Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
August 11 of this year marks the 100th birthday anniversary of Boris Karlov, folk musician and accordionist. (Please do not confuse him with the British actor Boris Karloff of Dracula movie fame; the name he took is a stage name. His real name is William Henry Pratt and he wasn't Slavic. Enough said.)
Although Boris Karlov passed on much too soon, 60 years ago, in 1964, his music is played at folk dances today.
After I read the Bulgarian YouTube comments I noticed that he is held in high regard in his home country as one of the best folk musicians. The people in Serbia are also fond of his music (there is a statue of him in Kraljevo, where he gave his final concert.) He created magic on that accordion.
Boris Karlov was born in Sofia in 1924 to a family of Roma musicians. Video #1 is a tune he wrote about his home town: Sofiisko Shopsko Horo. Shopsko denotes the western region of Bulgaria; the region is known as Shopluk.
Video #2 is another fast tune (Karlov was best known for really fast music). The dance is named after another Bulgarian city: Vidin. The name is Vidinsko Horo. The costumed dancers are from Japan (Bulgarian folk music is very popular there).
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Video #3 is one of the best known Karlov tunes: Bavno Oro. Bavno is Bulgarian for slow, but the last 40 seconds or so of the music is fast! (Note: this is a tune from North Macedonia that is popular in
Bulgaria.)
The music changes from 7/8 to 7/16 very quickly. See video below.
Most folk dancers will recognize Video #4 as the music for the dance Sedi Donka. Here it is listed as Plovdivsko Horo (Sedi Donka is a dance from Bulgarian Thrace, where the city of Plovdiv is located.) This is a tune that flies at warp speed. Feet can hardly keep up with this especially since this dance alternates multiple meters: 7/16 and 11/16 (there are slower versions of Sedi Donka but this one is the best).
Video # 5 is one of my favorite dances and quite challenging so I have included a teaching video by Jim Gold. It is a fast rachenitsa (rhythm: apple-apple-galloping). Of course Karlov had to play the national dance of Bulgaria (there are several arrangements of rachenitsa by Boris Karlov on YouTube). This one is Gjuševska Rachenitsa. If you want to skip the teaching, the dance starts at 4:50)
This is dance named after a town: Gjueševo. The Bulgarians named it after another town: Pazardzhik. It doesn't matter, this is a great piece of music!
Unfortunately, Boris Karlov died at the age of 40 from kidney failure while on tour in Serbia. Extensive touring in former Yugoslavia, Austria, and Bulgaria may have contributed to his demise. Who knows what other magical tunes he could have written had he lived longer? He left quite the legacy despite the brevity of his life on Earth.
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You can read more about Boris Karlov's life, in Bulgarian, in an article by Nikolai Chapansky, announcer of several folk music programs on Radio Plovdiv.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
