Traditional Music

Traditional music encompasses the folk, ceremonial and vernacular styles rooted in the history, language and social life of a particular region or people. Transmitted largely by oral tradition and communal practice rather than notation or commerce, it is played on instruments indigenous to each culture and serves functions from storytelling and worship to work, dance and celebration. Every documented musical culture possesses such a repertory, from the ballads of the British Isles to the court and village musics of Asia and Africa. The term also names the recorded legacy of these practices, preserved through field recording and archival reissue.