A city isn’t so unlike a person. They both have the marks to show they have many stories to tell. They see many faces. They tear things down and make new again.
Rasmenia Massoud
Today's music and dance are from the city of Stara Zagora in the south central (Thrace) region of Bulgaria.
Video #1 is Starazorska Rachenitsa, named after the city. Rachenitsa is the national dance of Bulgaria and danced all over the country; it has many regional styles. The Thracian rachenitsa tends to be slow and smooth. Oftentimes in this dance the arm movements are emphasized.
The name rachenitsa is derived from the Bulgarian word for hand or forearm: ръка.
Here you will see a club demonstrating the dance. Afterwards, there is instruction, and then everyone else joins in. This version is "na horo" or in a group.
The next dance is Staro Zagorsko Horo. The difference between rachenitsa and horo is that a horo is a group dance; rachenitsa can be performed solo or as a couple as well as in a group.
Staro Zagorsko Horo is a pravo variation.The pravo is the most popular dance form in Thrace, although there are regional variations done in other parts of the country. Like the rachenitsa, it is danced all over the country.
This dance starts off slowly and speeds up. The beginning is a pravo variation with grapevines and sways. The fancy footwork starts at 2:32.
If you are a regular reader of The Alien Diaries, you will recognize the Chinese "bonding folk dance class."
Today's post has a springtime theme with music by the Bulgarian composer Diko Iliev (1898-1984).
His works were based on folk dances from northwestern Bulgaria and arranged for brass orchestras.
Although many people are familiar with his most famous piece, Dunavsko Horo, he wrote numerous other compositions which are not as well known.
The first is titled Пробуждане на Пролетта (Springtime Awakening.) Although I like the scenery in this video, however, the "please purchase" annotation is a distraction. My guess is that although many YouTubers are looking to make money from their videos, they are a bit more discreet about it.
By the way, I find commercials very annoying, and always skip though them when I can. The advertising business would go bankrupt the if the world were made up of people like me.
The next piece is Proletno Horo (Springtime Dance). After a long, hard winter, everyone wants to dance outside. The artwork is very appealing as well, it captures the essence of a Bulgarian village scene. If anyone knows who the artist is, please let me know in the "comments" section!
Same artwork, but a different piece of music this time, Maisko Utro, or May Morning. Iliev might have been inspired by a quote from William Shakespeare when he composed this piece: No doubt they rose up early to observe The rite of May; and, hearing our intent, Came here in grace of our solemnity.
I like spring because it's so colorful, and after the cold and dreariness of winter, it's good to see the trees dressed with beautiful blossoms and everything in brilliant hues.
If you enjoyed this you may also like:
Dreaming of Spring in the Middle of Winter (a blog post written during the cold, snowy and harsh winter of 2010-2011). If you like Bulgarian folk songs about flowers, this is for you!
Ultimately, your theme will find you. You don't have to go looking for it.
Richard Russo
I never expected to find the word "horo" in an online dictionary. The original source for the definition was from Encyclopedia Brittannica. It is derived from the Greek χορός, which means a dance done in a line or circle, and the Bulgarian word is almost the same as the Greek.
The name's the same for all three of the folk ensembles in today's post. The first band is from the Bulgarian city of Ruse (Rousse). The dance is Dunavsko Pravo Horo. If you're wondering why the dance looks familiar, it's the same dance (done to different music) during New Year's celebrations in Bulgaria.
Check out this 50th anniversary performance (which took place in 2012). Horo Orchestra was founded in 1962. The dance in this video is a Daichovo Horo from northern Bulgaria.
Everything you always wanted to know about the Horo Orchestra of Ruse can be found by clicking this link. You can also check out samples of their music.
The next Horo is a group of ladies from the city of Brisbane, Australia and they perform a spirited Shopska Rachenitsa. Many Bulgarians emigrated to Australia (and other countries as well) after the fall of Communism, this is called the Bulgarian Diaspora. Bulgaria is currently suffering a "brain drain" because many young people go abroad in the hope of earning more money than they could at home.
Xopo from Shelburne, Massachusetts, USA, plays a very charming melody (lesnoto) from the Pirin region of Bulgaria. Their repertoire is from the Balkans with an emphasis on Bulgarian and Serbian folk music. Everyone, including band members pronounces their name ZO-PO. That drives me absolutely crazy, maybe because I've been teaching myself how to read the Cyrillic alphabet, and in Bulgarian, "X" has an "H" sound.
If you enjoyed this you may also like Folk Ensembles Named After Dances
Esma would have plenty to say. She has done quite a bit of traveling in Bulgaria and the United States.
Giving names to inanimate objects is not unusual. People give names to cars and boats. It gives them personality, and even power. If you speak or understand an language other than English, which ascribes genders to nouns, this naming thing starts to make sense. For example, Spanish has masculine and feminine nouns. Things get even more complex in languages like German and Bulgarian, which have masculine, feminine and neuter nouns.
But this post isn't about the complexities of grammar and language, it's about music.
In this case, Esma is a very important part of her band. She's very colorful and loves keeping time (with a little help from her friends). What's unusual is that although she belongs to a Bulgarian band, the writing on her is in the Roman, not Cyrillic, alphabet.
Esma belongs to Kabile, a band from the Thracian region of Bulgaria, which is making yet another tour of the United States (the previous ones were in 2008 and 2010). She is a tupan, a double-headed drum who likes odd rhythms like 7/8 and 11/16.
Esma especially likes rachenitsa, the national dance of Bulgaria, which is in 7/8 time. Check out the video here:
Several of us watched a demonstration of a Bulgarian gaida (bagpipe), by one of the musicians, Dzhenko Andreev. There were musical instruments and CD's for sale on the table. If I had the time and the money, I wouldn't mind taking up kaval (an open ended flute). I don't have the lung power for playing the gaida.
Later in the evening,we danced to a kaval solo performed by Nikolay Doktorov. This is a tropanka (stamping dance) from Dobrudja, northeastern Bulgaria.
Kabile will be performing all over the United States between August and November of this year, with Esma in tow. If you would like to find the venue nearest you, click the link below:
Today's post features the Trakia Percussion Group from Bulgaria. They play classical music and Bulgarian folk dances on a Central American folk instrument, the marimba.
For some reason Bulgarians are fascinated by music from Latin America. One of the Bulgarian National Radio affiliates has a program titled Planeta Latino, and I have heard songs in the Puerto Rican style on this radio station (in Bulgarian)! Here's the link to program (if you're Cyrillically challenged, you may want to use Google Translate). http://radiovidin.bnr.bg/Shows/Music/planeta-latino/Pages/default.aspx
The marimba is the national instrument of Guatemala, and is also popular in southern Mexico, as well as in other Central American countries. Musicians and composers have been incorporating it into classical music as well because of its unique sound quality. It is a percussion instrument, like a xylophone, with resonators on the bottom. The traditional instruments from Guatemala and Mexico used gourds as resonators, and they were made from wood. The modern ones are made from metal and synthetic materials.
I grew up with Guatemalan folk music because my mom's best friend was from that country. I got to like it because they played it so much, and they had stacks of recordings featuring the marimba. When I first heard Bulgarian folk music played on marimba, I found it rather strange at first, but then I found I rather liked this cross-cultural mix.
Earlier this year I had written a post featuring Petko Stainov's Rachenitsa, of which one of the variations was played on a marimba. (You will see a link to it at the end of this post.) A member of the Trakia Percussion Group, Miroslav Dimov, saw a comment I had posted on YouTube and sent me the link to some of his videos.
The first video is a medley of Bulgarian folk dances played on marimba: a lesnoto, a pravo and a kopanitsa. The lesnoto is a dance in irregular rhythm (7/8 time signature); the pravo is in 6/8; the kopanitsa in 11/16. They blend almost seamlessly into each other.
The second is a dance titled Gornodikansko Horo, which to me sounds like a fast pravo. By the way, the group won a first prize in an international competition with this piece, and it's a delight to listen to. If you take a closer look you can see the musicians are wearing traditional Bulgarian embroidered shirts.
If you enjoyed this you may also like: Variations on a Theme by Petko Stainov (Rachenitsa Travels to Guatemala)
Elitsa Todorova, Bulgarian pop/folk singer plans to lead 50,000 young people from Bulgaria in the the longest folk dance in the world on June 9th and 10th, in Varna. She hopes this event (Horo 2012) will make it into the Guinness Book of World Records. Read more about it here:
On my forays in the Universe of You Tube, I have found Bulgarian folk dancing in many locations around the world. You don't have to be Bulgarian to dance like one :)
Our journey begins in Kodiak, Alaska, a small town in the United States on an island in the Pacific Ocean. It is known mostly for one of the most fearsome creatures, the Kodiak bear. Before Alaska became a state it belonged to the Russians, who sold the land to the Americans for a bargain basement price. Alaska is sparsely populated, averaging about 1 person per square mile. What's surprising is that even in a remote location like this one, Bulgarian folk dance has made a foothold. About half the population in the state is here :)
There are a number of videos of this Chinese group on YouTube. They describe themselves as a "Bonding Folkdance Class." Here they perform Tervelska Tropanka, a dance from the Dobrudja folklore region.
Do you have a sense déjà vu? If you're a regular reader of this blog you'll recognize this group from Jerusalem, in Israel.
If this is your first time here, check out the Dunav website:
Now we go south of the Equator. Bulgarians have settled in the most remote regions of the globe, and they have a sizable population in Australia. Everywhere they went they brought their culture with them, so they wouldn't get too homesick.
This group, Horo, is from Brisbane and they dance the Shopska Rachenitsa. Horo translates to "chain dance" in English, and as it turns out, this is not the only folk ensemble named after a dance.
At the bottom of the world in a land of ice and snow is the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute. There have been sightings of dancing penguins, this happens to be one of them. If this video looks familiar, you have probably seen the movie Happy Feet.
If you take a look at the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute's website, you'll see more dancing penguins. Rumor has it that the scientists there have been teaching them :)
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:
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!
