Folk / traditional music in Asia
Asia is the host to the old civilizations in the planet. Traditional music in Asia has a long root in the history of mankind. Asia is the land for ancient musical instruments and rituals with traditional music. The traditional music in Asia can be divided into four regions.
1. Middle east and central Asia
2. South Asia
3. East Asia
4. North Asia
The music of first two categories have more similarity with the same roots. Raga, maqam and different type of classical traditional music in Iran, India, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Arabs countries and etc.
Some ancient musical instruments are common from Central Asia to South Europe with little difference in shape and playing technique. Dotar (or dutar or doutar) is a good example of these instruments. Tradition of story tellers as travelers is common in many part of Asia from east to west with their own local instrument. And this tradition also influenced part of musical tradition in South Europe countries like Bosnia and some Balkan countries.
Folk music in north Asia which mostly means Russia has more similarity in East European music and culture.
The music of East Asia has its own character with ancient type of instruments and musical structure, for example various types of Pentatonic scales in Japan. Or different styles of Court music in East Asia.
By checking the list below for each Asian country, you can know more about each folk music genre or instrument in each Asian country. You can also listen to some traditional songs for different regions of Asia. There are also some ethnic groups which are included in the list as they have huge tradition of folk music other than their mother country. Some of them are separated between more than one country.