Albania is located in southeastern Europe, bordering the Adriatic Sea and Ionian Sea, between Greece in the south and Montenegro and Kosovo to the north.
Albanian music is a combination of the music of Southeastern Europe, especially Turkish music as the Ottoman Empire ruled Albania for over 500 years.
Albanian Folk music
Albanian folk music includes northern Gheg traditions and southern Labs and Tosks. Albanian folk songs comprise heroic epics, lullabies, love songs, wedding music, work songs and other kinds of songs.
Epic songs in northern Albania include këngë trimash (songs of bravery), këngë kreshnikësh, ballads and maje krahi (cries). The most traditional form of epic poetry is called Rapsodi Kreshnike (Poems of Heroes). These epic poems are sung, accompanied by a lahuta, a one-stringed fiddle. It is rarely performed in modern Albania, but is found in the northern highlands.
In Dibër and Kërçovë in Macedonia, the çifteli is used. It is a two-stringed instrument in which one string is used for the drone and the other one for the melody. Other musical instruments include the zumarë (reed), an unusual kind of clarinet.
The maje-krahi songs were originally used by mountain dwellers to communicate over wide distances, but are now seen as regular songs. Maje-krahi songs require the full range of the voice.
The music of southern Albania is polyphonic. Vlorë in the southwest has one of the most unique vocal traditions in the area, with four sections (taker, thrower, turner and drone) that combine to create a complex and emotionally cathartic melody.
South Albania is also known for funeral laments with a chorus and one to two soloists with overlapping, mournful voices. There is a prominent folk love song tradition in the south, in which performers use free rhythm and consonant harmonies, elaborated with ornamentation and melisma.
The Tosk people are known for ensembles consisting of violins, clarinets, llautë (a kind of lute) and def.
Southern instrumental music includes the sedate kaba, an ensemble-style form led by a clarinet or violin alongside accordions and llautës. The kaba is an improvised and melancholic style with melodies.
The ethnic Greek population of Dropulli performs music that is very similar to the music of Epirus in Greece.
Albanian Folk Iso-polyphony
Traditional Albanian polyphonic music can be divided into two major stylistic groups as performed by the Ghegs of northern Albania and the Tosks and Labs living in the southern part of the country.
The term iso is related to the ison of Byzantine church music and refers to the drone accompanying polyphonic singing.
The drone is performed in two ways: among the Tosks, it is always continuous and sung on the syllable ’e’, using staggered breathing, while among the Labs, the drone is sometimes sung as a rhythmic tone, performed to the text of the song.
Rendered mainly by male singers, the music traditionally accompanies a wide range of social events, such as weddings, funerals, harvest feasts, religious celebrations and festivals such as the well-known Albanian folk festival in Gjirokastra.
Albanian iso-polyphony is characterized by songs consisting of two solo parts, a melody and a countermelody with a choral drone. The structure of the solo parts varies according to the different ways of performing the drone, which has a great variety of structures, especially in the popular style adopted by all groups performing this music.
Over the last few decades, the modest rise of cultural tourism and the growing interest of the research community in this unique folk tradition have contributed to the revival of Albanian iso-polyphony. However, the tradition is adversely affected by poverty, the absence of legal protection and the lack of financial support for practitioners, threatening the transmission of the vast repertoire of songs and techniques.
The rural exodus of young people to the bigger cities and abroad in search of jobs compounds this danger. Given these conditions, at the present time, the transmission of this tradition is maintained through professional folk artists, rather than within the family structure. Source: UNESCO
Albanian Musicians
