Bulgaria’s Tempestuous Music to Ring Out in S.D.

Imagine two joyfully boisterous wedding parties with brass bands facing off in the village square for centuries-old celebrations. If a “welter of clashing sounds” and a flurry of blazing silks and sashes come to mind, you’re close to capturing the tempestuous character of Bulgarian folk song and dance.

But tempestuousness is only one aspect. Bulgarian folk traditions have an immense range of characteristics. Lace-like, lyrical atmospheres are also the product of exacting vocal and physical techniques traced back to Balkan antiquity.

Over the past 50 years, these folk forms have been transformed into art forms. What was once ritual expression in the fields and villages is now a national treasure arranged and presented on stage.

The Pirin Bulgarian National Folk Ensemble is one of several Bulgarian companies preserving scores of folk dances and songs and performing them throughout the world. Presented by the San Diego Foundation for the Performing Arts in a three-day engagement beginning tonight at the Spreckels Theatre, the Pirin will perform “the best songs, dances and instrumental pieces from the repertoire, from all the folklore regions of Bulgaria,” promises artistic director Kiril Stefanov.

“It is a time of war here, and a difficult time in Bulgaria,” he said through an interpreter during an earlier leg of the ensemble’s U.S. tour. “Nevertheless, we perform for American audiences with pleasure, to show the diversity of the Bulgarian folk culture as seen through a contemporary creator.”

That creator includes several choreographers and composers, notably Stefanov, who has arranged more than 700 songs “on the basis of authentic Bulgarian music” for the Stefanov Bulgarian Women’s Chorus, a group that appeared on the hugely successful 1987 Nonesuch recording, “Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares” (“The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices”).

The Stefanov Chorus is part of the 80-member touring company, along with male and female dancers and male musicians who play folk instruments--lutes, drums, flutes, bagpipes, and more. All perform in national costume, and all “are absolutely professional,” Stefanov says.

“They are very well trained, the result of serious work for many years, and they pass this to the younger members.”

Making gender distinctions in this folk tradition is not gratuitous, nor is noting how the tradition is passed on.

Bulgaria is a mountainous country (Pirin is the name of a mountain and range in the state’s southwestern region) and its way of life for centuries has been largely agricultural. Ethnomusicologist Timothy Rice has pointed out that the instrumental music and song traditions, from medieval times and earlier, reflect the division of labor. Bulgarian men played the instruments because they had more idle time on their hands; women sang because they performed the heavy labor, both in the fields and at home--their hands were busy hoeing, harvesting, sewing, hauling, washing, etc.

The women developed an unaccompanied song tradition that has remained largely free of infiltration by foreign musical traditions, a distinctive “many voicedness” that has been called exotic, angelic, thrilling, and, as Rice described its musical texture, “a welter of clashing sounds.”

“The beauty of this type of singing,” Stefanov explains, “is it is enriched with trills and throat closings, which in sound are similar to Bulgarian instruments.”

Simply put, a lead singer cries out, or whoops upward, then begins an uneven rhythmic and vocal line. Behind her, deeper voices roar into sustained chords, like the drone of a bagpipe. The songs progress with elaborate ornamentation and dissonant harmonies. All voices use a highly focused open-throated technique, a means for great projection and carrying power, vocal traits desirable when singing outdoors across fields.

Although the sound can seem strange to those familiar with Western harmonic traditions or to those who expect folk music to be simple, repeated melodies, it is expressive, rings clear, and is frequently virtuosic in speed and precision.

Songs were passed from older women to younger. Grandmothers generally raised the children (mothers were in the fields) and taught them songs and their lyrics, which carried ritual significance relating to daily work, war, weddings, festivals, and more.

Folk dances, too, were linked to specific rites and celebrations and are characterized by exceptionally diverse rhythms and innumerable steps. The “horo” or circle dance is the most common and inclusive--everyone was welcome to join the chain, tradition says.

By contrast, the freer Shoppe dances, which originate from the region around Sofia, are fiery and competitive--hyperkinetic endurance trials somewhat reminiscent of ecstatic dancing in the Middle Ages or today’s break dancing.

Dances were traditionally named for animals, trades (butcher, soldier, potter), or epic heroes, or a dance’s name may speak of its character. The lentil dance, for example, has very small fast steps.

Bulgaria lies on the northern border of Greece. Its culture is ancient. As a state, it has been around 1,300 years, a fact the Pirin is celebrating, as cultural ambassadors, with this tour. The folk songs and dances on which Pirin’s program is based are no longer found in context in Bulgaria. Circle dances don’t arise spontaneously in the fields; costumed wedding parties don’t sing and dance in city intersections.

Bulgaria has opera companies, symphony orchestras and ballet companies. But it also has a commitment to its cultural past. If you were to visit the country, you’d hear folk music “everywhere,” according to Pirin representative Nelly Ladove, “in the villages, on TV, on radio stations, in the cities.”