The Zurna in Bulgarian Folk Music

Today's post features a musical instrument that people either love or hate: the zurna. In that respect it is related to the bagpipe (gaida).

The zurna looks like a wooden horn with finger holes, and has a double reed like an oboe. According to this article it may have originated in Asia; it is a very popular instrument in Turkey and the Middle East.

http://www.belly-dance.org/mizmar.html

Shepherds played zurna to frighten the bears away. The Ottoman Turks, who ruled Eastern Europe for nearly 500 years brought the zurna to the Balkans. The zurna and the tupan (double-headed drum) were important instruments in Turkish military bands, and the purpose of the music was to intimidate enemies of the Ottoman Empire.



The people of the Pirin region (southwest Bulgaria) incorporated the zurna as well as the tupan into their folk music. It's loud enough to wake up the dead and played during festive occasions. This one happens to be a New Year's Day celebration.



The zurna is usually accompanied by a tupan. In this video the purpose is not intimidation, but music for dancing.



The last video is from the festival "Pirin Sings." This is more like Pirin, get up and dance, or else :)



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

The Bagpipe and Bulgarian Folk Music
http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/06/bagpipe-and-bulgarian-folk-music.html

If Drums Could Talk....
http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2012/09/if-drums-could-talk.html


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

If Drums Could Talk......

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:

http://balkandance.net/kabile2012/index.html

If you enjoyed this, you may also like:

Dancing to the Rhythm of a Different Drummer (why Balkan folk music is cool)

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

An Unforgettable Evening with Kabile (complete with video from their previous U.S. tour in 2010)

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/11/unforgettable-evening-with-kabile-at-mt.html

Check out some really great music played on gadulka, which includes a solo performance by Nicolai Kolev of Kabile.

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2011/11/gadulka-in-bulgarian-folk-music-another.html


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

How Bulgarian Folk Music Induces Altered States....

It's not unusual to get into a trance when listening to certain types of music. If you click this link you can get an idea of how that happens. Although the article is primarily about modern techno and house music, people have gone into trances while dancing long before electronic music came into existence. Shamans in primitive societies have beaten on drums and performed ceremonial dances as a means of communicating with the spirits.

It is very easy to escape reality while dancing and listening to Bulgarian folk music. Some of it, especially pieces with bagpipes and drumming, borders on the hypnotic. The rhythms are ancient and transcend time and space.

In the first video, a group of dancers in traditional dress, with live musical accompaniment, perform in the town square, with the townspeople joining in. The piece that the musicians play has a mesmerizing quality, and you could very easily go into a trance while dancing to it. (I couldn't help but notice the flashing signs from the spa hotel. If you stare at them and listen to the drumbeats long enough, you will get hypnotized, or at the very least, have this uncontrollable desire to find the nearest casino and gamble away your life's savings.) Is there a subliminal message here?



The Nestinari ritual involves dancing in a pit of hot coals which have been burning all day. Hypnotic music is especially important to the performance of this ceremony. Although modern science has proven that just about anyone can walk on coals if they use the proper technique, many believe that the Nestinari have magical abilities and can communicate with God and the saints by going into a trance while dancing. The music used in the Nestinari ceremony is very primitive, the wail of a gaida and the beat of a drum (tupan). Even the little kids have no fear, they hold their arms out so the woman can carry them over the fire!



You can read last year's post on Nestinari, see the Myth Busters video, and learn about the science behind fire walking here:

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/05/fire-walking-myth-or-magic.html


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