ABSTRACT
Throughout Corsican history, foreign influences chiefly affected the coastal areas. In Corsica, singing and the oral poetry it supports are far more important than instrumental music, and many distinct song genres can be identified, though the free use of existing tunes across genres leads to a certain amount of overlap. Three kinds of Corsican musical instruments can be distinguished: pastoral flutes and reeds; noisemaking idiophones and membranophones; and more refined instruments, like the bagpipe and the cetera 'cittern', both introduced from Italy and used for dance music and to accompany singing. Young musicians are currently reconstructing and reviving performance on the instrument, which the violin and the guitar eclipsed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, only in turn to be eclipsed by the accordion. Corsicans loved to improvise songs in ordinary family gatherings and at fairs, and men and women competed in the art.
