Today is the International Music Day. Music is an inseparable part of life, it is what no one could imagine life without.

Meanwhile, Albanian folk music has a very interesting history, the way this type of music has always lived with the Albanian people, being inherited from generation to generation and continuing to live always with the Albanian people.

Albanian folk music is one of the most precious assets of the country. In the descriptions of foreign researchers who came to Albania during the 18th-19th centuries, it has been roughly concluded that the main wealth of Albania is musical folklore.

Musical folklore leads an active life even today, while traces of its antiquity have been proven since the XIV-XIII centuries BC. In various archaeological objects – sculptures, bas-reliefs, terracotta, etc. – popular tools, used to this day, dancers, singers, characteristic costumes, etc. are clearly depicted.

Albanian musical folklore is extremely rich, which is expressed in the existence of vocal music from monophonic to polyphonic; in popular instrumental music; loud music and instruments; music for accompanying folk dances, etc. Added to these is a large fund of folk instruments classified into the four groups already known as ideophones, membranophones, chordophones, areophones.

Albanian musical folklore lives its life in a specific division, related to the forms of musical expression and the main types of instruments used. The Shkumbin River, which runs through Albania, apart from separating the country’s two main dialects in Gegë to the North of Shkumbin and Toskë to the South of Shkumbin, also serves as a natural border for the classification of the typology of musical folklore.

Folklore has survived for centuries, although it has been transmitted and preserved in popular memory from generation to generation. By learning folklore, we learn how the people have progressed and developed, how they have experienced their historical destinies, what they have valued, etc.

/k.s/