Moravian folk music

The "Gubernial Collecting Action" at the beginning of the 19th century was responsible for documenting folk music of the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Today tens of thousands of folk songs from Moravia are archived in the Ethnographic Division of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

[2] One of the most important elements of the traditional music of Southeastern Moravia is emotional variegation and greater rhythmic leeway.

[7] The leader and "conductor" of the cimbalom band is often a violinist, called "primáš" in Czech, who plays the leading melody with ornamentation.

The traditional line-up of hudecká muzika (string band) consists of fiddle (prim), viola (kontra) and bass.

[8] Bagpipes, gajdy in Moravian dialects, are integral to the fabric of "gajdošská muzika", often accompanied by violin (prim), viola (kontra) and double bass.

[8] Removing some typical violin features lead to the origin of an instrument nicknamed the squeaking fiddle in the former Bohemian-German area of the Jihlava region.

Other songs may require unusual instruments such as simple whistles, pipes, flutes and recorders, hurdy-gurdy and jaw harps.

Koichiro Matsuura, the General-Director of UNESCO in 2005 proclaimed the Moravian verbuňk as the part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Mankind.

[21] Following World War II and the Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948, folk songs were used as a part of the communist cultural programme.

The "off-key and creaky" music of old village musicians was often replaced by the academic and virtuosic expression of professional players,[21] typically represented by the Brněnský rozhasový orchestr lidových nástrojů (BROLN) (The Orchestra of Traditional Folk Instruments of the Brno Radio).

Traditional music partially returned to its roots in the last decade of the 20th century and slowly began to restore its distinctives.

Hradišťan, a well-known traditional folk band, later turned away from folklore and focused on fusion in various world music projects (Yas-Kaz, Dizu Plaatjies and Altai Kai collaborations among others).