Country

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Country in south-east Europe. Under Ottoman rule from 1385, Albanians proclaimed their independence in 1912. This was recognized by international conferences in 1913 and again after World War I. The country was occupied by Italy from April 1939 and during World War II by Germany. In ...

Country in North Africa. Algeria is the second-largest country in the African continent, with an area of 2,381,741 km² and a population of 31·6 million (2000). Its wide musical diversity reflects its geographic proximity to Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Tunisia and Western Sahara, as well as its physical and historical links with Europe. Sunni Islam is the state religion, and a regional form of Arabic is used, although French and Berber are also widely spoken. Most of the country's inhabitants live in the large cities of the ...

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(Port. Républica de Angola). Country in south-central Africa. It has an area of 1·25 million km² and a population of 12·78 million (2000 estimate). Angola was a Portuguese colony during the first half of the 20th century, declared an overseas province in 1972 and achieved independence in ...

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Country in the Caucasus of Central Asia of 86,600 km², with an estimated population of 7·83 million (2000). Since 1828 Azerbaijan has consisted of two parts; one forms a province of Iran, whilst the other, which was a Soviet socialist republic from 1920...

An independent state, consisting of an archipelago of islands, in the Arabian Gulf.

European country, independent since 1830. See under Low Countries.

Country in south-eastern Europe. Located in the Balkan peninsula, it has an area of 51,209 km2 and a population of 3,791,662 (2013 census, preliminary results). It is believed that a medieval Bosnian state was constituted at the end of the 8th century. In the beginning, the rulers of Bosnia were called ban: the first called by the name ban was Ban Borić and later on, the famous Kulin Ban; and after the coronation of Ban Tvrtko I Kotromanić in ...

Country in southern Africa. It has an area of 581,730 km² and a population of 1·62 million (2000 estimate). Its main inhabitants are the Tswana who are related to the Sotho of Lesotho and the Pedi of South Africa. Other peoples in Botswana include the Kalanga peoples of the north, who are related to the Shona peoples of Zimbabwe and the Khoisan of the Kalahari desert, who were formerly called ‘Bushmen’ (and many of whom still prefer to be so-called) and later referred to as ‘San’, a term that is now considered by some to be even more derogatory. Variations in the terrain, climate and vegetation have tended to mould and modify the tribal styles of music-making to suit both the environment and the temperament of local peoples. Vegetation further restricts the construction of instruments to those types for which the raw materials can be found locally, so that drums are generally found in forest areas, flutes where there are reeds and unaccompanied choral singing in open grass plains. These types of music-making are all found in Botswana....

Country in South-east Asia. An independent Islamic sultanate, Brunei is located on the north-west coast of the island of Borneo, about 440 kilometres north of the equator. The country is bounded on its northern edge by the South China Sea and on all other sides by the Malaysian state of Sarawak....

Country in south-eastern Europe. Bulgaria is a country of 110,994 sq. km with a population of approximately 7.25 million people, about 70% of whom live in urban centres. The national language is Bulgarian, a south-Slavic language. Orthodox Christianity is the official religion. Minority groups include Pomaks (Slavic Bulgarian Muslims), ethnic Turks, Macedonians, Christian and Muslim Roma, Jews, Albanians, Vlachs, and Armenians....

Country in Central Africa. See under Rwanda and Burundi.

Country in South-east Asia. It is bordered by Laos in the north, Vietnam in the east, the Gulf of Thailand in the south and Thailand in the north and west. Its population is more than 90% Khmer but also includes small numbers of Vietnamese, Chinese, Khmer Loeu (‘Highland Khmer’) and Cham. This entry mainly concerns the music of the Khmer majority....

Country in West Africa. The archipelago of ten islands and five islets is approximately 570 km west of Senegal, with a total area of 4033 km² and a population of 500,585 (2011 estimate).

The Cape Verde Islands were uninhabited at the time of their discovery by Portuguese explorers in ...

Country in South America. It is bordered in the north by Peru, east by Bolivia and Argentina and south and west by the Pacific Ocean. The country occupies a narrow strip of land running for 4200 km from north to south, with an area of 736, 905 km². Further territory includes Easter Island (Rapa-Nui), the Juthan Fernández Islands and many other islands to the west and south....

Country in East Asia. China is composed of 22 contiguous provinces, five autonomous regions originally inhabited largely by ‘minority’ groups (Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang-Uighur, Guangxi-Zhuang, Ningxia-Hui and Tibet), three centrally-controlled municipalities (the capital Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin) and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. Its total area of about 9,573,000 km² also includes the area formerly called Manchuria (now the three north-eastern provinces). According to the ...

See India, subcontinent of