Music by language and world music: Music by language - Ancient music, musical cultures and practices that developed in the literate civilizations of the ancient world, succeeding the music of prehistoric societies, as major centers of Ancient music developed in - in alphabetical order - in China, Egypt (the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms), Greece (the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods), India (the Maurya, Shunga, Kanva, Kushan, Satavahana and Gupta dynasties), Iran/Persia (the Median, Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Empires), the Maya civilization, Mesopotamia, and Roman Republic - 'Klezmer', an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, as the essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for listening, and would have been played at weddings and other social functions. The musical genre incorporated elements of many other musical genres especially Greek and Romanian music, Baroque music, German and Slavic folk dances, and religious Jewish music - Sephardic music is an umbrella term used to refer to the music of the Sephardic Jewish community, as Sephardic Jews have a diverse repertoire the origins of which center primarily around the Mediterranean basin. In the secular tradition, material is usually sung in dialects of Judeo-Spanish, though other languages including Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, and other local languages of the Sephardic diaspora are widely used. Sephardim maintain geographically unique liturgical and para-liturgical traditions. - Secular Jewish music and Jews in classical music