The Message of the Folk Music of the Finno-Ugrian Language Relatives of the Hungarians

Abstract

Of the peoples speaking Finno-Ugrian languages, the closest language relatives are the Ob-Ugrians. From among the further Finno-Ugrian language relatives we introduce the archaic layer of Komi (Zyrian), Udmurt (Votyak), Mari (Cheremis), Mordvinian, Estonian, Finnish, and Saami (Lapp) folk music. There are both similarities (narrow range, diatonic set of notes, etc.) and differences among them. Perhaps similarities found in them are due to preserving archaic layers of music and not to linguistic language relationships.