Global cultural process in the continuity and prospective of musical tradition

When we mention the word “tradition,” we immediately think of the past. Certainly, the past, in a semantic sense, associates something passed that cannot be returned. However, we are witnessing that in the construction of new and contemporary tradition, we often return to the past and in that way we continuously relive it again. The new achievements are not only the product of adaptation and cultural processes, but they are also new qualitative systems of creative motivations that differ from traditional values. We are considering this study through the prism of the Turkish population in rural settlements, which in certain periods has changed and transformed in its way to modernity as evidenced by today's material and spiritual cultural heritage. They are a reflection of this path, which often passes through contrasts and inevitable contradictions that model the emergence of some new values. In this paper, we traced this complex process from the perspective of the most striking indicators of the spiritual and material musical tradition: musical instruments, performing ensembles, repertoire, and dance. We observed these aspects through the most massive and most abundant ritual ceremonies––weddings that were observed and recorded by field research in the rural settlements of several geographical locations in eastern and western Macedonia. Regardless of the location of settlement, new–modern forms of expression of musical culture are prevailing through the dominance of western provenance instruments, imported repertoire that inevitably entail changes in other ethnological features, as in the costume and during the ritual.