Balkan music – Oscar van Dillen

Balkan cartography

Let us first look at a historical map of the Balkans during Ottoman times in 1699:

To understand Balkan music, one first has to understand some cartography. Due to a turbulent past, today there are basically two interpretations of what the Balkans are:

a narrow one, including only countries around the Balkan mountains, south of the Danube;
a broader interpretation which includes areas north of the Danube and part or whole of the Anatolian peninsula as well¹.

These two interpretations are illustrated with the following two maps.

Map of the Balkans in narrow sense

The narrow interpretation of the Balkans includes mostly the Western Balkans and currently European countries, as demonstrated by the following map, which represent a eurocentric, or perhaps a “bosporophobic” view on the peninsulas: excluding one.

Map of the Balkans in broadest sense

In the following map of the Balkans the many close relationships between the people living on both peninsulas, strongly connected both musically and historically, are represented far more honestly by this blue area, which bridges the Bosporus.

Closely connected topics

Separate pages which deal with this topic concern also:

So despite the cartographical considerations, also I decided to not include music from Turkey into this page, not only because its many traditions suggest a separate page, and I do strongly recommend studying all in connection to each other, but also not to make this page overlong.

I thank also Nikola Smolenski, who helped me in compiling this page (before the overhaul).

Oscar van Dillen