ABSTRACT
The ambiguity of the term 'musical folklore' exists because its definition covers several approaches. First, in its original meaning this term represents the collection and inventory of oral traditions found essentially in countries where the goal was to protect, preserve and analyse an often threatened heritage. Second, represents the romantic idealisation of music genres with a bucolic character, emblematic of a nation, crystallising a nostalgia for the rural as the sector of society rendered most fragile by modernity, but also functioning as patriotic 'collective memory' on occasions such as feasts and popular performances of the kind of the Fête des Vignerons in Switzerland. Finally, the approach is assimilated in 'musical folklorism' consisting in manipulating the folk heritage – as much by political entities as by tourist promoters – for what we might call deflected ends. The stage performance of music genres which, in principle, are not supposed to be presented in such a setting is not, however, a new phenomenon.
