The music of the Balkans includes Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Hungary, Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, which all have strong and individual styles of folk music, which played an important part in social ceremonies and events.
In particular, Bulgarian folk music is known for its “asymmetrical” rhythms ( described by Bela Bartok as “Bulgarian rhythms” ), where the musical time is not split in even beats, but in longer and shorter. To understand how this works it is helpful to relate the music to folk dances. For example, the well known tune Eleno Mome (Елено Моме) exists written in 7=2+2+1+2, 13=4+4+2+3, and 12=3+4+2+3 times