Music of Thrace Music of Thrace Music of Thrace is the music of Thrace, a region in Southeastern Europe spread over southern Bulgaria (Northern Thrace), northeastern Greece (Western Thrace), and European Turkey (Eastern Thrace). The music of Thrace contains a written history that extends back to the antiquity, when Orpheus became a legendary musician and lived close to Olympus. Though the Thracian people were eventually assimilated by surrounding Balkan groups, elements of Thracian folk music continue. Traditional Thracian dances are usually swift in tempo and are mostly circle dances in which the men dance at the front of the line. The gaida, a
East Thrace the distribution of ethnoreligious groups in the local "sanjaks" was as follows: The Muslim "millet" was recorded as Turkish, while the church members of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as Greek. In the past century modern East Thrace was the main component of the territory of the Adrianople Vilayet, which excluded the Constantinople Vilayet, but included West Thrace and parts of the Rhodopes and Sakar. A publication from December 21, 1912 in the Belgian magazine "Ons Volk Ontwaakt" (‘Our Nation Awakes’) estimated 1,006,500 inhabitants in the vilayet: East Thrace East Thrace or Eastern Thrace ( or simply "Trakya"; , "Anatoliki Thraki"; ,