Toward the Typology of Traditional Instrumental Music of Serbia

Abstract

This paper contains an overview of the research on traditional instrumental music in Serbia with a special focus on the latent ideas regarding typology. Namely, in comparison with traditional songs, instrumental music has not been thoroughly researched. Consequently, there is neither comprehensive systematization nor explicit typology of instrumental music. Meanwhile, the marginalization of some instruments in folklore practice has led to almost disappearance of particular genres and instrumental music styles and to the new problem of typology with historical dimension, i.e. inclusion of tradition’s dynamism. The main goal is the reaffirmation of that kind of thinking in Serbian ethnomusicological circles and the advocacy of systematization and typology in current and future projects.