User:Hustle77/Music of Karadeniz

Music of Karadeniz, The northern Turkish region along the coastline of the Black Sea ("Karadeniz" in Turkish) is home to plenty of local musical folklore with vocals, lyrical themes, and native instruments typically evoking the sea culture and rural settings of the area. These include fishing villages, tea plantations, stone and wood housing, and mountain plateaus, the latter home to the traditional horon circle folk dances from the historical Pontus region.

Though nowadays the overwhelming majority of the region's population is Turkish, the eastern part of the region is inhabited by the Laz people, who speak a Kartvelian language related to Georgian; Muslim Georgians and Chveneburi; the Hemshin, some of whom speak the archaic Homshetsi dialect of Armenian; as well as communities of Pontic Muslim Greeks.

Instruments
The instrument most frequently associated with the Black Sea Region is the Pontic kemenche, a bowed lute which (or a variation of) is also used in Greek Folk Music, Armenian Folk Music, Georgian Folk Music, and Azerbaijani Music. The name stems from that of the related Iranian bowed string instrument kamānche, Persian for "small bow". Aside from the kemenche, other characteristic instruments include the tulum or guda, a bagpipe popularly used by the Laz; and the garmon, a button accordion, in the Artvin province.