The Music of Armenia, Volume 5: Folk Music

The folk music of Armenia is so diverse that a single recording is not enough to encompass it. Rural work songs, urban folk songs, contemporary protest songs from the disputed Karabakh region, laments for lost parts of Western Armenia, songs of emigration, and of course, the universal topic of love and love lost. With such a range of songs to cover, producer David Parsons needed three full recordings to document the current state of Armenian folk music. This volume contains two of the three; the contemporary folk music of the Nagorno-Karabakh region takes up a volume by itself.

Unlike the earlier volumes in this series, which have featured a single ensemble or soloist, the folk songs and dances in this collection are performed by no fewer than two ensembles and a number of vocal soloists. As with all folk music, these songs and dances reflect the people's own history and their land. Songs about the landscape and the various rivers, mountains, and regions of Armenia comprise one of the most distinctive parts of their folk repertoire; the plowing and farming songs are especially haunting and memorable. The area known as Western Armenia has proven to be a particularly fertile ground for folk song and dance. This region is the subject of much nostalgic and patriotic song. The music of the ashugh, the wandering poet/minstrels of Armenia, is also part of the folk music tradition, although, typically for Armenian music, it can also be considered a type of classical music tradition.