Bulgarian presentation: musicology of the Bulgarian traditions

BULGARIAN PRESENTATION Musicology of the Bulgarian Traditions, with Borislav Petrov

Ethnomusicology student and artist Borislav Petrov gave a presentation on Jazz, Folklore and Folk Jazz in Bulgaria. He began with an interesting fact – that the Wallace Hartley Band who played on the Titanic, had also played in Sofia.

Then he talked about the different ways that jazz was introduced and spread into Bulgaria. Jazz music began to appear in Bulgaria right after World War I from military bands from the Allies, especially in Sofia. Bulgarian musicians picked it up very quickly and began forming new bands, performing at theatres and casinos. The Charleston dance also became very popular in Bulgaria. Jazz also came to Bulgaria through silent movies, in cinemas there were bands who played music to the silent movies, including jazz. Gramophones also helped to spread jazz: in 1919, there were only 100 gramophones in Bulgaria. Two years later, there were 16.763 gramophones bought. Jazz became particularly popular amongst Bulgarian intellectuals. For example, the famous poet and writer Geo Milev spoke about jazz in Bulgaria as early as 1922.

The opening of the American College in Sofia in 1926 also had a huge impact on the jazz scene. A lot of the alumni became the first generation of jazz musicians in Bulgaria. But what clearly marked the beginning of jazz life in the country was the concert of Sam Wooding and the Chocolate Kiddies in Sofia in 1928. This was the first U.S jazz performer in Sofia and will remain the only one for the next 50 years.

The Great Depression in the early 30’s also affected Bulgaria, meaning that a lot of nightclubs and theatres closed down, and musicians lost their jobs. Consequently, many Bulgarian musicians migrated to Berlin, forming a big colony of Bulgarian musicians there. Musicians such as Lubo D’Orio became quite popular along with his big band in Berlin, all throughout the Second World War. Another Bulgarian musician based in Berlin was Ari Leshnikov, who created the first ‘boy band’ the Comedian Harmonists, they became world famous, playing for President Roosevelt. Also in Berlin, Pancho Vladigerov wrote the first jazz originals by a Bulgarian in 1920. There were 20 big bands in the 1930s, with the most most wellknown being Assen Ovcharov’s Jazz Ovcharov Big Band. The first Bulgarian jazz diva was Lea Ivanova.

Jazz live music was really flourishing until 1947, when the Communist regime who had been in power since 1944, decided to change the cultural climate in Bulgaria and address what they saw as a negative American/Western influence in the country. There were restrictions and bans on bands playing jazz. Despite this, all through the 50’s, bands found a way to sneak jazz into their

music. An example was the Balkantourist band. The Balkantourist was actually a big company whose role was to promote Bulgarian culture, especially to tourists. They are also famous for inventing the Shopska salad, created to look like the same colours of the Bulgarian flag: white, red and green.

The second generation of musicians who became the first ambassadors of folklore music outside of Bulgaria included pianist Milcho Leviev, student of Pancho Vladigerov. As the Communist regime became slightly more liberal in the 60’s, he wanted to play more jazz. He collaborated with Symeon Shterev and they created the successful band Jazz Focus 65 which won several European Jazz awards and performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival. The flutist of the band Symeon Shterev appeared in Downbeat magazine. The band was able to go around the regime’s restrictions and played both in Bulgaria and outside of it. In 1978, the second U.S orchestra came to Bulgaria to perform in Sofia, the Glenn Miller Foundation.

The first band to include folklore influences in their music in Bulgaria was White, Red and Green. Pianist and composer Anthony Donchev and others were amongst the first jazz musicians in Bulgaria to start exploring folklore music and to establish the jazz folklore movement in the country.

Borislav then explained a little more about Bulgarian folklore, how it developed and how it became incorporated into jazz folklore. The kaval is a Bulgarian flute that possibly came via the Ottoman empire, used to accompany different rituals and celebrations like weddings. Bulgarian music had traces of some music from Turkey but the Communist regime tried to deny this influence. However, the influences are undeniable.

At the end of the 19th Century, Bulgarian music became influenced by Western music through the arrival of military bands. For example, Diko Iliev, brass band leader and composer, wrote music that was a fusion between Bulgarian folk music, Western music and brass band music. All Bulgarians still dance to one of his compositions on New Year’s Eve, the ‘Danube Horo.’

There are 7 folkoric regions in Bulgaria and they sound very different from each other. A big contribution to the spread of Bulgarian folklore music in the cities were the field recordings that were organised at the beginning of the 20th century and especially in the 1950s, collected by musicologists and written down in books. These written materials and field recordings inspired some classical composers to create works that incorporated Bulgarian folkore, for example Pancho Vladigerov, Marin Goleminov and many more. The Bistritsa Four was a band with folklore instruments that became famous all over the world. But also, many modern instruments were being used that changed the sound.

The Communist regime promoted and invested in folklore as a high art. They began to establish folk ensembles that mimicked classical orchestras, but with folk instruments. They hired composers to write new music and with dancers. There were 9 ensembles supported by the government that existed at the time. One of these, the Filip Kurev National Folklore Ensemble included a full folkloric orchestra, choir and dancers, and still exists today. 2 folklore music schools were also opened in late 60’s. This created a whole level of professional folklore musicians, which is quite unique in Europe. The Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal 22

Choir, was discovered by Swiss producer Marcel Cellier and renamed the Mystery of Bulgarian Voices. He made them world-famous, and they toured the U.S.

In the 1970s and 80s saw the prominence of ‘Wedding Bands’. They were named as such because most of their performances were mainly at weddings. They took folk music and made it more complicated by introducing solo improvisations and writing sophisticated arrangements. The most famous of this is Ivo Papasov (Ibriyam Hapazov). He is of Turkish speaking Roma descent. Wedding band music became so popular that the Communist government began to see a threat in them. They felt there was a subculture forming that they could not control, so in an attempt to control it, in the mid-80’s they established the National Wedding Band Contest in Stambolovo. After the contest, bands were interrogated by an institution called the Directory of Music which most probably had representatives from the Bulgarian version of the KGB, the State Security. Bands were told not to play elements of Turkish and Roma music, even though many of these musicians were of this descent. There was a general suppression of Turkish and Roma minorities during Communist regime. Despite this, Ivo Papasov’s Trakiya Orchestra became very popular.

Bulgarian folk music includes asymmetric meters that correspond to dance steps. Composer Bela Bartok composed ‘Six Dances In Bulgarian Rhythm’ and made people in the wider musicology world aware of this rhythm. These rhythmic structures are actually present in many folk music in the Balkans, North Africa, Middle East.

Borislav then rounded off his presentation with a brief overview of the emergence of Pop-Folk (Chalga) in the 1990s including Chalga music star Galena, the folk revival in the 2000s, and contemporary gypsy music orchestras.