager for the folk music magazine NoDepression. Updated February 13, Top Alternative Albums of the s.

Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for LiveAbout. Folk tunes are now often written down, and they have influenced other kinds of music, so that the differences between various types of music are harder to see. This means that small communities such as villages or families would relax by playing and singing music together. People would often make up a new song or new piece of music, or make changes to music that they already knew.

In this way music was always changing. People would get musical ideas from other groups nearby. This is why folk music from neighbouring countries often sound similar. Ballads were a popular kind of folk music. Sometimes they had a refrain after each verse so that everybody could join in. Ballads told stories of love, myths or folklore. This is how stories were handed down from one generation to another. Instrumental folk music was used for dancing.

Some of the instruments may have been very simple, such as a pair of sticks, rattle or a simple drum. Some singing was polyphonic , i.

Very often two voices would sing in parallel going up and down together. In countries such as Russia persons sings in three or four parts, e. In countries such as Britain this polyphonic tradition did not exist. Folk songs there were sung by one singer, unaccompanied. Folk music used different scales. Cymbals — slightly concave round brass plates that are either struck against another one or struck with a stick to make a ringing or clashing sound. There are almost 50 different bowed stringed instruments in China.

The more popular are: erhu, zhonghu, banhu, jinghu, gehu. There are over 20 different plucked or struck stringed instruments in China, but the more popular are: guqin, yueqin, yangqin, guzheng, ruan, konghou, liuqin, pipa, zhu, sanxian. There are many kinds of Chinese opera that are related to different geographic regions and each have a distinct flavor and style.

However, to the untrained ear, each type will sound strikingly similar and in fact, all Chinese operatic styles do share many overall traits. They all tend to focus on a high-pitched female voice, elaborate costumes adorned with masks or full-face makeup usually with accentuated eye and lip color , and ornate headpieces.

For a more detailed, comprehensive article on Chinese opera. Two classic characteristics of all forms of Chinese opera are the visual elements of costumes and makeup. The exaggerated face paints are meant to scare away the enemy and each color has a different meaning. They symbolize a character's role, fate, and also help illustrate the character's emotional state and general character.

Makeup can include a completely painted face or only painted in the center connecting the eyes and the nose. White — perhaps surprising to observers in the West, white does not carry the traditionally western meaning of purity, innocence, and good. Instead, it represents something evil, treacherous, and sinister. White painted faces usually represent the villain of the show.

The larger the white painted area, the crueler the character. Another unique characteristic, especially to an operatic art form, is the amount and integration of physically challenging, acrobatic moves incorporated into the performance. While perhaps not considered a true ethnicity, Cantonese people do speak their own language, have their own cuisine, and their own heritage different from the Han.

Included in that heritage is unique art and music, the latter of which is usually much livelier in pace and happier in tone and spirit than music from other provinces — which is typical of Cantonese character. In Guangdong, two traditional genres of music are Teochew and Hakka, but there are many more.

Much of the music in Yunnan is somewhat similar to other music found in South East Asian countries like Myanmar and Thailand; however, some of the music is similar to forms found in southern China. Kuaiban is similar to rap and other forms of rhythmic music found in other cultures.

Of all the forms of music found within China, perhaps the music from Tibet is the most well known in most Western countries. Monks use music to recite various sacred texts and for festival celebrations. Considered relaxing, these bowls are often found in meditation music both within and outside of Tibet. Lag-na — a framed drum on a wooden stick, struck with a mallet producing a medium-pitched sound. The Uyghurs' best-known musical form is the Muqam, a symphony-type suite of twelve sections related to Uzbek and Tajik forms and built on a seven-note scale.

Instruments typically include dap a drum , dulcimers, fiddles and lutes and the musicians have some freedom for personal accompaniment, especially in the percussion. The Mongolian culture found within China is somewhat similar to that found in the country of Mongolia.

Mongolian folk songs have a "long tune" and a "short tune" and use a variety of stringed instruments such as Morin Khuur a type of fiddle. An ideological music with political or nationalistic content, sometimes adapted to a grand orchestral presentation. Created in the early to midth century, this became the leading music genre on radio and television after the Communist party came to power until the s.

During the height of the Cultural Revolution, political music was the most prevalent style and became known as Revolutionary Music with a near cult status under pro-Communist ideology.