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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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