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Written in Folk Roots issue 92/93, 1991
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares - Volume 3
Fontana 846-626-1 (LP) (Also on CD & cassette) (1990)
SOFIA WOMEN'S CHOIR
Le Chant des Femmes Bulgares
Auvidis A6138 (CD) (Also on LP & cassette) (1988)
Marcel Cellier first recorded Bulgarian women singing together, harmonising with
strong use of seconds, in the early 1950s when he was in the village of Sapareva
Banya with the ethnomusicologist Raina Katzarova. At that time the choirs
comprising such rural singers and using their traditional songs and vocal styles
didn't exist; the first, the Philippe Koutev ensemble, performed outside
Bulgaria in about 1955, being seen by the postwar Communist government as the
sort of cultural export it wished to encourage (and control?).
More choirs developed - including those from
Pirin, Plovdiv and Tolbouhin, and the Bulgarian Radio and Television Choir - and
started to involve composers creating new material on a traditional base, in
some ways like Vaughan Williams et al in Britain, but with the difference that
the performers were traditional musicians. By 1974 there were enough for the
state label Balkanton to release a classic recording, for me still the most
moving, from the 10th International Folklore Festival at Bourgas, which featured
most of them, with performances from soloists such as Yanka Rupkina, Nadka
Karadjova (singing A Lambkin Has Commenced Bleating, a rendition which
created an interesting chain of events in Britain eight years later) and
Balkana's bagpiper Kostadin Varimezov. Around the same time Balkanton also
released records of vocal and instrumental soloists, sometimes back to back, one
side of a disc each.
In 1975 Disques Cellier released a recording of
the Bulgarian RTV choir, and called it Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. It
was eventually licensed to various countries, where labels chose to keep the
French title. It came out to deserved acclaim in Britain 11 years later in 1986,
on the 4AD label. Cellier released Volume 2 in 1988; it reached Britain
immediately this time, again on 4AD. The choir decided to change its name to
match the albums at this point, so all its subsequent recordings, for example
the Cathedral Concert album, are legitimately called "Le Mystère des Voix
Bulgares". Cellier was apparently flattered; some of the rest of us were
confused, particularly when he now brings out Volume 3, which focuses on what
some of the other choirs - Plovdiv, Trakia, Rhodopi-Smolian - have been doing in
the 1980s, as well as including some by Choir RTB, which is presumably
essentially the same as the "Le Mystère" choir.
OK, so now that's clear, what's it like? Well,
whereas I felt that if you had some of this music already, the Cathedral
Concert album on the Jaro Fuego label was not essential, Volume 3, a
little surprisingly on the Phonogram-owned Fontana label, is fresh, powerful and
beautiful. I know some people feel that these choirs are putting a gloss on the
real thing, and I myself am a bit put off by the national dress image; the fact
remains that this is wonderful, subtle, uplifting music. It would be of concern
if it replaced its root, the village music; of course in a developing world such
rural folk art is inevitably a victim of changing circumstance, but the Two
Girls Started to Sing album on Rounder (reviewed earlier in FR) shows that
at the moment it's still to be found in at least some parts of the countryside.
Perhaps by our response to Bulgarian music in the West we can help to encourage
a continued healthy connection between root and branch, because clearly western
success counts to those in central and eastern Europe, now more than ever
(though people in many such countries are currently preoccupied with a healthier
connection between hand and mouth).
The other album, Le Chant des Femmes Bulgares,
has a French title too, because it was recorded in 1988 at the Théâtre de
Sartrouville for a French label. It features the Sofia Women's Choir, conducted
by Zdravko Mihaylov. The material includes such well-known items as Philippe
Koutev's arrangement of Todora (which I first heard sung by Ethel Raim's
Balkan-American group the Pennywhistlers on a Nonesuch album around 1970); the
sort of set of mixed old and new one might expect at a concert, and pretty well
done. Soloists are Nadejda Khvoinova, Elena Bojkova, Evtimka Raikova, Dimitrinka
Ganschovska, Kremena Stancheva and Vassilka Andonova; an un-named small
instrumental group, similar to that with Balkana, supplies occasional
instrumental accompaniments. The arrangements, though excellent, are followed to
the last quaver; this is definitely classicisation, termination of the folk
process, and as such, while it produces fine enough music, can result in a
creative form with endless exuberant possibilities being sewn up tight by
pedants - just look at the state of western classical music. Nevertheless, good
singing and good tunes; sure, it's more of the same, but it's a great same.
© 1991
Andrew Cronshaw
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