Folk instruments are an integral part of the traditional culture of a country, however, in order to understand what kind of instruments can be considered folk, it is necessary to turn to history and folk music.
Instruction manual
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Pay attention to unique sounds in this or that folk music. First of all, those instruments are called folk that were created and widely used in any particular nation, in a particular country. These musical instruments can be heard in the traditional music of a particular state; they give this music uniqueness and recognition.
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For example, the well-known Scottish bagpipe makes it possible to distinguish Scottish folk music from, for example, Russian music from the first sounds, where mainly spoons, balalaikas, harp, rattles sound, etc. The famous Ukrainian folk instrument is the bandura, the Georgian is the chunguri, you can hear cymbals in East European music, a gong is known in Southeast Asia, and Kazakh folk music certainly gives out dombra. It is customary to consider the sitar as the Indian national instrument, the pan-flute as the Chinese, the banjo as the American, and the fluer as the Moldavian.
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Do not forget about the "ethnic" folk instruments. Ethnic community and a long historical and cultural contact determine the existence of "ethnic" folk instruments, which are an indispensable element of the instrumental composition in folk music of several countries at once. For example, the whistle metal pipe was created in England, but was popular in Ireland, and its analogue under the name “pipe” is known in Russia. Both whistle and flute can be heard mainly in folk music of all three countries. Instruments such as duduk, tar, saz, kemancha and zurna are an integral part of the folk music of Azerbaijan and Armenia, and in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan the set of folk instruments is almost the same.
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Pay attention to the use of folk instruments in our time. As a rule, folk instruments are used for the game today, you can distinguish them from modern brothers in several ways. Firstly, folk instruments are much older. For example, a balalaika is several centuries older than a guitar, just like a recorder is older than an orchestra flute. Secondly, folk instruments can be heard performed mainly by folk music. It can be music interpreted in a modern way, weighted by electric guitars, processed using electronic effects, but it will be created on the basis of folk motifs. Thirdly, authentic folk instruments are exclusively acoustic, unlike electric guitars, electric violins, etc.
