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Written in Folk Roots issue 143, 1995

KRACHNO HORO
Musiques Populaires de Bulgarie
Silex Mosaique Y225217 (1994)

IWANKA IWANOWA & STARA SAGORA
Kalina Malina
Acoustic Music Best.Nr.319.1045.242 (1994)

Two great Bulgarian albums.
      First, flying, fast dance music from a "noces" group from the town of Gabrovo in the north central part of the country, at the foot of the Stara mountains, well-placed to draw from a number of regional styles in making an urban music of great rhythmic richness. Such groups are for hire for weddings and the like, and their instrumentation moves with the times. Krachno Horo is a quartet featuring Neno Koitchev on accordion (with a big, fat sound, almost organ-like) and clarinettist Tincho Petrov Dinkov, with Miltcho Stoyanov's tambura and bass guitar and Bogdan Anguelov's tapan and exuberant kit drumming. The playing is immensely tight, but there's no sense of cynical, flying fingers commerciality; there's real fun here, right through to the unexpected vocals in the final track. The nearest parallel Britain has seen would be Ivo Papasov's band, and this is certainly in that league.
      And the Iwanka Iwanowa album is in the league of the two Balkanton albums from the 70s that first opened my eyes to the extraordinary beauty, skill and variety of Bulgarian music. Like them, Kalina Malina, recorded in 1993 in a Köln studio, features a mix of vocals and instrumentals. Iwanowa's singing is reminiscent of that of Nadka Karadzhova, particularly in the soaring Male le ne podila me. She double-tracks on one item (there's only one thing as good as a Bulgarian woman singer and that's two of them), and there's one male vocal from Geljasko Waltschew. Orchester Stara Sagora - kaval, gaida, gadulka, tambura and tapan - has the classic sound, that way of playing on the edge of notes like wrestling with the wind. Oh, and just when you think you know what to expect Petar Iwanow's gadulka becomes a selection of animals in the otherwise serene kaval-led Owtscharska Idillia I.


© 1995 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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