Folk Music of Greenland

The Inuit and the Danish tribes of Greenland have both maintained their distinct patterns of traditional music. Country-wide folk traditions include storytelling, which changed greatly after the fundamental of the South Green land Printing Press in the year 1857.

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The folk music that has best survived European contact can be found in the east and northern of the island. It includes sacred drum dances played on an oval percuss made of a wooden frame with a bear-bladder on top. The drum dances are the only truly local music in Greenland, and are part of a root renewal in the recent times. Shamans used drums as part of their religious affairs and sometimes organized singing contests between opponents in which the performers who got the laughs from the spectators won. Inuit drum dances were a changing tradition and in the recent Greenland are being replaced by amateur theater orchestras like Silamiut, who used elements of local music with masks, face painting and other methods. Piseq are a form of personal song that comments on daily life; these are often handed down from generation to generation. The Greenlandic Inuit traditional songs are performed to tell stories play games and tease or charm others.