2020 shouldn't just be about vision. It should also be about seeing what the New Year can bring.
― Anthony T. Hincks
It's time to say good-bye to 2019. It's hard to believe The Alien Diaries is entering its 10th year in publication with over 400 posts. This one is number 401.
Today's post features music for the New Year, some pop and some folk.
Video #1 is a New Year song in Bulgarian. This is a pop song and not a folk song. It got my attention and I wanted to share it. The artist is Nelina Georgieva.
Video #2 features Mango Duende with their version of Diko Iliev's Dunavsko Horo. This group is best known for their rendition of folk songs from Latin America. Some are in Bulgarian, and some are in Spanish.
Another New Year is almost upon us, and it's time for another take on the Bulgarian New Year dance, Novogodinsko Horo (most of us know of it as Dunavsko Horo by Diko Iliev).
Video #3 celebrates the 80th anniversary of Dunavsko Horo. The date the piece was introduced to the public was April 18, 1937. Since then, it had been adopted for New Year celebrations in Bulgaria, and things haven't been the same since. By the way, the commentary in in video is in Bulgarian. The dance, however, is a universal language. The piece is a cultural icon, like the Radetsky March.
Video #4 is an actual New Year celebration that took place last year in Sofia, Bulgaria last year broadcast by Bulgarian National Television. It's 35 minutes long. If you don't have time to watch the entire video here are the highlights: the Bulgarian National Anthem with fireworks at 4:12, followed by a Russian hymn sung by Boris Christoff (Hristov), Dunavsko Horo at 7:59, Elenino Horo by Panko Dobrev with costumed dancers at 12:45, Alexandriika at 17:54 (also by Diko Iliev), at 20:35 more brass music and folk dancers, at 22:08, Daichovo Horo by Diko Iliev, at 27:08, Rosna Kitka by Diko Iliev. It ends with Gankino Horo at 30:24 also by Diko Iliev.
Pick and choose what interests you, or you can watch the entire video, including the commercials. Notice that most of the music is by Diko Iliev; you can read about him in one of the posts below.
Happy New Year to all and thank you for reading my blog!
Since this week's dance has two c's instead of one, here's the Cookie Monster to tell you what the letter C is all about. Eating too many cookies results in weight gain, which is why Cookie Monster should take up Balkan dancing.
The featured dance is from the Sumadija region of Central Serbia, Cicino Kolo. Translated into English it means "Grandfather's Kolo" At first it looks like something your grandfather can easily do until it starts to speed up.. Cicino Kolo is not recommended for those who have arthritis in the knees or other mobility problems. No disrespect meant to grandfathers, some are very fit and active people.
Kolo means "circle"and it can also mean wheel. Not all kolos are danced in a circle, as you will see in the here, since there are only two people, not enough to form a circle. Circles and lines, by the way, are geometric figures, which are very prominent in folk dances from Eastern Europe.
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you'll recognize the dancers. They are members of the Dunav group, from Jerusalem, Israel. By the way, Dunav means Danube in Serbian and Bulgarian.
Although I'm not quite ready to move to letter D I thought I'd include, as an added bonus, the Bulgarian New Year Dance: Diko Iliev's Dunavsko Horo. He composed it in honor of the Danube, River of Many Names. It was a big part of his life because he spent many years in the town of Oryahovo, along the river. The music and the dance are associated with Diko Iliev, even though he wrote many other compositions.
Play it at midnight and turn the volume loud enough to wake the dead. Get all your friends to line up behind you and dance around the living room instead of having a drunken Auld Lang Syne singalong. If you want to learn the dance, the first post on the list below will help.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
― Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr
One day I decided to check out the Universe of YouTube to see how many different tunes I could find for Dunavsko Horo (that were not composed by Diko Iliev). I found five; there are probably more. The Bulgarians love this dance and play it on festive occasions, especially to ring in the New Year.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any notes (even in Bulgarian) about the origin of Dunavsko Horo. I'm sure people did this dance or something like it before Diko Iliev (1898-1984) came along and made it popular. The dance may have originated in the town of Svishtov; it is also known as Svishtovsto Horo.
Even though this is essentially the same dance in all five videos; there are variations in speed and style. This is where the "different village" concept comes into play.
The first video is a group of young people from the ensemble Pirinska Kitka performing at a Christmas celebration. The recorded music is played on traditional Bulgarian folk instruments.
This brass band version, which reminds me of Diko Iliev's Dunavsko, is from a Bulgarian dance teaching video. It's quite a bit faster than the one in the previous video. The costumes are from the northwestern folklore region (Severnjasko).
Here's another teaching video, this time from horo.bg . They have an excellent website with videos and information about Bulgarian dance and folklore. The dancers are from the Filip Kutev Folk Ensemble. Although there is an English translate button on the horo.bg site, it doesn't work very well. You are better off cutting and pasting the link to the site into an online translation program, although some of the meaning can get lost.
By the way, my group likes this version because it's not too fast.
If you're searching for a feminist version of Dunavsko, look no further. Since most women love to shop, here is a group of them in one of their favorite places: the shopping mall. For some reason they aren't wearing folk costumes. Maybe they couldn't find them at any of the stores.
Young people add an element of energy, and this version is fast, with plenty of arm swinging! The group is the ensemble Goce Delcev, from Sofia.
Now that we've survived the end of the world and the craziness that is the Christmas holiday it's time to celebrate the New Year, Bulgarian style. Today's post will feature party videos from different countries with Bulgarian folk dancing.
The first one takes place in Tampa, Florida in the United States, and this really exuberant group dances a rachenitsa, accompanied with lots of noise (presumably to drive away the evil spirits). Maybe they've had a little too much wine, the room seems to turn sideways :) I know it isn't me...
There are many versions of Dunavsko Horo around, and this dance always ushers in the New Year in Bulgaria; the one shown here is played on traditional folk instruments. This group of young people is from Bulgaria.
The next group hails from Toronto, Canada. Check out the cute little girl in the center of the room (somehow they manage not to run over her). The dance is Bachkovsko Horo, which looks very similar to Dunavsko, with a few more steps. It is a very energetic dance which should be done only by people in excellent physical condition :)
The music most often used for Dunavsko Horo on New Year's is by Diko Iliev; this father with his little boy are having fun with it. They're pretending that they're shooting off fireworks while the little one blows the whistle and keeps time with the forks. They're wishing everyone a Happy New Year all the way from California.
All that gloom and doom predicted for 2012 is now just a memory. Here is last year's New Year post. You can look back on 2012 and be glad it's almost over. What will 2013 bring? More of the same, I'm sure.
Today's post will be about some interesting New Year rituals.
In Bulgaria, the New Year is welcomed with a ritual called Surva. According to the Bulgarian National Radio website, "very early in the morning on 1 Jan. boys (survakari) tour the community with best wishes for the New Year. They use decorated cornel twigs gently beating neighbors on their backs, for the sake of health, endurance and prosperity."
The noise and the cowbells in this video serve to frighten away the evil spirits and the fire symbolizes the return of the sun in this very noisy Surva celebration. The fun doesn't end on New Year's Eve, at least not in Bulgaria!
Jumping into a frigid body of water in January seems to be the thing to do to stave off the boredom of winter, and in my humble opinion, you have to be either drunk or out of your mind to think about it. If you live in New England, like I do, the ocean is freezing cold even in mid-July, and I've compared it to taking the Kneipp Cure.
Sebastian Kneipp, a monk from Germany, was one of the first to popularize the cold water treatment. He claimed it cured him of tuberculosis, which was a very common ailment in those days. He may have been on to something. http://www.kisthydrotherapy.com/cms/history.php
The Polar Bear Club, founded over 100 years ago in Coney Island, New York, was one of the first organizations to begin the New Year by taking a dip in the icy ocean. Any hangovers from the previous night will certainly be obliterated in that 38 degree water.
The Christian holiday of Epiphany falls on January 6th. In Latin America, Epiphany is Three Kings Day. It is said that this on this day the Kings arrived at the manger of the infant Jesus and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Three Kings Day celebrations involve lots of singing and dancing as you can see in this video from Puerto Rico.
Epiphany takes on an interesting twist in Eastern Europe. There, the focus is more on commemorating the baptism of Jesus. Another name for the holiday is St. Jordan's Day, and it involves a group of men plunging into freezing cold water to retrieve a cross thrown into it by a priest. This custom is practiced by those of the Eastern Orthodox faith, which is the predominant religion the Balkans and in Russia. In Russia, where lakes and rivers often freeze solid, a hole will be cut into the ice.
The cross throwing ritual accomplishes two purposes: the first one is to bless and purify the water, the second is for health and good luck, especially to the person who retrieves it. Here's a group of men (notice that all the participants are male) taking a dive into the icy Danube near the town of Svishtov. Snow flurries fall from the sky and the audience on the riverbank is bundled up in heavy winter coats.
In this clip from a news program, a bunch of people dance in the Tundzha River and several men play the gaida! Either they have been endowed with supernatural powers that overcome the effect of frigid water, or they have been hitting the rakia :)
With January 1 just around the corner, it's almost time for the annual New Year's Concert from Vienna. While the rest of my compatriots park themselves in front of the TV watching the college football games, I'm enjoying music by the Strauss family and other composers who wrote dance music during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
What few people are aware of is that the Johann Strausses, father and son, wrote music based on folklore themes. The Austrian ländler, a dance in 3/4 time, was the forerunner of the waltz.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landler
Here's a demonstration of this dance, which is very popular in Austria and Bavaria:
Johann Strauss Sr., along with another composer, Josef Lanner, incorporated the ländler into many of their compositions and popularized the waltz, a more refined form of the countrified Austrian folk dance, in Vienna. Strauss Sr.'s most famous piece, however, was not a waltz, but the Radetsky March. There is a connection between Radetzky and Bulgaria's most famous poet, Hristo Botev. You can see a video of the Radetsky March, played as an encore in every New Year's Concert, here: http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/05/hristo-botev-poet-and-revolutionary.html
The Vienna of the Strauss family was, and still is, a multi-ethnic cosmopolitan city. It was one of the capitals of the great Austro-Hungarian empire, which encompassed most of Central and Eastern Europe. It included the two ruling countries of Austria and Hungary, and also what is now the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, western Romania, northern Italy, parts of Bosnia, Serbia and Poland. This empire was home to people who spoke many different languages and were of different nationalities. They did not always get along.
Somehow the emperor, Franz Josef, managed to hold this polyglot empire together for nearly 50 years, until his death in 1916, when it started to break apart. Two years before, all hell broke loose in Austria-Hungary when a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Austrian archduke, Franz Ferdinand, who was to inherit the empire. This was the event that precipitated World War I, and the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918.
It's time for some music by Johann Strauss, Jr. This is a polka (a folk dance native to Bohemia, located in the present day Czech Republic) with a spicy Hungarian theme. This performance of Eljen a Magyar is from a telecast of the 2009 New Year's concert.
The German name for the Austro-Hungarian empire was "Die Donaumonarchie" (Danube Monarchy) after the river that held it all together. As for the color, Strauss got it wrong. The German language has a number of words for a person who's had a little too much wine (or any other kind of booze). One of them is "blau" (blue). So it's possible that when Strauss wrote this magnificent piece of work, he may have had one too many at the tavern, and in his alcoholic stupor, thought the Danube was flowing with wine. (By the way, the Wachau region of Austria, along the river, is an important wine producing area).
The footage, from the 2010 New Year's Concert, is amazing, especially if you've seen it on TV instead of that little YouTube screen. And if you have actually been there, like I have, the scenery is out of this world. The video is but a shadow of the real thing.
The Danube, the River of Many Names (read this for an explanation:)
http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/10/river-of-many-names-musical-journey.html flows through a number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe, most of which are mentioned in the video. However, the Austrian TV, who produced this, omitted a few important ones. One of them was Bulgaria, the birthplace of composer Diko Iliev.
Diko Iliev was born in a small town across the Danube from Romania in 1898 (a year before the death of Johann Strauss the 2nd). He wrote music based on Bulgarian folk dances for brass and wind ensembles. His most famous work, Dunavsko (Danubian) Horo, begins the New Year all over Bulgaria, and everyone dances to it at midnight.
The next video from the Universe of YouTube celebrates Bulgaria's entry into the European Union on the first of January, 2007. The first piece is a choral rendition of the Bulgarian national anthem, which leads into Dunavsko Horo at minute 1.50, then concludes with the finale of the last movement of the Beethoven 9th Symphony, the end of which was unfortunately cut short. Notice how the fireworks are in time with the music!
Diko Iliev was a versatile musician. Not only did he compose music based on northwestern Bulgarian folk motifs, he wrote marches, tangos and waltzes. His music is well known and loved in Bulgaria, and always played during celebrations such as New Year's Day and national holidays. Unlike Strauss, who composed primarily for the aristocracy and the upper classes, Diko Iliev was a composer of the people. When he died in 1984, busloads of mourners travelled to Montana, a town in Northwestern Bulgaria, for his funeral.
Diko Iliev's music captured the soul of the Bulgarian people as much as the music of the Strauss family did in Austria. Give it a listen, and you'll understand why.
Happy New Year 2011 to all!
This post is dedicated to an old friend, Don, who passed away suddenly in September, 2010. He especially loved the music of Beethoven and the Strauss family. My husband and I spent New Year's Eve with him and his wife when we lived in New York in the 1980's. He left this world much too soon and we miss him very much.
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!
