After contacting some ethnomusicologists who have worked in Bulgaria (and surrounding regions) -- Tim Rice, Karen Peters, Robert Reigle -- and gathering a few contacts on HospitalityClub.org (an incredibly helpful network), I left Sofia and headed out to the Pirin Mountains.
Blagoevgrad, a big university town in southwest Bulgaria (see map), proved to be a trendier young people's town than I was expecting. A great atmosphere of cafe/bars, mountains, and parks, surrounded my a sprawl of soviet-style concrete block apartments. I stayed with a woman named Evgenia (Jenny) whom I met on HospitalityClub. She had warned me that if I was going to stay with her, I'd have to be ready for her "girls" -- that is, her two labroador retreivers who are the love of her life -- I said, no problem.
We dusted off her ancient Mazda, a tiny sedan affectionately called "Muzzi" -- which she assured was much, much older than me -- and drove out to the Rila mountains to visit a must-see site in the region, the
Rila Monastery. Dating from the tenth century, this mountain-top retreat is considered to be the most revered Eastern Orthodox site in the country, still active with a few dozen monks (though mostly a tourist site, for Bulgarians and foreigners alike). Almost every inch of every wall in the monastery is covered in colorful fresco -- the Bulgarian churches are known for taking liberties with painting themes, sometimes considered controversial and outside the canon of traditional Biblical scenes. Back at her apartment, she also cooked some traditional dishes for me --
tarator (yogurt soup with dill, cucmber, walnuts) and
gouvetch (pork and veggies stewed in earthen pot) were particularly mouth-watering.
Another contact I made over HospitalityClub, named Aneli, ended up being extremely helpful in finding traditional drone singers. She arranged a meeting for me and "the best living musicians" in town, a set of twin sisters named Pirinka and Zdravka Hristova (pictured below). Dressed in matching leopard-print get-ups (asked if they usually wear the same clothing, the response was a "yes" in perfect unison), the twins began a rapid-fire interview with me, assuring me that I will never find anyone in the Pirin region, or even in Bulgaria for that matter, who can sing harmony as tightly locked together as they can. Being identical twin sisters, and borderline intimidating with their high-energy in-your-face chain-smoking, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and asked if I could hear a sample of their singing.
When they took me into a practice room at the local
chitalishte, the cultural center found in every town, and opened up their mouths to sing, I was speechless. Such volume coming out of these two rather small women -- such expression and virtuosity in their duet. And it was exactly the polyphonic technique (female-only tradition) I was looking for, called
atsane. One of the sisters, usually Pirinka, would sing the lyrics (mostly) all on one droning note (called the
iso, or secundo), while the other would take on the melody line (the primo) with its characteristic sudden upward leaps. An unspeakably beautiful and spine-chilling combination, ripe with dissonance and clear bright nasal timbral quality, no vibrato. When the melody hovers slightly above (m2 & M2) or below the drone (on m7), a bell-like ringing or beating effect is achieved (this effect is particularly audible in my favorite:
Mome Elenko). Take a minute to
listen for yourself to a few more examples, although I was having some mic issues in this tiny practice room and the recording quality is only so-so.
The texts of the songs, which I got translated and have included on the audio samples post, speak of everyday life in the Bulgarian countryside -- farming, fieldwork, the beauty of nature, the beauty of the girls, themes of love, humorous stories of lazy men or women who don't do proper housework. One theme which I found fascinating was the subtle Bulgarian nationalistism present in most songs, mostly in the form of reverence for the
Haiduti, (or
voivod) the bands of grassroots rebel fighters from the Bulgarian countryside who kept the Ottoman (Turkish) invaders out. They bacame national heroes and their important position in the village communities across the Bulgarian countryside is praised in many of the folk songs (for more on the
voivod, click
click here).
On the advice of Aneli, I left Blagoevgrad, passed through Bansko (where they actually have a tradition of male drone singing, but I came at the wrong time of the year to attend a rehearsal), and went to Gotse Delchev near the Greek border. One of Aneli's students, Kosta, hosted me in his family's home in
Delchevo (photo above), a tiny village of 80 inhabitants in the Pirin foothills just outside Gotse Delchev.
To arrive in Delchevo was like taking a trip back in time to a peasant village. While everyone here was living in relative poverty (by World Bank standards...), they had all that they needed -- their sheep and goats, their gardens, their simple houses, and their community.
On the evening of my arrival, Kosta and I walked around the entire village, asking if there were any babas (grandmothers) who would sing for us. Word spread fast, and before long a group of about a dozen babas approached us, smiling, and ready to sing. Except there was one problem -- the women explained that an older member of their community just passed away the day before, and that it was not auspicious to do any singing during a time of mourning!
Two babas in Delchevo explain that they would sing for us if it weren't for the village's recent tragedy...
It was just bad timing, and Kosta walked me home a little discouraged. But then, around 10pm, three babas knocked on our door, and said that, since they understood I had come so far just to hear them sing, they would do an impromptu concert for me in the
chitalishte!
I grabbed my recorder and mic, and we unlocked the old building (it turned out that Kosta's dad was actually the mayor of the town, and we used his office for the recording session!). The three women, Baba Nadna Georgieva Karamfilova (age, 66), Baba Stoichna Nikoleva Stamenova (68), and Baba Mitra Lazarova Stamenova (70), told me that their legs were very tired, and that they would prefer to sing sitting down.
When they opened their mouths, there was quite a different story they told with their voices. More raw and unrefined than the Hristova twins, these babas were singing from their souls, from their experience working out in the field, from their memories of childhood in Delchevo when their grandmothers taught them these folk songs. I hesitate to call it "out of tune," acknowledging my bias for Western notions of pitch, but the music was very rough around the edges, almost primal. After the first song, the babas asked me if I liked their singing. I gave an affirmative reply (which, in Bulgaria, is accompanied by a head shake instead of a nod) and shouted a "bravo!" The women began another song, and I glanced over at Kosta, who kept his eyes closed in contemplation. The music was moving all of us.
After a few songs, the women ended our session, saying that they were too tired to sing any more. They were at first reluctant to accept a small sum of money (leva) from me for their performance, and later Kosta told me that they considered the money to be a significant gift compared with their small government pensions. Many of the older generation are forced to live off tiny pensions in the current post-communist era of confusion -- many of these countryfolk feel abandoned by their government, who had at one time promised them "everything"...
Delchevo, in the morning.
Take a few moments and listen to some of the
audio samples and read the translations of the text -- more than many places I've visited, the folk music in the Pirin Mountians really speaks to the world view of these simple-minded farmers. Their loves, their lives, their games, their heroes.
Thank you to Kosta Panayotov and Iva Todorova for help with translations. Thanks to Jenny for your wonderful hospitality, to Aneli for connecting me with musicians and CDs, and a special thanks to everyone who sang for me. You were all instrumental in helping this project work!
