PhDr. Soňa Burlasová, CSc. ranks among the leading figures of Slovak ethnomusicology thanks to her systematic study of Slovak folk songs. She began her career as a member of the Czechoslovak Radio Choir in Bratislava and later became a long-time researcher at the Institute of Ethnology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (formerly the Institute of Ethnography).
Her research focused on Slovak folk songs from multiple perspectives: fieldwork centered on both traditional and newly emerging song repertoires, with a special emphasis on regional traditions, particularly in the Horehronie and Hont regions; and the study of song genres such as Slovak folk ballads, narrative songs, funeral laments, wedding, military, and conscription songs, as well as outlaw ballads.
The culmination of her lifelong research into folk ballads and narrative songs is the multi-volume work Catalogue of Slovak Narrative Songs I–XI. Among her pioneering publications are Ľudové balady na Horehroní (Folk Ballads from Horehronie, 1969), Slovenské národné povstanie v ľudovej tvorbe (The Slovak National Uprising in Folk Creativity, 1974), Slovenské národné povstanie v ľudovej tvorbe (1974), V šírom poli rokyta I., II. Slovenské ľudové balady, romance a novelistické piesne (In the Open Field the Willow Tree I, II. Slovak Folk Ballads, Romances, and Narrative Songs, 1982, 1984), Ľudová pieseň na Horehron (Folk Song in Horehronie, 1987), Vojenské a regrútske piesne (Military and Conscription Songs, 1991), and Slovenské ľudové balady (Slovak Folk Ballads, 2002).