Spain

Scholarship in traditional Spanish music has often focused on individual, localized traditions at the expense of a broad overview of Spanish music culture. Folk musics in the north of Spain tend to share similarities with European folksong style by utilizing mostly major and some minor keys, syllabic settings, and symmetric phrases. The principal Spanish song genres are associated with the annual ritual calendar. Much traditional instrumental music in Spain is monophonie. Though Spain is well known for the guitar, the Spanish instrumental tradition relies upon flutes, shawms, and bagpipes, with rhythm provided by many types of frame drum, and a festive textural layer added by metallic idiophones including bells and triangles, particularly favored for religious occasions. Most studies of folk cancioneros, collections, and recordings have sought to define regional or generic styles, trace the roots of extant folk melodies, or detect folk elements in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art music, especially the zarzuela.