Bulgaria - Plovdiv & the Rest

Plovdiv Mosque from a nearby roof terrace

Plovdiv old town

Now, unlike Sofia, I really did like Bulgaria's second city Plovdiv.  It has an ancient history with Roman ruins visible in various parts of the city and is reputedly one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in Europe dating back some 7000 years.  It now has a vibrant student scene, famed for great food and a lively nightlife.  On one occasion we were eating in a restaurant when we were unexpectedly treated to this dance performance:

Singer and choir master Eugenia Georgieva is a native of Plovdiv, but now resides in London, where she leads a Bulgarian choir at University College London.  She performs both solo as well as part of various ensembles, delving mostly into traditional material from the Rila Mountains, but also dabbling with electronic music.  Here is a track from her 2018 solo album Po Drum Mome / A Girl on the Road called Brayne le Ivane / Hey, Brother Ivan:

One of the ensembles Eugenia is part of is the Perunika Trio, a traditional a'capella group together with Victoria Evstatieva and Victoria Mancheva.  Here is a short song called Pripade temna mugla from their 2008 debut album Introducing Perunika Trio:

Singer Neli Andreeva was born in the town of Asenovgrad, but grew up in the Rhodope Mountains, where she began singing traditional songs from an early age with her grandmother.  She is also choir master of the Philip Kutev Folklore Ensemble, more of which below.  Here is a song called Da Znaesh Maicho featuring her as lead singer together with the Nusha Choir and Croatian pianist Zvjezdan Ružić, which features on their 2023 album Dandelion:

Folk singer Valya Balkanska, born 1942 in Arda in the southern Rhodope Mountains near the Greek border, has literally achieved interstellar fame.  Her song Iziel ye Delyo Haydutin was included on a music recording that was on the NASA spacecrafts Voyager I and II that were launched in 1977 to explore space beyond our solar system.  I wonder what aliens made of this, but it it is indeed a beautiful piece of music which was originally recorded on vinyl in 1968.  Here is the song:

Clarinet player and band leader Ivo Papazov was born in Kardzhali in the eastern Rhodpe Mountains.  He started playing in public from the age of 12 at Gypsy weddings and later founded his own wedding band, pioneering the style of Balkan Gypsy wedding music fusing Balkan music with elements of funk, rock and jazz, often played at breakneck speed.  He collected numerous awards including the BBC Radio 3 World Music Award in 2005.  Try out his 2007 Best of album for some more, but here is an historic live performance on Nightmusic.  Try not to wriggle around manically...

Next we are heading north into the Rose Valley, which provides a large percentage of the worlds rose oil.  During our time in Bulgaria we based ourselves in the small village of Rozovets.

For much of the year it's a quiet place, but at the end of the summer everybody who has moved away over the years comes back for a grand summer party with plenty of food, music, dancing and fireworks.  The band starts playing around 5 pm and goes on non-stop - and I mean non-stop, no breaks between songs or tunes, just individual musicians having a wee break now and then - until 1 am.  Here's a wee flavour of it all:

Composer and arranger Filip Kutev (or Philip Koutev) was born in Aytos near the Black Sea coast in 1903 and died in 1982, but his name lives on in the Bulgarian National Folklore Ensemble Philip Kutev, which he founded together with his wife Maria in 1951.  The ensemble was the first to bring traditional Bulgarian music onto the stage and to a wider audience.  It is now led by his daughter Elena Kuteva.  Below a sampler of their varied activities.  For more check out their 2006 self-titled album. 

That's it from Bulgaria, next we are heading to Turkey.  In the meantime, as usual, you can follow my virtual travels on my Tripline map.

Romania - Bucharest

 After skirting around the capital on my last post, we are now heading straight into Bucharest and see what the city has to offer in terms of music.  I visited Bucharest for a couple of days back in 2014, here are a couple of photos from that trip:

View to the parliament building

The old town

One of my first encounters with the Gypsy music of Romania was the 1997 movie Gadjo Dilo (Crazy Stranger in the Romani language).  It's the story of a young, naïve and floppy-haired Frenchman, Stéphane, who travels to Romania looking for a Roma singer called Nora Luca, to whom his father used to listen to all the time before his death.  Armed with a tape recorder he ends up as a guest in a Gypsy village, not speaking any of the language and being viewed with suspicion by its inhabitants.  It then turns out that a young woman in the village called Sabina, played by actress, painter and musician Rona Hartner, speaks French, and after some initial hostility a love affair ensues.  The film deals with the continued prejudice against the Roma community, but also features a lot of Gypsy music performed by village musicians and enthusiastically supported by Rona Hartner.  If you haven't seen the movie I highly recommend it for an insight into Gypsy life and for the music.  Here is a scene from the movie of the song Tutti Frutti, the soundtrack has also been issued as a CD:

Rona Hartner was born in Bucharest in 1979, but sadly died recently after a battle with lung and brain cancer.  Apart from her acting and painting career she also recorded a lot of music, specialising in Gypsy music.  She lived the last couple of decades of her life in France.  Here is a live version of a song from her 2013 album Gypsy Therapy with DJ Tagada called Nationalité Vagabonde, a sentiment I can identify with:

RIP Rona Hartner.

The Shukar Collective are an Ursari Roma band that fuses traditional Gypsy music with electronica.  They produce sounds by tapping spoons and other domestic objects combined with an analogue synthesizer.  Here is a song from their 2005 album Urban Gypsy called Bar Boot:

The Mahala Rai Banda is a Roma brass band founded in 2004 in Bucharest by violinist and composer Aurel Ionita, who is related to several members of Taraf de Haidouks.  They blend traditional wedding music with Balkan Beats.  It makes for great party music.  Here is a song from their 2019 album Ghetto Blasters called Ding Deng Dong.  The album won the Songlines 2009 Best Album Award:

Bucharest band Balkan Taksim combine Balkan Psych with Subterranean bass and low-fi synth electronica, blending old with new and analog with digital.  Here's a song called Anadolka from their 2021 EP Žali Zare:

That wraps up our tour of Romania, next stop is Bulgaria.  In the meantime you can follow my virtual musical travels on my Tripline map.