People often associate French music with opera, but its rich folk music tradition allows listeners to enjoy songs about love, marriage, and death.
Indigenous folk music can be found throughout Corsica and Auvergne; its tradition remains alive today.
Indigenous Folk Music
Indigenous Folk Music (IFFM) is an oral tradition-inspired form of music known as traditional. This broad genre encompasses numerous styles and traditions from different cultures around the world.
Society and culture often incorporate music into celebrations for events or rituals – from calendric ceremonies and banquet giveaways, to calendric or life cycle rituals and feast celebrations.
Tradition music can often be traced back to its source in one culture or region over several decades ago, often through oral tradition that passes down from generation to generation.
French-speaking Canada is experiencing a revival of folk traditions to meet tourist demand for authentic Canadian music. Some groups specialize in early 20th-century melodies with piano accordion accompaniment.
Bagpipes
Bagpipes are an integral part of culture in many nations around the world. Most commonly associated with Scotland and Ireland, they have also found popularity across Northern Europe and Southwest Asia.
Composed of four primary parts, bagpipes consist of: a blowstick, bag, chanter and sometimes drones. Air is continually supplied through the blowstick to compress in the bag before sending sound through chanter and drones into the atmosphere for producing sound.
A chanter is the part of a pipe used for musical performance by its player, covering or exposing various holes to produce notes. A typical open-ended chanter does not allow rests between notes and cannot provide volume control.
To counter these limitations, a piper may utilize technical movements to break up notes and create accents and articulations; this practiced technique requires great mastery to master.
Hurdy Gurdy
The hurdy gurdy (also referred to as Vielle A Roue or Wheel Fiddle) is one of the oldest stringed instruments. Originating in medieval Europe, this keyboard-inspired string instrument was the precursor for later stringed instruments with keyboard principles applied directly.
The sound produced by the hurdy-gurdy is produced by cranking a wheel with a handle to set strings into continuous vibration, with one melody string capable of playing tunes when stopped by keys along its length adding further to its soundscape.
European nations saw its rise to fame around 1200, when its use by blind beggars and street musicians first spread throughout Europe. France in particular became famous for this instrument.
Modern hurdy-gurdies can be constructed of solid woods or combinations of different materials, and manufactured in both the US and Canada by select builders. Finding an experienced maker before purchasing one is key as poorly made instruments may prove challenging to play.
Accordion
The accordion is a musical instrument that uses free vibrating reeds to generate sound, secured to metal plates with rivets.
These pieces are then assembled and glued into a long reed-box that projects into the bellows, where air passes over and through reed before passing into slot on plate, causing it to vibrate, producing that characteristic accordion sound.
Most modern accordions feature a leather or plastic flap on one of their slots to prevent air from flowing backwards and causing the reed to bend instead of vibrate.
Based on its design, an accordion may feature either two or three treble reed banks. To indicate this fact, switches located near the treble keyboard typically display LMM or LMMH to indicate which sets of reed sets there are (for instance).