WESTERN EUROPE ICELAND-GREENLAND

Greenland's two main types of folk music are Inuit, created in the tradition of the region's indigenous Inuit people, and Danish (mixing in a little influence from the U.S. and the U.K.), created by the Danes who colonized several hundred years ago and still technically rule the island. Greenland's Inuit share cultural and musical traditions with Inuit people all over the world's north. Most Greenlandic Inuit music features singing and hand-held frame drums. Greenland's musicians also use buzzers, whistles and even bull-roarers.

The main surviving Greenlandic musical tradition is the Drum Dance,  a competition during which two musicians come to the town's “Qaggi,” which is a snow-house built to host community events, and chant lighthearted songs while each beating a frame drum (made of an oval frame with a bear bladder stretched over the top as the drum head), competing to see who can get the most enthusiastic response from the audience.