A musical style that originated with Bill Munroe in the late 1930's. Unlike mainstream country music, bluegrass relies mostly on acoustic stringed instruments, including the fiddle, played with more improvisation and flashiness.

This style is primarily meant for a listening audience, rather than a dance floor.

The Acadians, a French speaking settler community in Nova Scotia, brought the fiddle with them to Louisiana when they were expelled. The fiddle was the predominant instrument in Cajun music, until popular American tunes mingled with it, along with accordions, guitars, and banjos, from the 1930s on.

Fiddle playing did not achieve the same prominence in English traditional music and dance as in Scotland, however several of the figureheads of the revival of flok music in England are noted fiddlers - Dave Swarbrick and Eliza Carthy among them.

The fiddle is one of the most important instruments in the traditional repertoire of Irish music, played in varying regional styles - Sligo, Kerry and Donegal fiddle traditions.

Klezmer fiddling has its roots in Jewish folk fiddling and dancing traditions of Eastern Europe, such as Hungary, Romania, Ukraine.

Scottish fiddlers have their own styles of ornamentation, and a particularly strong repertoire.

There are identifiable regional variations - that of the North East (Banchory and Fochabers); of Shetland (a separate category), the North-West (much influenced by Gaelic traditions - and in turn a strong influence on the Cape Breton fiddling heritage).