LE MYSTERE DES VOIX BULGARES (The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices)

This is an audio CD of 13 Bulgarian folk songs sung mostly a capella or with minimum instrumental accompaniment by the Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir under the direction of Philip Koutev and Krasimir Kyurkchiyski recorded in Bulgaria by Marcel Cellier in 1987.

Well, this is not how Bulgarian folk songs are sung in real life, I think (they’re supposed to be mostly homophonic or at most diaphonic... with the main melody sailing above a droning chorus singing in one voice), but it’s beautiful!

From what I gather, it was during the communist era that the Bulgarian composers began to arrange the traditional folk songs into Western style chorals with 3-4 parts. One singing the melodic line, while the rest provide a most weirdly wonderful semi-Western style counterpoints (contrasting melodies to highlight the main one) below it. It is not kitsch, I think, because the main melody is not compromised in the process. If anything, the added Western harmonies help highlighting the original main melodic line even more.

The chorus and the melody are often on different keys, and keep cutting in at irregular timing... All combine to make a very weirdly soulful dissonance, and it all works. I have to say, if they are singing off pitch, I wouldn’t know it because they are so unconventional (at least to my Western music regular-time oriented ears). You hear a line, and it sounds off...doesn’t seem to fit with the others, but they work it into some kind of vocal ornamentation and end up sounding right on the whole. I know I’m not writing very sensibly, but you just have to hear the thing to know what I mean.

The voices are beautiful though not refined and mostly without as much vibrato (natural pulsation in the voice) as you’d hear from opera singers. And they use all kinds of sound, mostly produced somewhere deep in the throat or the chest (I guess that’s why so many Bulgarian opera singers are great Verdi singers... really strong voices!). They even screech (like you see the Iraqis do in news clips where they’re cheering something on the street), use glottal sounds, vary the timbre of their voice, etc. All to serve in story-telling. I come away with the feeling that Bulgarians communicate more naturally by singing their stories than by saying them.

Most of the songs have a melancholy undercurrent, but none sounds helpless. They really give me the impression of the Bulgarians being long-suffering people who have been through a lot, but there’s that Slavic hardiness in them. Listening closely to these music and you can almost smell the grass of the Thracian plain or touch the fog over the mountains of Rhodope. One of these days I’ll make it to Bulgaria and see if the visions I get from listening to their enchanting music is very far off from reality or not.

Sample Youtube clip at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ4LCejQg8o

Tracks:
1. Pilentze Pee (Pilentze Sings)
*2. Svatba (The Wedding)
*3. Kalimankou Denkou (The Evening Gathering)
4. Strati na Angelaki Doumasche (Haiduk Song)
*5. Polegnala e Pschenitza (Harvest Song from Thrace)
6. Messetschinko lio Greilivko (Love Song from the Mountains)
7. Brei Yvane (Dancing Song)
*8. Erghen Diado (Song of Schopsko)
9. Sableyalo mi Agontze (The Bleating Lamb)
*10. Pritouritze Planinata (Song from the Thracian Plain)
11. Mir Stanke le (Harvest Song from Thrace)
*12. Schopska Pesen (Diaphonic Chant)
*13. Polegnala e Todora (Love Song)
(*) denotes my favorite tracks

1 CD. Booklet contains: Tracks listing and a note in English on Bulgarian folk music by the composer Ingram Marshall. No printed lyrics given, but I found 3 (tracks 2, 10, 13) in Cyrilic and English translation here:http://www.christopherculver.com/en/translations/bulgares.php.

By the way, there’s already a great review of this CD by trust12345, that is really worth checking out. He is a lot more learned than I am musically.

If you are interested in Bulgarian folk songs, you might want to try Bulgarian Soul CD by Vesselina Kasarova also.

------------------
If you’re up to the sport of trying to figure out which song is representative of which regions of Bulgaria, here are some clues;
1. Thrace songs tend to be monophonic (sung in one voice) and melodic line extensively ornamented (sometimes via manipulation of vibrato (pulsation) of the voice!). They may use Turkish Hijaz scale with complex meters. Thrace is in South-East Bulgaria and the home of the legendary Orpheus of Greek mythology.

2. Schoppe songs tend to be diaphonic (2 parts) with the melodic line singing above a droning chorus. The melodies are set in a rather narrow range and create quite startling dissonance with the drone. They use all kinds of sound in their expressions (including whooping, Iraqi-style hicking (for lack of better vocabulary on my part), mimed chatters, etc). Schoppe is the region of Sofia and its vinicities.

3. Pirin songs tend to be diaphonic and similar to Schop songs, but with a wider range and not as dissonant sounding. They enjoy mixing meters, favoring 7/8 with long 1st beat. Songs may be accompanied by some local instruments like kaval fiddle or tambura. Pirin is in the South-West of Bulgaria, next door to Macedonia.

4. Rhodope songs are monophonic and with pentatonic melodies with big interval leaps. Songs are accompanied by kaba gaida bagpipe. Rhodope is the mountain regions in Southern Bulgaria.

5. Dobrudzha songs are monophonic with lyrical melodies similar to Romanian music.

Links of interest:
http://www.omda.bg/ENGL/ethnography/folk_music.html
http://www.bulgarian-guide.com/bulgarian-traditions/bulgaria-folklore/folk-music.html (this site post some downloadable Bulgarian mp3's)

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Listening