Balkan Dances That Are Often Confused (Part Two)

I had nothing to offer anybody except for my own confusion.
Jack Kerouac

A few months ago I wrote a post about confusion regarding Balkan dances with similar names.  This is the sequel, otherwise the first one would have been too long.

Video #1 is the very popular Jove Malaj Mome from Bulgaria. It has traveled around the world and has gone as far as China.  The lyrics describe a girl named Jova, who prefers the city guys from Sofia, and won't even look at the men from her village. She is way too good for them.

If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you've seen the "Bonding Folkdance Class." They have a large repertoire of dances and a high energy teacher.

The dance is in a compound rhythm 7/16 +11/16.  Many folk dance people happen to be good at math (but I'm not one of them).



Video #2 is a dance from Macedonia, Edno Maloj Mome (One Little Girl).  Many Macedonian and Bulgarian songs are in the 7/8 rhythm (pineapple-apple-apple). The dance usually done to this rhythm is lesnoto, but as you will see this one is a bit more complicated.



Before you can run, you have to learn to walk. Video #3 is a "plain vanilla" lesnoto. There are many variations of lesnoto;  this one is the easiest. It's basically walking in 7/8 rhythm while alternately lifting each foot. It is how Macedonians learned to walk when they were babies. This rhythm is ingrained in them in the womb.

The group dances to a medley of four songs: Oj ti pile, Zalna majka, Bitola moy roden krai, and Makedonsko Devojce.



Video #4 is of another dance from Macedonia, Lesnoto Oro. It is a dressed up version of lesnoto.  Are you confused yet?

Lesnoto Oro starts slowly then speeds up, typical of Macedonian dances.



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Balkan Dances that are Often Confused, Part One

Dancing in Sevens, Part One (Bulgaria) and Part Two (Macedonia)


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Voices from the Past: Classic Bulgarian Folk Songs, Part Two

It is easy to time-travel, the physicist says—we do it every day. Traveling backward is the problem.
― Rebecca Curtis

Today's post is another adventure in time travel: a musical journey into the world of classic Bulgarian folk songs.

The first video is Čuškata ljuta, pak ljuta (the hot red pepper song) performed by the Adjovi sisters.. It  became a favorite with the group Lyuti Chushki from Washington D.C.

The Adjovi twins bear a striking resemblance to the Gabor sisters (remember those actresses with the Hungarian accents and big hair?)  According to the bio on Bulgarian Wikipedia they were born in 1947, and as far as I know are very much alive.  They gave a performance not too long ago on the Bulgarian TV show Ide Nashenskata Muzika.

You can find the lyrics here, in Bulgarian and transliterated, along with a video and sheet music. Google Translate came up with a cute ditty that didn't make much sense (in English, anyway), but the song is catchy and fun, and best of all, you can dance pajduško to it!

If you like earworms, you will also like this song. It will take up residence in your brain for hours!



Kostadin Gugov was born in Sofia in 1935. His family came to Bulgaria as refugees from Greek Macedonia.  Like many other famous folksingers of his generation, he performed for the Bulgarian National Radio and later for Bulgarian National TV.

His specialty was mellow songs from the Pirin region. Some of his most popular songs are Ako Umram il Zaginam,  Zaiko Korkoraijko and Jovano Jovanke.  Shown below is a performance that he did many years ago.  He passed on in 2004.

You can also dance to the song; it's a lesnoto (pravoto).



Video #3 features the singer Pavel Sirakov, born in 1918.  He lived to the ripe old age of 88 and during his lifetime traveled all over Bulgaria with Boris Karlov, accordionist; singer Boris Mashalov and many other folk artists of the 20th century.

The performance is an excerpt from the TV show Ide Nashenskata Muzika and shows a performance from the year 1983 of the song Na Razdumka.  According to Google translate the song has something to do with gossip.  I don't see gossiping here, instead there are people toasting with glasses of wine during the holiday season. Maybe the wine loosens their tongues after they've had a little too much.

It is listed here as Chudno Horo. The dance to this music is a rachenitsa  in 7/8 rhythm (apple-apple pineapple).




If you enjoyed this, you may also like:

The "Flavors" of Bulgarian Rachenitsa, Parts One and Two

A Visit to Bulgaria and a Little Spicy Music

The Travels of Padjusko Horo

A Look at Peppers in Bulgarian Food and Folk Songs

Voices from the Past: Classic Bulgarian Folk Songs, Part One


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Dancing in Sevens....

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.—Leo Tolstoy

Remember when you took fractions in school?

Some of us found them easy while others found them difficult to comprehenend. It all depended if you were mathematically minded or not.

Fractions are parts of a whole. As the fraction is part of a whole, the rhythm is part of a dance. In fractions, the pieces can be arranged in different ways, and in dances the same time signature (7/8) can have a different rhythm, depending on where the accents are.

This link, Math For Poets and Drummers describes the mathematics of music and poetry. This is especially good for right-brained people like myself who tend to see the whole first, then break down the parts. We don't analyze, we synthesize.

http://www.sju.edu/~rhall/Rhythms/Poets/arcadia.pdf

By the way I am a poet as well as a dancer so my sense of rhythm is very well developed. Math? Well, that's a different story.

I happen to be fond of dances with odd numbers in the time signature, and today we're going to examine the rhythms of the lesnoto, rachenitsa, and chetvorno, dances popular in the Balkans, and all of them with with seven beats to the measure.

The first example will be a lesnoto, a walking dance popular in Bulgaria and Macedonia. The rhythm for this is "galloping-apple-apple." The video is not in English but don't let that deter you; he does an excellent job teaching the dance even if you don't understand the language.



The next dance will be the ubiquitous national dance of Bulgaria, the rachenitsa, which can be done as a solo, couple, or group dance. The accents are on different beats than the lesnoto; apple-apple-galloping. This one is moderately fast and very macho :)



Chetvorno Horo, a dance from the Shope region of Bulgaria, is also in 7/8. The rhythm for Chetvorno is galloping-apple-apple, and has a slightly different feel from both the rachenitsa and the lesnoto. This group performs it in a shopping mall. How often do you see that?



By the way, chetiri is the number four in Bulgarian. If you look at the word in Cyrillic it looks like this: четири. The "ch" resembles a four. Which poses more questions: How does one do a seven beat dance in four? The steps themselves are in groups of two and three. (3+2+2=7) I have yet to figure that out.

If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Dancing to the Rhythm of a Different Drummer

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2011/01/dancing-to-rhythm-of-different-drummer.html

Dancing by the Numbers

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2011/10/dancing-by-numbers.html

Balkan Folk Dancing and its Relationship to Math
(a little geometry in this one)

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/06/balkan-folk-dancing-and-its.html


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

"Those Who Can't Dance Say the Music is No Good" (Jamaican Proverb)

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
~Kurt Vonnegut

There are times I find myself dancing in the living room, usually when no one is home. My husband and daughters don't appreciate Bulgarian folk music, especially when it's played on loud "obnoxious" bagpipes and accordions. You couldn't pay them to dance to what I listen to which is why joined a group of like minded friends who dance on Friday (and sometimes Sunday) nights.

I enjoy dances from all over the Balkans, but am particularly partial to those from Bulgaria. Here a few of my favorites, complete with the aforementioned obnoxious musical instruments.

I originally learned Mitro from watching it on YouTube. I was delighted when one of the leaders of the Sunday night group introduced this dance, since I already knew it! Mitro is a modern version of Pravo Horo (the most popular dance in Bulgaria). It's from the Rhodope region, where they can get a little crazy with the bagpipes, the introduction will certainly get your attention. And the stamping is one way to get your frustations after a rough day.



Another of my favorite dances is Vlaško. This was originally a men's dance, complete with stamping and fast footwork (so the guys could show off their stuff), but nowadays, women get in the line (and even lead!) since the macho dances are much more fun. The name Vlaško comes from the Vlachs (Wallachian) people who were originally from southern Romania. They got around, and there are signficant numbers of them in Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece. There are many dances in the Balkans with the name Vlaško:  this one is from Bulgaria.



The lesnoto, or pravoto is very popular, especially in the Pirin region of Bulgaria, which shares a border with Macedonia. The lesnoto is one of those dances in an odd rhythm (7/8 for your music theorists out there); "pineapple-apple-apple", and it's very easy. It's basically walking with a few step-lifts thrown in. Even little kids can do it.

This band does an excellent job with Idam ne Idam; the dance that goes with the song is a lesnoto variation. The gaida player is fantastic, and so is the singing, although I know some people who would disagree with that. Bulgarian folk music, especially when played on bagpipes, is something people either love or hate. A Jamaican proverb describes it best: "those who can't dance say the music is no good."



For more on lesnoto read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesnoto

If you enjoyed this you may also like my series on the clarinet, the accordion and the bagpipe in Bulgarian folk music.

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2011/01/clarinet-in-bulgarian-folk-music-third.html

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/10/accordion-in-bulgarian-folk-music.html

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/06/bagpipe-and-bulgarian-folk-music.html

If you're looking for a socially acceptable way to rid yourself of stress, read:

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-stamp-out-your-frustrations-and.html


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.