Today's dance is a close relative of Jove (or Yove ) Malaj Mome, a very popular tune from the Shope region of Bulgaria.. The music sounds very similar, although the choreography is different. In Bulgarian transliteration the character Йtransliteration can be either a "j" or a "y" (j in Bulgarian has a y sound). The dance is Yovino Horo.
The rhythm is a combination of 7/16 and 11/16. Compound rhythms are quite common in Bulgarian folk dances.
Jova is a female name in Bulgaria.
The next video is Jove Malaj Mome so you can compare the two dances. The rhythm is the same, the music and steps are slightly different, and there is singing. There is something very charming about Bulgarian folk songs. They can make the most commonplace events sound special. The lyrics describe a stuck-up young woman at a dance looking for a rich man from Sofia. She's definitely looking for upward mobility.
If these guys look familiar, and you are a regular reader, you'll recognize them as the "Bonding Folkdance Class" from China.
The bonus video this week is a reading of the poem "Advice" by Bill Holm as interpreted by the magician Tom Verner. There is a little surprise at the end.
Music is very spiritual, it has the power to bring people together.
Edgar Winter
I couldn't find any Balkan dances for this week's post that begin with the letter "X" (although I did find a song from Albania with the totally unpronounceable name of Xhimixhi) The name is a real tongue twister.
Today's theme will be traditional and modern versions of a Bulgarian folk song from the Rhodope region of Bulgaria: Sabrali sa se Sabrali. Judging from what I've seen on the Universe of YouTube, it is quite popular.
Version one is the one we dance to, the beautiful traditional version performed by the Rhodopea Kaba Trio. The song is about three young women who fall asleep under a tree. They each wake up to find something missing: a necklace, a belt, and an apron. Someone has been engaging in petty theft under the stars.
Version two features a modern Sabrali performed by the singer Neli Andreeva and a group of dancers from the Bulgarian TV show Ide Nashenskata Muzika (here comes our music). The Bulgarian National Television uploads a new show online each week, which features folk artists from past and present.
Version three is performed by Rositsa Peycheva, this time featuring dancers in traditional Bulgarian elaborate embroidered costumes with some beautiful scenery in the background. The large bagpipe is a kaba gaida, native to the Rhodope region.
The bonus video is of a band from Western Massachusetts whose specialty is music from the Balkans. Their name begins with the letter "X" and they and their fans pronounce it zo-po. The group is Xopo and to make things even more confusing, "X" in Bulgarian is pronounced like our letter "H." Xopo is the Bulgarian word for "horo."
The video was taken at a party in Wethersfield, Connecticut and the dance is a tropanka from the Bulgarian region of Dobrudja.
If you enjoyed this you may also like:
Modern Versions of Traditional Bulgarian Folk Songs: Part One and Part Two
Several years ago I wrote a post about Nestinari (fire dancers) who dance on hot coals for the feast day of Saints Constantine and Helen. Their feast day falls on May 21. There is also a MythBusters video that explains the science of walking on hot coals.
Today's post is about a Balkan country that seldom seems to make the news: Slovenia. Slovenia used to be a part of the multi-ethnic, multicultural nation of Yugoslavia, which fell apart after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Before there was a Yugoslavia, Slovenia belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The folk music of Slovenia has been strongly influenced by its neighbor to the north, Austria.
The video features a waltz from Slovenia, played on an accordion, which. according to some, is an instrument of torture. It was most likely invented in a German speaking country. Since accordions were easy for traveling musicians to carry around, their popularity spread over Europe.
Other Balkan countries have also included waltzes in their folk music, for example: Croatia and Bulgaria. You can find them in one of the links below.
This piece sounds more Germanic than Slavic.
The bonus video features Cookie Monster and the Letter of the Day. Guess what that is?
Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.
Mother Theresa
Albania was virtually isolated from the world until after the fall of Communism. It was an oddity among the countries of Eastern Europe in that it deviated away from the Soviet Bloc (the Russians had a heavy hand in most of Eastern Europe until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989). Albania allied itself with Communist China for a while and then went its own way. It was a closed country that few outsiders were allowed to visit and even fewer were allowed to emigrate from until 1991.
Albanian is totally unrelated to any other language spoken on the Balkan peninsula.
Albanian folk dance borrows some elements from Greek and South Slavic music, and some of the dances that they do are similar to those of their neighbors in Greece, Bulgaria and Macedonia. An example is Valle Pogonishte, related to the Greek dance Pogonisios.
The dance shown in the video below is Valle E Burrave; in English it translates to "Men's Dance." Originally only the men were allowed to perform this dance, and they are the ones who do the fancy choreography. The women get to participate, however, so this is an "equal opportunity" dance.
Today's bonus video features Mother Theresa, one of the greatest humanitarians in the world, who was of Albanian heritage. She was born in Skopje in 1910. At that time, Albania and Macedonia were still part of the Ottoman Empire.
She left home at the age of 18 to become a nun and spent the rest of her life in India, ministering to the poor and sick in the slums of Calcutta.
The video shows her as a young woman in an Albanian folk costume, and you can hear her speak her native language. Albania's Communist government was against any form of religious expression and Mother Theresa was not allowed to visit until the government relaxed its stance on religion. It was a very joyous occasion for her.
If anyone out there speaks Albanian, it would be much appreciated if you could post a translation of her speech in the "comments" section.
If you love Balkan music and dance you have come to the right place! The Alien Diaries began in February 2010 and is updated at least twice a month.
This blog is dedicated to the memory of my cat Fatso (see avatar), who passed away on April 9, 2011 from congestive heart failure. He was the inspiration for several of my early posts.
Don't forget to check out my second blog, Light and Shadow, for some humor, satire, photos and poetry!
