ABSTRACT
Romania, with the Danube River to the south and the Black Sea to the east forming natural boundaries, has an area of nearly 238,000 square kilometers and a population of about 23 million. Romanians trace their ancestry and language to the Romans, though their ethnic origins include a mixture of peoples. Most performances of Romanian folk music, song, and dance are directly tied to rituals and other traditional occasions: winter customs, agrarian rites and feasts, and social and ritual events. Romanian musical instruments began as remarkably simple natural objects: a leaf, a blade of grass, a sliver of birch bark, the bony scale of a fish placed between or in front of the lips and blown to produce a shrill, clear sound with wide melodic range. Most Romanian folk music is performed monophonically, but polyphony and harmony occur in some vocal, instrumental, or vocal-instrumental group performances.
