Indigenous music is a term for the traditional music of the indigenous peoples of the world, that is, the music of an "original" ethnic group that inhabits any geographic region alongside more recent immigrants who may be greater in number. The term therefore depends upon the political role an ethnic group plays rather than upon its strictly musical characteristics, for all further criteria (territory, race, history, subsistence lifestyle, etc.) defining indigenous peoples can also be applied to majority cultures.
Societies defined as, or defining themselves as, "indigenous" are found in every inhabited climate zone and continent of the world. Some important articles are:
- Music of Africa, especially the non-European, Asian or Arab-derived traditions
- Maori music of New Zealand
- Music of the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia
- Music of the indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean
- Native American music of the United States and Inuit, Métis and First Nation music of Canada
Famous quotes containing the words indigenous and/or music:
“What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)