Maybe it’s just me, but just as everything else in Europe is falling apart, Euro 2024 seems an exceptionally exciting showcase for football, with a sense of passion accompanying some great matches and brilliant goals.

All—well, almost all—the twenty-four teams in the six groups have inspiring regional traditions of folk music, which (let’s face it) may not be uppermost in the thoughts of most fans. So before we bid farewell to some of the teams, here’s a niche alternative playlist, largely compiled from other posts on this blog.

Albanian zurna shawms with dauli drums, a widespread festive combo.

Easy to sample, and exhilarating, are the traditions of east Europe and the Balkans:

• Albania (Shqipëria!)
• Croatia (Hrvatska!)
• Serbia (Srbija)
• Hungary (Magyarország!)
• Romania (disappointly, România)

With long histories of discord, national allegiances often remain fractious—chronic enmities are still exposed in the fans’ behaviour at the Euros (see e.g. here). Boundaries having changed over the history of recording, here (based on this article) I will merely offer a few tracks that charm the ear, to encourage us to pursue the soundscape of the whole region:

• Muszikas with master fiddler Sandor “Neti” Fodor
• Albert Lord’s 1935 recording of bard Avdo Mededovic
• Fanfare Ciocârlia!

Béla Bartók recording Slovak peasants in 1907.

Other boundaries may be sensitive too:

• Poland: a wealth of A/V tracks here.
• Czech Republic: we might set forth from Janáček’s early recordings in Moravia, also shading into
• Slovakia
• Slovenia: try this selection of tracks
• Ukraine: regional folk traditions (see also liturgical, and pop)

Note also Resisting fakelore under state socialism in former Czechoslovakia and Poland.

• Turkey is curiously well covered on this blog (see roundup): a sample might include Musicking of the yayla, Anatolia: a rural woman singer, and Some Kurdish bards. You might even like this post on Turkish futbol, as well as Love, Deutschmarks, and death.
• Georgia: it has to be choral polyphony! (see under Musics lost and found).
• Italy: among a wide range of folk traditions, I’ll go with the splendid Enza Pagliara
• Spain: again, a wealth of regional genres—notably flamenco (roundup here!!!), as well as the Rioja and Valencia
• Portugal: fado, obvs—see here, and here.

The playlists for other nations pose a different kind of challenge:

• Germany: to rescue us from clarinets, accordions, and lederhosen, apart from the uniquely numinous national anthem, click here for a rare tradition of bowed zither.
• Austria: try this playlist for Roland Neuwirth with Extremschrammeln, Essig Und Öl.
• Switzerland: excuse the cliché, but try cowbells and alpine horns (“Swiss health authorities advise public against watching oom-pah bands”)
• Denmark (cf. Sounds of Nordic noir)—the 1996 Ocora compilation Danemark: chanteurs et ménétriers samples vocal and instrumental traditions.

• The Netherlands: by extension, how about this Batak hymn from Sumatra, from the ear-scouring Frozen brass CDs!
• Belgium: this track comes from the Ocora CD Belgique: ballades, danses et chansons de Flandre et Wallonie (1981)
• France: pursuing my fetish for shawms (see above), here’s the Bréton bombarde, with accordion
• England: Morris dancing might not spring to the mind of some fans…
• Scotland: though perilously close to the “tartan and shortbread” image, pibroch is not to be sneezed at—besides the ubiquitous fiddle, the bagpipe (not so much a dark horse as a black sheep?) is among other instruments commonly played in most nations under consideration—see this list.

Ukraine: Mykhailo Tafiychuk on volynka bagpipe of the Hutsuls.

Several posts on football can be found under A sporting medley: ritual and gender, including my wonderful playlist for Emma and Leylah.