Folk/traditional music

[willcowskitz]

Do you listen to folk music and which particular cultures have produced the most beautiful music to your liking?

Personally I like Hungarian, Romanian and Russian gypsy music, traditional Russian dances, Bulgarian and Finnish women choir music, Ukrainian traditional (from medieval to classical period) compositions and Polish darker shaded moody traditional pieces such as dances (rarely polka though), and Swedish folk music. Slavic music has the characteristic dark colours in it that it often touches me, gypsys are temperamentic and seem to share some sort of love for nature, air and fire with me (at least in their music) and that's why it often touches me.

[JK]

Personally I like English folk music, this probably has something to do with my being English, however I do think that it captures a lot of the English countryside and lanscape. I particularly like how composers such as Vaughn-Williams and George Butterworth capture this in their music and are clearly influenced by folk harmony and melody. I also like Romanian and Hungarian gypsy music. Folk music is of course very important to any country as it is induvidual to a country and varies widely throughout a country itself. Folk musicians also facinate me as they are incredibly talented, able to improvise ensemble pieces on the spot.