Romani music is the music of the Romani people who have their origins in northern India but today live mostly in Europe.
René McLean is a hard bop saxophonist and flutist. He was born in New York City. He started playing guitar before receiving an alto saxophone and instruction from his father, the alto saxophonist Jackie McLean.
Ali Akbar Khan was an Indian Hindustani classical musician of the Maihar gharana, known for his virtuosity in playing the sarod. Trained as a classical musician and instrumentalist by his father, Allauddin Khan, he also composed numerous classical ragas and film scores. He established a music school in Calcutta in 1956, and the Ali Akbar College of Music in 1967, which moved with him to the United States and is now based in San Rafael, California, with a branch in Basel, Switzerland.
Saunders Terrell, known as Sonny Terry, was an American Piedmont blues and folk musician, who was known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers and occasionally imitations of trains and fox hunts.
Ivo Papazov, nicknamed Ibryama (Ибряма), is a Bulgarian clarinetist. He leads the "Ivo Papazov Wedding Band" in performances of jazz-infused Stambolovo music, and is one of the premier creators of the genre known as "wedding band" music in Bulgaria, along with the violinist Georgi Yanev, saxophonist Yuri Yunakov, clarinetist Neshko Neshev and accordionists Ivan Milev and Peter Ralchev. Together with Emilia they are known as Mames 2001. An orchestra that had great success in the TV show Познай кой е под масата.
Richard Avedis Hagopian is an Armenian-American oud player and a traditional Armenian musician. Hagopian achieved popularity in the 1960s and 70s as a member of the Kef Time Band, performing kef music, a dance-oriented style of Armenian folk music popular with diaspora communities.
Mike Seeger was an American folk musician and folklorist. He was a distinctive singer and an accomplished musician who played autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, guitar, mouth harp, mandolin, dobro, jaw harp, and pan pipes. Seeger, a half-brother of Pete Seeger, produced more than 30 documentary recordings, and performed in more than 40 other recordings. He desired to make known the caretakers of culture that inspired and taught him.
Michael White is a jazz clarinetist, bandleader, composer, jazz historian and musical educator. Jazz critic Scott Yanow said in a review that White "displays the feel and spirit of the best New Orleans clarinetists".
Fanfare Ciocărlia is a twelve-piece Romani Balkan brass band from the northeastern Romanian village of Zece Prăjini. They are known for their fast, high-energy music with complex rhythms and high-speed staccato clarinet, saxophone, and trumpet solos.
Michael Moloney was an Irish-born American musician and scholar. He was the artistic director of several major arts tours and co-founded Green Fields of America.
Kevin Burke is an Irish master fiddler considered one of the finest living Irish fiddlers. For nearly five decades he has been at the forefront of Irish traditional music and Celtic music, performing and recording with the groups The Bothy Band, Patrick Street, and the Celtic Fiddle Festival. He is a 2002 recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin was a Creole accordionist who specialized in the Creole music called "la la music" or "la musique Creole" and was influential in what became zydeco music.
Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong was an American string band and country blues musician, who played fiddle, mandolin, and guitar and sang. He was also a notable visual artist and raconteur.
Andy Statman is a noted American klezmer clarinetist and bluegrass/newgrass mandolinist.
Ferus Mustafov, also known as King Ferus Mustafov, is a Macedonian saxophonist of Romani descent. He is a multi-instrumentalist and is highly popular in his home country for his repertoire of Balkan folk and gypsy, or Rom, wedding music. He is also credited as one of the artists from the Balkan region to have made this type of music internationally popular.
Louis Bashell was an American polka musician from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was known for playing the Slovenian-style polka. He was nicknamed "Milwaukee's polka king".
Robert Bernat was an American composer and the founder, artistic director, and conductorof the River City Brass Band in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His musical influences included his mentor, Aaron Copland, as well as other American composers including Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, and John Philip Sousa.
Jimmy Cozier Sr. is a jazz musician from New York City.
Bulgarian wedding music is a genre of Svatbarska muzika or a "wedding music" style that evolved in the late 1960s in Bulgaria. Its popularity has spread in Europe and North America. This style of music is performed elaborately in weddings in a festive atmosphere, and also on other happy occasions. It was not given state privilege initially by the socialist regime of Bulgaria as it was considered folk music. The music is a fusion of "an eclectic array" of Bulgarian, Romani, Turkish and Macedonian music and is very popular in the southern Balkan region. Following the end of the People's Republic of Bulgaria in 1989, the popularity of wedding music has soared.
Cyril Pahinui was a slack-key guitarist and singer of Hawaiian music.
