We forget just how painfully dim the world was before electricity. A candle, a good candle, provides barely a hundredth of the illumination of a single 100 watt light bulb.
Bill Bryson
You may be wondering why I used a quote about candles. Read on and you'll find out.
Today's post is first in a series featuring Danube songs from Bulgaria. The title for this one is Dunave, Beli Dunave. In English it translates to "White Danube." In Bulgaria, the color white is associated with "joy, grandeur and beauty," among other things. There are a number of arrangements and different versions of this song, and I have written about them in previous posts (see links below)
Songs like this are the reason people are so enchanted with arrangements of Bulgarian choral music.
Back in the late 80's people in the States took notice of vocal music from Eastern Europe. Marcel Cellier had put together an album called the "Mystery of Bulgarian Voices." It became extremely popular in the United States, and Americans were amazed at the beauty and harmony of Bulgarian folk songs. One was even used in the TV series Xena, Warrior Princess.
The name of the group in the video is Rosalitsa and this performance took place in the community center (chitalishte) in the town of Svishtov, Bulgaria. Svishtov has been settled since the time of the Romans, who called it Novae. The Bulgarian name of the town is derived from the word "candle." There was once a lighthouse there to aid night time navigation, back in the days when there was no electricity.
The song is performed a capella and there are two distinct, yet harmonious melodies blended together. It sounds like something you'd hear in a church or a concert hall. This is Bulgarian folk song at its best.
If anyone out there can find the lyrics of this beautiful song, please post them in the "comments" section. It would be much appreciated!
Friday. The golden child of the weekdays. The superhero of the workweek. The welcome wagon to the weekend. The famous F word we thank God for every week.
source unknown
Fridays are usually dance nights for me, and I am always thankful for them at the end of a hard week. I bet you thought I was going to mention the other F-Word, which you can find on Wikipedia. They have written extensively about it,. You can satisfy your curiosity about its etymology, and how it can be used as a noun, adjective or adverb. The F-Word is an extremely versatile as well as colorful part of speech.
This week's dance begins with the letter F, although it hardly can be called the F-Word. It's Fatise Kolo , a dance from from the town of Vranje in Serbia. It is one of those odd rhythm things; the time signature is 9/8 (quick-slow-quick-quick). You can find the lyrics and translation here
I don't know who sings this piece, but it's beautifully done and reminds me of classical music. It's amazing how many musicians have used this song on YouTube. It is a Serbian classic.
This week's added bonus is for one of my readers who likes videos of scantily clad women. It's a different Fatise Kolo, from Niš, a spa town in Serbia. In spa towns there are swimming pools, and that is the place where you find the bikini girls.
The music isn't bad, either. It is in 7/8 lesnoto rhythm, and very danceable.
If you're wondering why this post starts with a picture of strudel, read on, you will find out later.
Are you ready for another close encounter of the Danubian kind? This post takes us to Serbia for yet more folk songs from the Universe of You Tube.
I found a couple of folk songs about Dunav, the River of Many Names, from Serbia. One is fun and one is romantic, both of them are great to listen to.
The first video is a group of crazy musicians having a blast on a beautiful spring day. So they decide to take a boat on the river and sing a folk song (in English translation the title is Dunave, Dunave moje more (Danube, My Sea.) For some reason there are no women along for the ride, although they are watching on shore...why is that? Do the guys have a monopoly on music and fun?
The way these musicians carried on in the boat, I thought Dunave moje more would have been more of a party song, but the actual translation was something totally different. The gist of the song was that the person in the song sees Dunav day and night and that he has given his life to the river. (I presume he dreams about it, as well.) I have dreamed about it since I was eleven years old. And for me it's a recurring dream which pops up in my subconscious periodically.
The lyrics (in transliterated Serbian) are here, but there is no translation. I had to resort to Google Translate.
Despite the fact I was able to travel to Europe and actually camped out on the banks of the Danube 14 years after the first dream, the dreams haven't stopped. Now that is the persistence of memory at its finest. Except that I don't dream about melted clocks :)
The next video conveys a completely different mood, although the lyrics have a similarity to Dunave, Dunave moje more. This song conveys nostalgia and longing. From what I get from the translation (again, courtesy of Google) it's about a man who grew up along the Danube, who had to go far away, left his heart there, but still sees it in his dreams (the dream theme seems to be a recurring one....)
Next is a musician playing a lively kolo on an accordion, the most popular instrument in Serbia. The kolo is a folk dance popular in Serbia as well as Croatia. It is usually (but not always) done in a circle. You won't see any dancing in this video, except maybe for the accordionist's fingers moving over the keys. He does an amazing job with this piece; the name of it (in English) is Danubian Whirlpools.
Now it's time to see what inspired the composer of the previous piece of music. It has something to do with strudel.
Water is fascinating. Like the other elements of antiquity, fire, air and earth, each has its good side and its destructive side. The River of Many Names is no exception. Although the beauty of it is celebrated in poetry and folk songs, flood season wreaks havoc and destruction. In the city of Passau, Germany I saw buildings along the Danube with high water marks. Written next to them was the day, month and year of the flood, which in a few instances was as high as the second story of the building.
Then there are the mysterious whirlpools and cross-currents which can be dangerous if you're not careful. By the way, in German, strudel has two meanings; the first one is the fruit filled pastry that everyone knows and loves. The second meaning is that of a whirlpool or vortex, and something you definitely don't want to have for dessert. The music matches the mood of this video which looks quite ominous...
By the way, the cafés in Passau have delicious strudel, and great coffee too. And if you go further down the Danube, to Vienna, you can get your strudel in fancy surroundings, like the Hotel Sacher.
If you enjoyed this post, you will also like the series The River of Many Names., parts 1-4. The first one is a musical journey.
Part four has more Bulgarian folk songs inspired by (what else?) Dunav, along with some stunning scenery and dancers in elaborate embroidered costumes.
If you didn't get enough Serbian folk music here, this post will satisfy your cravings as well as relieve your frustrations, since there are lots of dances with stamping!
"Their way of Dancing, is nothing but a sort of stamping Motion, much like the treading upon Founders Bellows."
John Lawson
I don't know what kind of dancing John Lawson was referring to, but he could have been referring to the Vlachs.
The Vlachs also known as Wallachians, had wandering ways and settled all over the Balkans. They were most likely descendents of the Romans, a Latin-speaking ethnic group. The Roman influence lives on in the country of Romania, whose language is based primarily on Latin. The word "Vlach" is a Germanization of "Wallachian", from "Wlaha" which means foreigner or stranger. Wallachia is located in what is now southern Romania (the provinces of Oltenia and Muntenia).
Today's post will feature Vlach dances from Serbia. They are very lively and have lots of stamping, a good way to get out your frustrations on bad days. And the music will lift your spirits, too.
Speaking of spirits, stamping while dancing was supposed to drive away evil spirits.
The first group, Dunav, from Calgary in the province of Alberta, Canada performs a medley of Vlach dances.
Gaida (bagpipe) music is popular in Serbia, although they prefer the accordion. Instruments of torture seem to vary by country. The Macedonians and Bulgarians like the gaida, the Romanians the panpipe, and the Greeks the bouzouki.
This video looks like an promotion for a piper named Bulgjigič Tomaslav. He has dancers and musicians here as a backup to make sure you know his music is good. (By the way you can't dance if the music is no good!) If you want to call him, let's say to play for your next party, his phone number is on the video, although if you lived far away, let's say, in North America, it would get rather expensive to pay for him and his group to travel across the Pond :)
His speciality is Vlach melodies and circle dances (the plural of kolo is kola). The backdrop is the Iron Gate gorge, along the Danube, River of Many Names. Here we go with that Dunav thing again....
Now it's time for another Dunav group, this time from Israel. The dance is Vlaško Serbsko.
If you enjoyed this you may also like:
The River of Many Names Part 3: Folk Ensembles Named Dunav
Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go. ~Blaise Pascal
Today's post is a another Close Encounter of the Danubian Kind. You get to visit different countries by way of music, enjoy some beautiful scenery and watch some fantastic folk dancing from Bulgaria.
During my forays in the Universe of YouTube I have found several groups that play, sing or dance to Balkan music. They all have one thing in common, the name "Dunav," which is Bulgarian/Serbian for Danube.
This river has been an inspiration for many artists, musicians and poets, from Germany all the way to Romania, but the Bulgarians seem have been the most smitten by the river that forms their northern border with Romania.
The ensemble Dunav, from Vidin in Bulgaria, is an example of Bulgarian artistry inspired by the River of Many Names. The beginning of this video is especially worth watching. Notice that the man shakes his head from side to side after seeing the images in the water. Are they a figment of his imagination? The dancers are amazing, and so is the scenery, the ship in the background, however, is a distraction. But, then, that's minor.
If you are a regular reader of The Alien Diaries, you have seen these people before. Their teaching videos are all over YouTube, and their specialty is dances from the Balkans and the Middle East. Dunav, a group from Jerusalem, Israel, describes their website as "the sharing place for Balkan music and dance." Check out their link:
Here they perform Talima, from Dobrudja, the northeast region of Bulgaria which just happens to be along the River of Many Names.
In the States, folklore and culture are often found at church festivals. These events are held during the summer at Eastern Orthodox churches located in large cities on the East Coast and in the Midwest. Many immigrants from Eastern Europe settled there because they were able to find work in the factories and in the steel mills. They wanted to keep the traditions alive for the next generation; the church had a hand in this by sponsoring classes in traditional music, dance, and the language of the old country. In turn, the festivals raised money for the church. The greater community benefits by being exposed to a foreign culture. I've been to Greek, Serbian, Albanian, Romanian, and Bulgarian festivals, to me it's like visiting another country without leaving my own.
The Dunav Orchestra performs at a Serbian festival in Indiana. This, to me, sounds like Croatian tamburitza music. The country doesn't matter, it's a pleasure to listen to.
The last "Dunav" group is from London. This performance, from their trip to Romania in 1993, is of a lively Romanian folk song.
If you enjoyed this post, you will also like The River of Many Names (parts one and two). Part one is a musical journey.
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!
