How to Recognize Regional Differences in Bulgarian Folk Music: Part One

We don't need a melting pot in this country, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in the different things. You want the vegetables - the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers - to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences.
Jane Elliot

The quote above could have been said about a regional dish in Bulgaria: the Shopska Salad, as well as about regional differences in Bulgarian folk music.

Today's post is about how to recognize regional differences in Bulgarian folk music. After many years of listening to and dancing to Bulgarian folk music, I've learned how to recognize subtle regional differences.

The first example is a song from the Rhodope region, often accompanied by a large bagpipe, the kaba gaida.  It has a distinctive sound.  The songs have an otherworldly quality about them.

The song, Bela Sum Bela Junace is about a shepherd who finds a blonde girl in the fog. He asks her to marry him.



Songs from the Shope region can be distinguished by the "whooping" sound.  The harmony in this is amazing. This song was featured on the Bulgarian National Radio's website in Musicbox Bulgaria for the month of July. It takes true musical ability to sing like these women do.

Chichovite Konje translates to Uncle's Horses.  Anyone know where I can find the lyrics and a translation?



The next folklore region is Dobrudja. The example in Video #3 is Tervelska Tropanka. You can hear the stamps in the music even without looking at the dancers. The main instruments in this piece are the accordion accompanied by a bagpipe.

There are a number of dances unique to Dobrudja: Tropanka, Sborenka and Opas (Dobrudjan Pravo Horo). All of them are punctuated with stamps.  Tropanka is accented with strong arm movements (see video below).. 

If you are a frequent reader of The Alien Diaries, you will recognize the Chinese "Bonding Folkdance Class."



The Bulgarian Thracians love clarinet music and the dance Pravo Horo. There are many variations of the Pravo; and many regional differences in style.  Bachkovsko Horo is an example of a Pravo from Thrace.

Notice that the music is played by a brass orchestra, which is more typical for northwestern Bulgaria than Thrace. The clarinet comes in loud and clear at about 2:14.

The dancers are from the city of Stara Zagora.



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Bulgarian Singing Demystified

More Stamping it Out: Bulgarian Folk Dances from the Folklore Region of Dobrudja

Dancing Across Bulgaria: The Pravo and Regional Folk Dance Styles

Part Two will be about the music of Northwestern Bulgaria and Pirin.


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Elitsa Stoyneva, a Young Bulgarian Folk Singer

Youth comes but once in a lifetime.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I had the pleasure of listening to Elitsa Stoyneva at Balkan Music Night in March in the Kefana, a space designed for performances.

She performed songs from different regions of Bulgaria.  In video #1 are two songs from the Rhodopes, a mountain area near Greece. The second song is Posteno Ludo i Mlado. It has a beautiful, haunting quality  that you can imagine echoing from the mountains.



Elitsa was pretty cool. She explained what the songs were about (one of them was quite funny; unfortunately I don't remember the name of the song, so I couldn't provide the video.) She even involved the audience in a song from the Shope region. The second and third songs in the video are an example of Shopi style singing, which  involves whooping and long notes (impossible for me to do but it was fun, anyway).

Here she performs with two singers from the United States. 

Elitsa is the woman on the left.  I actually got to meet her while we were dancing a rachenitsa later on in the evening.  Her English is excellent, tinged with a charming Bulgarian accent.  Since the music we were dancing to was so loud, I couldn't hear her very well, but from what I gathered, she wasn't familiar with the dance the way we do it here.  Different village, you know.



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Bulgarian Singing Demystified

The Best of the Bisserov Sisters (and Family)

A Golden Record, Rhodope Folk Songs, and Valya Balkanska in Concert

Check out this blog on Bulgarian singing, written by an American named Martha Forsyth, who performs with Zdravets, a Boston based group.


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The Different "Flavors" of Pravo Rhodopko Horo

The more things change, the more they stay the same.
French proverb

Pravo Horo and 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.



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

The Bagpipe in Bulgarian Folk Music

Bulgarian Singing Demystified (includes a medley of songs from the Rhodope region, directed by Tatiana Sarbinska)

Dancing Across Bulgaria: The Pravo and Regional Folk Dance Styles


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

Variations on the Bulgarian Folk Tune: Dospatsko Horo

Today's music features different versions of the music for the Bulgarian folk dance Dospatsko Horo.  Like many Bulgarian dances, it's named after a town,  Dospat, in the Rhodope region of southern Bulgaria.  Dospatsko was originally a men's dance.

The video below is from the Chinese "Bonding Folk Dance Class" and uses the music familiar to recreational folk dancers.



Here is the entire piece; the artist listed is the orchestra of Anastas Naumov.  The dominant instrument here is the gadulka, a Bulgarian version of a fiddle, with the gaida and kaval in the background. You get to watch some beautiful scenery at the same time.  You can even dance to it if you want.

Version two is a modern and mellow Dospatsko, from a Bulgarian dance music album.  The dominant instrument here is the kaval.

I have heard many different renditions of Dospatsko on YouTube. Some are good and some are just awful, like version #3, which sounds like elevator music.  I know art is subjective, but this album cover is ugly!



It took some time for me to warm up to version # 4, which is the most unusual Dospatsko I've heard. It was recorded in a synogogue in Poland with excellent acoustics, and played on a cello, accordion, organ and a kaval. The music alternates between being slow and fast, solemn and dramatic. This version isn't meant for dancing but it's definitely worth a listen.



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Bulgarian Folk Dances Named After Cities and Towns

Variations on the Bulgarian Folk Tune Gankino Horo

Modern Versions of Traditional Bulgarian Folk Songs Part One and Part Two


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