The Republic of Lithuania is a republic in northeastern Europe. One of the three Baltic States along the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland to the south, and the Kaliningrad Oblast (region) of Russia to the southwest.


Lithuanian folk music is based around songs (dainos), which include most commonly romantic and wedding songs. These songs were performed most commonly by women, either in groups or alone, and in parallel chords or unison. Duophonic songs are common in the renowned sutartines tradition of Aukštaitija, a region in the northeast of Lithuania. Another style of Lithuanian folk music is called rateliai, a kind of round dance. Instrumentation includes kankles, a kind of zither that accompanies sutartines, rateliai, waltzes, quadrilles and polkas, and fiddles, (including a bass fiddle called the basetle) and a kind of whistle called the lumzdelis; recent importations, beginning in the late 19th century, including the concertina, accordion and bandoneon. Sutartino is accompanied by the skuduciai, a form of panpipes played by a group of people, as well as wooden trumpets (ragai and dandytes). The kankles is an extremely important folk instrument, which differs in the number of strings and performance techniques across the country. Other traditional instruments include the svilpas whistle, drums and tabalas (a percussion instrument like a gong), sekminiu ragelis (bagpipe) and the pusline, a musical bow made from a pig's bladder filled with dried peas.

The rateliai round dances have long been an extremely important part of Lithuanian folk culture, traditionally performed without instrumental accompaniment. Since the 19th century, however, fiddle, basetle, lamzdeliai and kankles came to accompany the dances, while modern groups also incorporate bandoneon, accordion, concertina, mandolin, balalaika, clarinet, cornet, guitar and harmonica. During the Soviet era, dance ensembles used box kankles and a modified clarinet called the birbynes; the Soviet ensembles were ostensibly folk-based, but were modernized and sanitized and used harmonized and denatured forms of traditional styles.

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