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Written in fRoots issue 229, 2002


VARIOUS
Au Delŕ Du Mystčre – Beyond The Mystery: Village Music Of Bulgaria
Vol.1: Rhodopes & Thrace
BMA Productions BMA-1001 (2001)
Vol.2: Severnjaško & Dobrudža
BMA-1002 (2001)
Vol.3: Šopluk & Pirin
BMA-1003 (2001)

VARIOUS
Anthology Of Traditional Songs And Dances From Bulgaria
ARC EUCD 1679 (2001)

YASKO ARGIROV
Hot Blood
Dunya FY 8047 (2002)

In 1966 French-Canadian Yves Moreau, then aged just 17, went to Bulgaria and began to record its wonderful range of instrumental and vocal musics. These three CDs comprise his own selection of the recordings he made between then and 1972 on the mono Uher tape recorder he wore slung from his shoulder as he wandered among the towns, villages and folk festivals of the country’s regions.
      He makes no claim to producing an ethnomusicological survey or analysis; he simply recorded what he could find, as best he could. Sometimes there’s tape overload, or the technology is rattled by the low difference tones of a pair of women’s voices as their harmonies touch a throbbing second-interval. But what these recordings (whose intended release as two LPs for Folkways records was aborted with the death of Moses Asch) constitute is a 30-year-old time-capsule of a land which is an intense focus of musical beauty, high skill and sophistication, at the exciting edge where Europe meets the Middle East.
      The recordings are geographically grouped, two regions per CD. There’s singing, male and female, from solo to ensemble, of love, seasonal, work, ritual and dance songs and ballads, and dance melodies and accompaniments on small and larger combinations of most of the wide range of instruments, including gajda, gadulka, kaval, dvojanka, zurna, tambura, clarinet, tarambuka and tapan.
      The CDs are separate releases, but even just in the Rhodopes section of Volume 1 a listen to the hard, even, long vocal notes of Valja Balkonska or the epic-style singing of Feim Džigov, both accompanied by Dimitâr Petkovski’s big Rhodopes bagpipe, the kaba gajda, is likely to lead to exploration of the whole set.

      A more formally recorded sampling of vocal and instrumental performances from musicians around Bulgaria, recorded between 1991 and 1999, is Anthology Of Traditional Songs And Dances From Bulgaria, licensed to ARC records by Bulgarian label ROD. Not without interest, but by no means as vibrant or skilled as the material in Moreau’s recordings.

      Yasko Argirov, from Plovdiv, appeared on the 1986 Balkanton album of leading Bulgarian clarinettists. Like Ivo Papasov, who also featured there, he works within the Gipsy wedding band scene in which those compelling traditional dance tunes in fives, sevens and their ilk from around Bulgaria and surrounding territories are delivered by a tight line-up usually centred on reeds, accordion and drums. Yasko and his five-piece band are as hot and fast as they come, but their sound is light – there’s no bass apart from unobtrusive keyboard, and drummer Ilya Argirov uses mainly high-tuned toms – and even at speed they’re players of subtlety and fine tonal control. Guest Maksim Nicolu contributes an almost Indian-sounding vocal to a traditional song from Plovdiv, and long-time Argirov collaborator accordionist Slavko Lambov takes light-touch lead breaks from time to time. On the occasional welcome slow section, particularly the intro to Maicina Taga where Yasko’s clarinet soars and weaves with a tone and style close to kaval, there’s genuine quiet lyricism, not syrupy sentiment.
      Also on the CD there’s a genuinely worthwhile and no-bullshit 12˝ minute video of informal and concert playing and English-subtitled interviews, made before and during an outdoor show in Italy.
     
      www.bourque-moreau.com, UK distributor www.international-records.com. Dunya is distributed by Felmay, www.felmay.it.



© 2002 Andrew Cronshaw
 


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