Onnik Dinkjian

Traditional folk is a broad umbrella for orally transmitted songs and dance tunes that circulated in rural and working-class communities before the age of mass recording. Repertoires include narrative ballads, laments, love songs, work songs, lullabies, and instrumental dance sets such as reels, jigs, hornpipes, and marches. Stylistically, traditional folk favors strophic forms, pentatonic or modal melodies (often Dorian and Mixolydian), limited harmonic movement, and strong, memorable tunes designed for communal singing and dancing. Performances range from unaccompanied solo voice to small ensembles built around fiddle, flute/whistle, pipes, concertina/accordion, guitar, banjo, and frame drum. Ornamentation, variation by verse, and flexible tempo are integral, reflecting an oral tradition where songs live through continual reinterpretation. Although it is pan‑regional, the modern idea of “traditional folk” coalesced in the 19th century through collectors and revivalists who documented vernacular music and framed it as cultural heritage.

Armenian church music is the sacred chant and liturgical repertoire of the Armenian Apostolic Church, sung primarily in Classical Armenian (Grabar) and preserved through oral transmission, medieval neumatic (khaz) notation, and later staff transcriptions. It centers on the Divine Liturgy (Badarak), the daily offices, and a vast corpus of hymns known as sharakans. Musically, the tradition is fundamentally monophonic and modal, drawing on an eight-mode (oktoechos) system with characteristically stepwise melodies, narrow to moderate ambitus, and expressive melismas. While the historical tradition is a cappella and unaccompanied, modern choral harmonizations (notably by Makar Yekmalyan and Komitas Vardapet) are also widely performed, carefully respecting the modal flavor of the original chants. The sound is solemn, luminous, and contemplative, with an emphasis on textual clarity, rhetorical pacing, and devotional atmosphere.