Folk Music of Bulgaria

The regional patterns abound in Bulgaria, Bobruzha, Sofiam Rhodopes, Macedonia, Thrace and the Danube shore all has different sounds. The folk music turned around holidays such Christmas, New Year’s Day, midsummer, and the Feast of St. Lazarus, as well as the Standzha region’s is usual Nestinarstvo rites, in which the villagers fell into a dream and danced on hot coals as part of the joint feast of St Konstantin and Elena on May 21. The music is also a part of personal cerebrations like wedding. The singing has always been a tradition for the women and men. The songs were often sung with women and men at work parties like the sedenka (which is often attended by young men and women in that is looking for partners to court), the betrothal ceremonies, and just for fun. The women have an extensive list of songs that they will sing while working in the fields.

source of picture: madisononthecheap.com

The young women who have reached the age of marriage played a particularly an important role at the dancing in the village square (which not too long ago was the major form of entertainment in the village and was a very significant social scene). They dance every Sunday and for three days on a major holiday such as Easter that began not with instrumental music, but it will be two orchestras of the young women composers, one leading each end of the dance line. Later, the instrumental musicians might arrive and the composers would no longer be the dance leaders.  A special way of song, the lament, was sung not only at funerals but also upon the departure of young men for military service.  

The Bulgarian folk music is called for its irregular rhythms (defined by the well-known Hungarian singers and ethnomusicologist Bela Bartok as Bulgarian rhythms), where the musical period is not divided in even beats, but in longer and in shorter.

The most significant state supported by groups of this period was the Sofia based State collective for folk songs and dances, which was led by Philip Koutev. Koutev have become the most powerful musicians of the 20^th century of the Bulgaria, and updated the rural music with more of the accessible love to great domestic approval. In the year 1951, Koutev established the band which is known now as the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir that became the popular worldwide after the release of several recordings entitled Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares.

The different sounds of the women’s choirs in Bulgarian folk music come partly from their special rhythms, love and polyphony like the use of close intervals such as the major second and the composers of a buzz accessory underneath the melody especially the common songs from the shop region around the Bulgarian capital Sofia and the Pirin region, in addition to Koutev, who produced most of the love music, and composed  many songs that were covered by other orchestras (especially the Tudora), where different women’s vocal groups gained fame, include Trio Bulgarka, Yanka Roupkina, Eva Georgieva, and Stoyanka Boneva and some of the women were included in the Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices tours.

Through the communist period, some of the musicians lived outside the state supported in the music scene, without official support, the wedding bands were also without the official limitations on their music, the leading  to join witch the foreign patterns and instruments. Thrace was a significant centre of this music and was the whole underground until 1986, when a festival of this music became a biennial event, as it was established in the town of Stambolovo and artists such as Sever, Trakiiski Solisti, Shoumen and Juzhni Vetar became famous especially Clarientist Ivo Papasov.