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Written in Folk Roots issue 134/135, 1994

SOFIA SINGERS
Bulgaria: the tradition sings on...
Buda 92599-2 (1994)

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Music of Shope Country
Le Chant du Monde LDX 274970 (1994)

The Sofia Singers is a group of 10 women singers, accompanied by a 3-piece instrumental group, born in 1993 from the much larger Pirin Ensemble which, together with the Bulgarian Radio ensemble, were the leaders in the arranged polyphonic vocal ensemble sound which became known in the west as the "Mystère du voix Bulgare".
      Herman Vuylsteke, who between 1977 and 1982 recorded the songs and instrumentals in the Shopluk region around Sofia contained in the second of these two CDs, while accepting the qualities of a number of arrangers and composers, makes probably valid critical comments on the "elitist, artistic, folklorized" music of the "official" choirs.
      Be that as it may, it would take a heart of stone to resist being moved by their music. The Sofia Singers still has that extraordinary hard yet subtle sound, yearning melodic lines and harmonic tension. Drawing, it says here, on the music of Thrace and Byzantium, Slav Orthodox choral pieces, and new compositions (many of them by artistic director Ludmila Dimova), this may be "art" music, even "official", it might even be attractive to foreigners, but it's certainly neither effete nor grey, nor is it simply emptily decorative ethnicolor.
      There seems to be a tradition in some areas of Balkan recording, and one which is largely continued by the notes on Volume 1 of Le Chant du Monde's promising Anthologie de la Musique Bulgare series, The Music of Shope Country, to neglect to give a full list of the performers' names. These are musicians, this is their album; their names deserve to be known, or they'll remain for ever "the people", a "mystère". Dammit, even the names of the tape machines are credited.
      While much traditional Balkan group singing is, or has been, monophonic, Shopluk, like several other Balkan regions, has a tradition of duophony - usually a melody with drone or parallel line, often only a second apart. It's on this that the expanded harmonisations of the arranged choral music are largely based; it isn't a case of just forcing western classical structures on the tradition.
      Bulgarian life is in a process of change, and inevitably the music, if it's really folk music, will reflect that. If some of it metamorphoses into something equally special but which can exist and flower in the new social climate, the area will continue to be musically rich; there's a tendency, though, when folk music becomes "organised" or "presented" for the onus of creativity to move from the individual to the composer or artistic director.
      In the female group vocal sections of the Shopluk recordings the harmonic closeness of the two lines, and the texture of the different voices within the unison of each line, creates an impression of extra parts, almost like sum and difference tones. There are male singers too, and instrumentalists - soloists and groups using kaval, svirka, bagpipe, gadulka and tapan. Here again Vuylsteke describes ensembles using instruments drawn from more than one region of Bulgaria - kaval, gadulka, gaida and tapan for example - as "a recent urban and tourist invention". Sure, but does that make it as undesirable as he seems to imply? Even he includes some such ensembles here.
      Whatever's the case, both these CDs are full of strong, varied and still very distinctive music which surely has the power to bend the global culture Coke can into strange and interesting shapes.


© 1994 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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