Instrumental Folk Research Articles

Development and Protection of Instrumental Folk Music in the Ningxia Reach of the Yellow River Basin

The Ningxia region, located in the upper reaches of the Yellow River basin, boasts a profound tradition of Yellow River culture. This cultural heritage encompasses folk songs, instrumental music, dance, and opera. This study discusses the works and performances of folk instruments in Ningxia, such as the suona, kouxian, and niwuwa (a musical instrument made of clay similar to ocarina). This study contributes to not only the academic field but also the inheritance of excellent traditional Chinese culture as well as the prosperity of social culture. Studies on the Yellow River culture can enhance the international community’s understanding and respect for China, promoting cultural exchanges and mutual learning.

The Harmonization of Folk Songs in Kodály’s Workshop

When Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály began systematically collecting folk songs, they almost exclusively encountered monophony, which subsequently featured as their compositional inspiration. As a musical phenomenon, monophony differed sharply from the harmonically based, often overharmonized, polyphonic universe of Western music. However, they also encountered coordinated folk polyphony, in the context of instrumental folk harmonizations. Taking into account the instrumental folk music both Kodály and Bartók collected, this study compares the two main types of folk harmonizations with folk song harmonizations in the works of Kodály, whose related theoretical statements are also considered. This study offers an in-depth analysis of six fragments from Kodály’s major folk-song arrangements to highlight the features of Kodály’s folk song harmonizations.

Gender Relations in Instrumental Folk Music in Slovenia

Gender studies are an important part of ethnomusicological research, but in Slovenia, not many studies or discussions have been dedicated to this topic. The position of a woman in the second half of the 20th century in Slovenia is, on the one hand, strongly connected to the socialist social system and its policy of equality, but, on the other, the article also reveals control mechanisms that maintained hierarchical positions between genders. Several cases of women public instrumental practices are described, with a focus on a narrative of a woman bell chimer through which the complexity of gender relationships in bell chiming is discovered and explained.

Bartók's Collection of Hungarian Instrumental Folk Music and its System

Béla Bartók's collection of Hungarian instrumental folk music is known only for the Hungarian Bartók scholars and ethnomusicologists although Bartók's permanent interest in folk musical instruments, and instruments in general, manifesting itself in essays and compositions has always been evident. The term Bartók's instrumental collection implies the Hungarian instrumental folk music material that emerged as the outcome of his own collecting work and explicitly melodies performed on instruments. This report gives a survey of Bartók's work in the field by means of some randomly chosen phenomena.

The Instruments and Instrumental Folk Music of the Hungarian Minority in Slovakia in the 20th Century

I am going to discuss the folk instruments and instrumental music of Hungarians living as a national minority in Slovakia. Not only the venue of the 34th world conference of International Council for Traditional Music organised in Nitra Slovakia (June 24-July 1 1997) but also the lack of coverage at any international forum encouraged me to pick this theme. In Hungary, the assessment and collection of folk instruments and instrumental folk music began together with vocal music at the advent of modern ethnomusical research in the late 19th century. In the wake of B61a Vikir and Jinos Sepr6di, soon Bela Bart6k, Zoltan Kodily, Liszl6 Lajtha and their pupils joined in the work. 1 In the north of former Hungary, they began collecting in areas annexed later to Czechoslovakia. As is known, Kodily, brought up in Galinta, began collecting folk music in 1905 in nearby Maityusfdld, going on to the Zobor region and the G6m6r plateau. It is, however, little known in Hungary, too, that his first collections in the area included many instrumental tunes performed on instruments typical of the region. Nor is it much better known that in 1910 Bart6k collected instrumental folk music along the Ipoly river in former Hont county and in the Csall6k6z area, contributing largely to the foundations of instrumental folk music research. They immediately published the description of the instruments and a part of the tunes, which greatly enhanced the value of their work.2 World War I interrupted researches for a long time. After the Trianon Peace, the former Hungarian frontiers were immensely reduced, two-thirds of the Hungarians falling into five neighbouring countries: more than 1 mil-

Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife: Instrumental Folk Tunes in Pennsylvania

Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife: Instrumental Folk Tunes in Pennsylvania

Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife. Instrumental Folk Tunes in Pennsylvania

Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife. Instrumental Folk Tunes in Pennsylvania

Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife: Instrumental Folk Tunes in Pennsylvania

The 651 tunes presented in this book represent an important segment of the musical heritage of North America and comprise what may well be the largest collection of Anglo-Celtic-American instrumental folk music. Tunes brought over by the first settlers from England, Germany, Scotland, and Ireland remained essentially unchanged despite many variations in the less accessible parts of Pennsylvania, thus preserving a musical tradition that stretches from colonial times to the recent past. The advent of electronic media and automotive transport brought an end to the isolation that sustained that tradition, and today its music is being diluted and homogenized through outside influences.Professor Bayard began collecting tunes in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1928 by listening to local fiddlers and fifers and transcribing what they played into standard musical notation by ear. His later collecting was aided by the addition of a tape recorder in 1948. The tunes he collected, along with those furnished by his associates in this project, were then sorted and organized into the present collection of 651 (some with as many as twenty-five versions) and annotated with the aid of leading authorities and published sources.The book starts with an introduction describing the general character of the tunes, the playing techniques of the fiddlers and fifers, and the circumstances in which the tunes were played. A note on the treatment of the music explains how tunes were used for different purposes (various dance and march steps, for example) through rhythmic modifications, and also details how fingering in traditional fiddling is related to key and pitch. The 651 tunes, arranged roughly by function (i.e., by the type of dance with which they are most often associated) are each labeled to show whether they were played on the fiddle, the fife, or both, and each tune version is identified by when, from whom, and by whom it was collected. An appendix connects the Pennsylvania tunes to other ones by giving transcriptions of forty-four related tunes from Missouri, Indiana, Massachusetts, Prince Edward Island, and County Cork, Ireland. Biographical sketches of the performers, a list of sources and an index of tune titles conclude the book.The authentic tunes of the Bayard collection will be invaluable both to the folklorists and to composers, performers, or students of music who seek understanding of the American idiom. Notes following each of the transcriptions link the tunes to others of Anglo-Celtic provenance, as well as to continental European airs.

Philander Seward's "Musical Deposit" and the History of American Instrumental Folk Music

Philander Seward's "Musical Deposit" and the History of American Instrumental Folk Music

Supplementary Jingling in the Instrumental Folk Music of Afghanistan

Ordinarily we suppose that an accompaniment to a melody—in folk music as in art music—is provided by a groundwork which is harmonic or rhythmic, or both. This basis holds together the whole of the melody, either by underlining the harmonic (or rhythmic) idea which lies more or less hidden in the melody itself, or by creating the harmonic (or rhythmic) idea, if the melody itself moves in a very free manner.In some more highly developed styles of folk music, as well as in those of art music, we find this groundwork strengthened and intensified by the heterogeneous sound of a special instrument which stays more or less in the background. The most outstanding example of what I mean is the well known Gipsy band of southeastern Europe with the sounding background of the cimbalom (dulcimer). A similar principle can be seen in the harpsichord of the Baroque orchestra.

Hill Country Tunes: Instrumental Folk Music of Southwestern Pennsylvania

Hill Country Tunes: Instrumental Folk Music of Southwestern Pennsylvania