You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Ogden Nash
Dancing keeps you young, and the younger you start the better. Staying immature is optional. Who wants to grow up anyway?
Today's post features young people performing dances from Serbia and Bulgaria.
Video #1 is of three Chinese kids from the States dancing Sestorkafrom Serbia.Check out the girl who leads (she also does the sound effects. Hoo-ha he-hop!
This dance is usually done in a belt hold, but the kids here are using a basket hold. Either one is fine. Short lines are best; three to four people is a good number.
The lyrics are at the bottom of the screen, so you can sing along.
Video #2 is the kids's dance ensemble Hopa Trop dancing a Shopska Rachenitsa. The group is from Seattle, Washington.
The title of the video is Proletni Igri (Springtime Dance). I'm still waiting for spring because the weather has been so chilly.
Video #3 is of the kids' ensemble Dimitrovche from Toronto, Canada. The description (in Bulgarian) translates to Big Thracian Dance. It's actually a dressed-up version of Pravo Horo. The kids are dressed-up, too, in elaborate embroidered costumes.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
French proverb
Pravo Horoand its numerous variations are popular all over Bulgaria. Today we shall focus on a single region, the Rhodope Mountains, and several versions of the dance from that area.
The basic village Pravo is a simple walking dance, three steps in and one step back, in a diagonal formation.
Here is an example of the basic village Pravo Rhodopsko accompanied by a kaba gaida, an instrument native to that region. This bagpipe is larger and lower pitched than the traditional Bulgarian gaida.
This dance song Mitro is an excellent example of the fusion of traditional and modern in Bulgarian folk music. Listen to the gaida solo at the beginning and the end of the video.
It's different from the kaba gaida played in the previous video and loud enough to wake the dead.
The Pravo step is interwoven into the dance with stamps and step-hops.
Several dancers in my Sunday night group went to Pinewoods recently, during a session held the last week of June.This year,Yves Moreau taught a number of Bulgarian dances. One that was introduced to my Sunday night dance group was Hajde Kalino. Similar to Mitro, the Pravo step here is also interwoven with a faster figure that includes stamps and grapevines.
The dance is moderately slow and speeds up when the singing stops. Rhodope versions of the Pravo are generally slow to medium speed. In other regions of Bulgaria, they can be so fast that you can barely see the feet!
In the next video, also of the song Hajde Kalino, the singers are accompanied by a kaba gaida. What I find strange is that neither the singers or the gaida player are wearing folk costumes. This looks like an impromptu street performance.No one actually gets up to dance until 5:45. Why did they wait so long?
The last video is another "souped up" Rhodope Pravo with claps and stamps (I thought Dobrudja Bulgarians, Romanians and Vlachs had a monopoly on those!) The song is Sapril Dobri. The instructor here is Jaap Leegwater, who specializes in dances from Bulgaria. He also led Mitro in video #2.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
Carl Sagan
Today's post is about Bulgarian folk singer Valya Balkanska and her connection with an exhibit at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. (I was in Washington, D.C. recently and had paid a visit to several of the Smithsonian museums).
The exhibit (see photo above) is a copy of the Golden Record sent up into space on the Voyager in 1977 for the purpose of contacting intelligent life somewhere in the universe.
The large bagpipe is a kaba gaida, used as accompaniment for folk songs from the Rhodope region of Bulgaria.
Although Izlel e Delyu Haidutin is Valya Balkanska's most popular song, there are many others in her repertoire. You can sample some of them in today's post.
The next two videos were part of a Bulgaria Liberation Day concert that took place in Toronto, Canada. It featured Valya Balkanska and Peter Yanev (on kaba gaida).
In the first video the audience dances a very long Pravo Horo. Afterwards the song Izlel e Delio Haidutin starts at 10:22 and goes into the next video. The person who recorded this performance had to do it in installments, which is a bit of a distraction.
Video #2 is a continuation of the first (on YouTube they are listed as 8 and 9). After a short speech in Bulgarian, there is more singing and dancing at 2:55. The video concludes with the song Tih bjal Dunav se valnuva,(also known as the Botev March)which commemorates Hristo Botev's historic crossing of the Danube from Romania to Bulgaria during the April Uprising of 1876. The lyrics are based on a poem by Ivan Vazov.
The other installments from this concert are on You Tube, for your watching and listening pleasure.
Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.
Herbie Hancock
Although I understand very little Bulgarian, their folk music speaks to me, and to many other fans of it as well. When a Bulgarian folk ensemble comes to play, few people sit down (except perhaps to rest for the next dance). The rhythms are compelling and sometimes hypnotic; it is easy to get into a trance while dancing.
Bulgarika is a folk ensemble that played last month in Amherst, Massachusetts, and I was at their dance party in early September. Right now they are on tour in the United States.If you do a Google search on them, you can find a performance somewhere near you.
Nikolai Kolev and his wife Donka, originally from Bulgaria, now reside in New York City, and a number of years ago played in the Kabile Bulgarian Band.
The Bulgarika ensemble on tour this year consists of four musicians: Nikolai Kolev, gadulka, Donka Koleva, vocals, Vasil Bebelekov, gaida and Dragni Dragnev, who plays several instruments: gaida, keyboard, kaval and tupan. He just doesn't play them all at the same time :)
Although it was very hot and humid, and the hall had no air conditioning (for cooling we had the windows wide open and fans running at full blast) everyone had a great time dancing and sweating to Bulgarian folk tunes. I felt bad for the musicians who wore long pants and long sleeve embroidered shirts because performing in the heat is hard work. They absolutely love what they do, and played for us (with a short break) for about three hours.
Here is a sample from that evening that I captured in video: the dance is a slow pravo.
This was another dance event with Bulgarika which took place recently in Pennsylvania. The music is a medley of songs from the Rhodope region of southern Bulgaria; the dance is Pravo Rhodopsko Horo.
And finally, an older video of Bulgarika from 2011 with Ivan Milev on accordion, and Donka Koleva's daughter Maria (vocals). It took place at an outdoor festival in Indiana. The dances are Pravo Trakiisko Horo, Devetorka, and Trite Puti.
Today's cross-cultural adventure explores Bulgarian folk music played on instruments from Italy and Central America.
The first piece is by Diko Iliev, who composed music based on folk dances from northwestern Bulgaria. This dance is a Daichovo Horo titled Bilka. Daichovo has an odd rhythm: quick-quick-quick-slow. The accent is on the first beat, but the fourth is the longest. For you music theorists out there the top number in the time signature is a nine. Balkan music is well-known for its irregular rhythms with a combination of quick-slow beats.
Here's the traditional orchestration for brass band to use as a frame of reference:
The next video is the same piece played by the group Prima Visione, and arranged for mandolin orchestra. The mandolin is an instrument most commonly associated with Italian music; this is quite an unusual combination. This version of Bilka has a quieter, gentler sound than the brass band.
The marimba is a a percussion instrument related to the xylophone. It is commonly associated with the folk music of the indigenous Maya people of the Yucatan in Mexico and the country of Guatemala.
Now things really start to get interesting. This video is of the Via Nova Percussion Group playing Bulgarian horo on several marimbas. Horo is a generic name for a folk dance from Bulgaria, in this case this one is a Pravo Horo.
The second set features three Bulgarian folk dances: Lesnoto, Kopanitsa, and Pravo. The first two have odd time signatures; Lesnoto is in 7/8 (pineapple-apple-apple) and Kopanitsa in 11/8 (quick-quick-slow-quick quick). The Pravo can either be in 2/4 or 6/8, this version is in 6/8. If you look off to the side, you'll see the tupan player. The tupan is a double-headed drum used throughout the Balkans. He is the all-important rhythm section and keeps everyone else in line :)
Variations on a Theme by Petko Stainov (a contemporary of Diko Iliev who also used folk motifs in his music). In this post, you'll hear different versions of his piece, Rachenitsa, along with some folk music from Guatemala.
Today's featured dance will be Opas, from the region of Dobrudja in northeast Bulgaria. Like last week's Romanian dance, Hora de Mina, it has different "flavors" with different music and choreography. Opas is the Dobrudjan variation of the dance Pravo Trakiisko Horo, shown here:
This link goes to Eliznik's Web Page a very informative source on folk dances from Eastern Europe.
If you scroll down and read the last paragraph, it explains the regional differences of Pravo Horo, the most popular dance in Bulgaria.
The version of Opas done in Bulgaria is a relatively easy dance, although the front basket-hold raises the challenge level a little, especially for beginner folk dancers. I happen to like this video because it's part of a series for learning Bulgarian folk dances, and the people wear elaborate embroidered costumes from the different folklore regions.
If you're a regular reader of The Alien Diaries the people in the next video will be familiar to you. The Dunav group from Jerusalem in Israel has a new series of videos featuring dances from the Balkans. I happened upon this when I was doing a search for the version of Opas that's done by recreational folk dance groups here in the States. This one rates 9.5 on a difficulty scale from 1-10; the belt hold makes it especially challenging. An especially difficult element of the dance is the deep knee bends, this is definitely off-limits if you have arthritis :)
For me, music and life are all about style.
Miles Davis
Although Bulgaria is a relatively small country (if you superimpose it on a map of the United States it's about the size of the state of Tennessee), it has seven distinct folklore regions. Today's post will feature dancing from four of them: Trakia, Rhodope, Dobrudja and Severnjasko.
Each area is distinct in its music and dance. Today's post will feature one of the most popular Bulgarian dances, the Pravo Horo (and its variations) and compare how it's performed in different regions of the country.
The Pravo originated somewhere in Thrace, a region now located in three different countries, Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey. By the way, people who live in the Thracian region of Greece do the same dance with a belt hold, but they call it by a different name, Zonaradikos. Zonaria means "belt" in Greek.
This dance from the Bulgarian region of the same name,Pravo Trakiisko Horo is slow and easy. It speeds up toward the end. It is a basic three and one pattern, in and out, over and over, at least until they run out of music.
Same dance as in the first video with a couple of slight variations. This group uses a front basket hold.
This pravo is from the Rhodope region of southern Bulgaria. The tempo is slower and almost hypnotic. The dancers link arms and the instrumental accompaniment is a kaba gaida (bagpipe) an instrument native to that area.
The people of Dobrudja,(northeastern Bulgaria), not to be outdone, have their own version of the pravo, called Opas. It's a more challenging dance than your basic pravo,too, with lots of stamping and done in a baskethold, so if you screw up, the whole line goes out of kilter.
One of the most popular variants of the pravo is from northwestern Bulgaria. It is a very lively and energetic dance and has practically become synonymous with celebrations in Bulgaria: Dunavsko Horo. There are many different melodies for Dunavsko (the brass orchestration by Diko Iliev is the most popular). This version is played on Bulgarian folk instruments. By the way, these girls are Bulgarian language students from Armenia.
For more on regional variations in Bulgarian dance, check out Eliznik's web page. If you're short on time, scroll to the very bottom where you will find a summary of the regional differences.
You can find almost anything on the Universe of YouTube, and what I've discovered is that there are quite a few folk ensembles named after dances.
The first group, Ciuleandra, is from Vancouver Island in Canada. The song Ciuleandra is very popular with folk dancers around the world, and it's from an old recording by Maria Tanase, a Romanian pop-folk singer who died in 1963. This ensemble performs their signature dance, followed by a couple dance.
Tropanka from SAP Labs in Bulgaria is a group of colleagues who have an interest in folk dancing, and they are quite good. I've seen a few of their videos on YouTube and I get the impression morale at this company is quite high, judging from their participation in company sponsored activities. Tropanka is a dance from the region of Dobrudja (northeast Bulgaria). This group performs it along with two other popular Bulgarian dances, Pravo Horo and Graovsko Horo.
Trite Puti is the name of a folk ensemble, a dance school in Sofia, and a popular folk dance from the central Bulgarian region of Thrace. Here the group is participating in an amateur folk dance competition held annually in Sofia. The first dance is Trite Puti, and the one immediately following is ChetvornoHoro.
If you enjoyed this you may also like Bulgarian Dances and their Greek Relatives:
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."
Bulgarian folk music is so good they have a difficult time keeping it inside the country. It undergoes some interesting transformations when foreigners borrow it. For example, check out this performance of the Hungarian group, Besh O Drom, who used a Bulgarian folk tune and kicked it up a notch. The result? Something so dynamic that you can't sit still while listening to it.(For some reason this performance ended up on a Spanish TV program).
And here's the original music and dance, which is Graovsko Horo, performed by a Balkan folk dance group in Israel:
The Pravo is another dance that has been around. It is supposedly the most widespread dance in the world. Variations of it have turned up in Greece, Macedonia and Albania. Here is a group of dancers at a Greek festival that I went to last summer performing Zonaradiko, the same dance as the Bulgarian Pravo. By the way, the Pravo is the most popular dance in the Thracian region of Bulgaria. The ancient Thracians were a people who lived in what is now Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, so there was a lot of cultural cross-pollination in that part of the world.
The Valle, a dance from Albania, is also similar to Bulgarian Pravo:
The Rachenitsa has been around, too. It has migrated as far as Armenia, in a dance called Laz Bar. A Laz is a dance in 7/8 rhythm (apple apple galloping), and although the music is Middle Eastern, that Rachenitsa rhythm is in there. Notice a rhythm change near the end, and the dancers doing something similar to Bulgarian Pravo:
Compare it to the Bulgarian Rachenitsa seen here:
Back in the 90's, there was a series called "Xena, Warrior Princess." It had been brought to my attention, since I never watched it on TV, that Bulgarian music had infiltrated this particular miniseries. I checked it out for myself, on YouTube.
Hope you enjoyed this multi-cultural journey to Bulgaria and beyond.....
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!
