A Musical Journey

Ramona writing.

Now that everyone has returned and is settling into their normal rhythm here in the Northwest, it is time to process the massive and somewhat overwhelming amount of music we were able to record along our journey. I would like to take the time to describe some of this for our audience as not everyone will be able to hear our new pieces in the November Town Hall concert and we will be able to present only a fraction of what we learned.

Many of you know that through my family, I have been listening to Bulgarian folk music since I was born and have been several times to the country. I wasn't introduced to the arranged choral music made so famous throughout the world by Philip Koutev until after college.  Much of what I heard growing up came from old records of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s; Balkanton, Jugoton, Radio Televisia (add location here), etc. Other music was from field recordings made or collected by various American folk dance teachers. Anyone who has listened to folk dance music of these eras can hear the difference between it and the arranged multi-voice pieces which grew in popularity at the same time.Village singers traditionally learned from other family members or others in their same village. Professionally trained singers study in music schools and learn to sing the styling from all regions of Bulgaria. When learning with one master teacher, we were told that professional singers needed to change their vocal quality in order to sing in extremely high and low ranges as well as to maintain their singing voices for hours at a time. Traditional singers might sing for gatherings, holidays and festivals, even hours at a time, but not daily and certainly not in extreme ranges for their "chest voice".

All this is to set the background for the astounding amount of variability in vocal music that comes out of one small country, both in terms of vocal production and in terms of regional style.  This variability, even the small fraction of which Dunava attempts to faithfully represent, is no small feat to produce. My goal for Dunava on this trip was to hear as much distinct music from the "source" as possible in order that we can have the same understanding of what music we are trying to present. In this, we were largely successful. In musical selection and vocal presentation we strive to be as accurate as possible. Collectively experiencing on this trip that we attempt to emulate two sources in Bulgarian vocal music, village and professional ensemble, not just one, was vital for our choir. Through the connections of our guides, our friends, and our own, we were immersed in a range of singing professionalism; from individuals singing only their specific villages's songs to small town ensemble members presenting regional medleys, to other small town choirs singing pan-Bulgarian favorites (as opposed to village specific songs), to members of the great and internationally acclaimed vocal ensembles. This is by no means meant to rank anyone's ability, but rather to highlight the difference in what people sang for us and taught us.

The first music we heard was in Sofia, capital of the country and center of the Shope region.  Two amazing components, the Mitevi brothers and 3 musicians (kaval/end blown flute, gudulka/bowed lira, and tambura/long necked mandolin) who play in the national orchestras, graced our evening. Everyone was fabulous. (Note: I shan't list all names in this post as they should all be noted in previous posts about these events. If anyone wants more detail, please contact us). The professional musicians were trained so well that they provided backup music for the two Shope singers on 1 or 2 songs, backup for Tsvetanka's Thracian songs, and then favorite instrumental pieces from all over Bulgaria.  The two singers (Shope singing is mostly done with a melody line and a drone), presented a selection of unarranged songs with close second intervals and a distinct kind of vibrato that is only sung in the Shope area. Listen to the clips so you can hear the types of music shared with us that night.

Audio Sample: Mitevi Brothers

In Varna, a city five hours drive east to the opposite side of the country on the Black Sea, our evening music was played by the talented group "Pendari",  headed, I believe, by Nikolai Doctorov. This group of musicians were also members of  Ensemble Varna (the city's professional music, vocal and dance troupe equivalent to Sofia's Koutev Ensemble).  Interestingly enough, until the musicians played tunes local to the Dobrudzha region, the music was remarkably similar to what we heard from the musicians in Sofia. Once we began to hear melodies like Zborenka, Varnenski Kjuchek, Danets, and Ruka, then the music and musicianship took on a very different flavor despite the use of the same instrumentation.

Audio Sample: Varnenski Kjuchek

In Sredets, a town in the Strandzha region of southeast Bulgaria, our music was noticeably different from the beginning. We spent the evening with part of the group "Bozhura", a men's choir with musicians. Their songs (as all songs in the east part of Bulgaria), are sung in unison. Here they were accompanied by only bagpipe and drum (gaida and tupan). Percentage-wise there are far fewer men's vocal groups in Bulgaria. Group singing is often presented by women even though many men sing as soloists. The only other men's group we heard, "Banski Starcheta", was in Bansko, a town in the far southwest of Bulgaria, and the two choirs couldn't be more different. Though they both presented songs traditional to their regions,  the vocal production, ornamentation, and all the little components that make up a each groups style have little in common with each other.

Audio Sample: Bozhura

Audio Sample: Bansko

The last musical group I want to share is the "Boyana Ensemble" from the town of Kostandovo in the northwest foothills of the the Rhodope mountains. The Rhodopes are in the south of Bulgaria but the range is large enough that music from Kostandovo has little in common with typical Rhodope music even though it is geographically in the same region. (Being on the northwestern edge, it it is also geographically close to the Pirin mountains (read Pirin music style) and the end of the Thracian plains (read Thracian music style). Rhodope vocal music is almost always sung by a single singer accompanied by a gaida. A few girls learned some Rhodope songs during our lessons in Kotel. The music we heard in Kostandovo had dumbek (small hand drum), accordion, and tambura. Always in two-voices, melody and drone, variations of both men's and women's groups presented Pomashko and Kostandovo village songs. To my less experienced ear, the music sounded Pirin or Macedonian, but there is a subtle difference that I am not yet clear on as to what makes the music Pomashko. Tsvetanka tried to explain something about chords and rhythms but it the rush of the moment it somehow still didn't click for me. Regardless of my ignorance, note the large distinction between this music and the rest you have hard so far.

Audio Sample: Ensemble Boyana

Now, let's move onto the choir music which we learned from professional singers in Varna, Kotel, Pazardzhik, and Sofia. Here, location matters less, as these women sing arrangements from all over Bulgaria. Each specializes in her own home region and may more often solo with pieces from their home region, but they are masters of all. We studied two medleys from the Shope and Dobrudzhan regions, and then many single region pieces from Shope, Thrace, and unknown or pan-Bulgarian arrangements. Here are two samples of us learning arranged pieces (which we are not currently going to perform).

Audio Sample: Ogrejala (with Tzvetanka Varimezova and Pazardzhik Ensemble)

Audio Sample: Mori Djulber Sevdo (with Sashka Chenkova and Abagar Quartet)

The original state music ensembles of the 1950s were modeled directly after Soviet choirs (e.g. the Soviet Pyatnitzy Choir) but have ever after taken on a life of their own with a beautiful range and depth of music that far surpasses their original inspiration. Nowadays, many youth study "national" music in both folk music schools such as the one we stayed at in Kotel and in larger universities throughout the country. As a result, their is a natural standardization that has happened even within regional styles, but at the same time, a far greater number of people with unbelievable musical talent. More about this can be read elsewhere but for Dunava's part, we were able to experience this passing on of folk music by studying with singers of several generations; long time director of the Varna choir, Yordanka Nadyelcha, the 20s-30s professional singers brought in to the Kotel school from the Abagar quartet, and then some middle schooler/early teens who helped teach us in Bansko).

And with the above final sound clip, I will bid our readers adieu and keep this post to a readable length. I hope you have enjoyed hearing some of the amazing variety of music which Dunava was able to experience in Bulgaria this summer. We hope to share as much as we can with you throughout this next year. If you are near Seattle, don't forget to come to our Town Hall performance on November 8th. We'll be presenting much new music there and you're sure to enjoy the wonderful venue.

Enjoy, and Happy Music Making!

Ramona and Dunava

Back in Seattle

Some of us have returned home and others are still exploring new places. Either way, we hope to continue to blogging as we recover from jet lag (takes about a week) and pick up the pieces of life here in Seattle.

Personally I've been through a lot of medical stuff in this past week, which I postponed so I could go to Bulgaria. I'll come out of in a few days.

To tide you over, here are photos of Jen and I sighing over an espresso vending machine at 5 am in the Sofia airport, and ooh-ing over our duty-free chocolates in the Frankfurt airport.

Patalenitsa festival/Sofia

Jen here. We performed in Patalenitsa, which our friend who has a daughter-in-law in Seattle informs us is the "Orange County" of Pazardzhik. There are nice properties and the mayor of Pazardzhik lives here (about 20 min. outside the center). It may be like Orange County as far as property values go, but I'm pretty sure there are no toilets like the one I experienced anywhere near Orange County!  We'll save you all the details, but as we neared the end of our trip, we were so happy to find restrooms with the basics: they flush, they're stocked with TP, there's soap, and a sink with running water. Any time we find one with all four, one of us shouts to the rest of the group, "It's a good one!"  

Here is where we performed, shortly after a giant thunderstorm. There were freshly fried doughnuts, 10 for 2 leva, which we devoured with powdered sugar before our performance.

It was such a thrill to perform for a small village -- everyone was gathered there. Smiling Bulgarian grandmothers, children, theater students visiting from England -- everyone was very welcoming. They seemed most pleased at our joint performance with the Pazardzhik Ensemble, Tzvetanka & Ivan. 

Our friend Sisi (Silvia) sang with her band, and Tzvetanka joined her on some duets.  The whole village joined in on one giant pravo, which I don't have a photo of because I was in it, too! 

Here are our friends from the Pazardzhik ensemble - sisters, who instead of being called Dolce & Gabbana, are jokingly referred to as Jordanche y Gergana, for their excellent fashion sense. 

At the end of the festival, we had dinner at a fancy hotel with a pool, and joked and laughed with our new friends in the Pazardzhik ensemble, amid clouds of cigarette smoke. The singer with the highest voice remarked, "If you smoke only at dinner, it'll make your voice higher!" If that were actually true, maybe we could all join the Pazardzhik ensemble! ;) 

We received wonderful gifts from Yanka, their director, but the most wonderful gift was sitting next to these powerful singers and learning from their vocal technique while learning songs together.  We're so grateful we got to work with them and hope to meet again soon! 

Next, we returned to Sofia. We did our final errands, like mailing postcards to our IndieGogo donors, and getting final souvenirs and sladolet (ice cream). 

We had a workshop with Binka Dobreva, who taught us some amazing Shope songs (all 3 sung at the same time!) 

We had the Last Supper, with snezhanka salad (also called Snow White salad, made with cucumbers, dill, onion & thick yogurt), lutenitsa (tomato & cheese sauce), bean salad, our final Shopska Salata, and grilled trout on the BBQ. I'm happy to report that I did indeed have Shopska salad every single day of our trip (14/14!) There were also chile relleno-esque stuffed peppers with egg & sirene cheese. So good! 

We were joined for dinner by the same musicians who played for us on our first night in Sofia, with the addition of Sasho on accordion, and Binka's lovely voice. 

Tzvetanka and Ivan had to leave for Burgas, so we were fortunate to have their friends take care of us on our last night in Bulgaria together.  Now, five of us are on our way back home with the Happiest Traveler. 

Many thanks to everyone who helped us get here, supported us from afar, and who await our return... Especially Scott, Dunes, Rik, Brian & Lydia, Rusty, Jon, David, Stuart, and Peter.

Singing with the Pazardzhik Ensemble Choir

Dina here. The last three days we've spent in Pazardzhik, Tzvetanka's home town, and made a dream of mine come true: Singing with the women's choir of the Pazardzhik Ensemble. Tzvetanka used to direct this choir when she lived here, and is still a respected guest teacher when she's in town. I got to visit a workshop she did with them two years ago, and was so blown away by the sound of these women that I decided I needed to somehow connect them with Dunava.

So here we are! For the past three days we've been rehearsing together, lead by Tzetze, learning new songs and synching up a couple we all know to sing together. The goal was to perform at the annual village festival in Patalenitsa nearby, but the end was secondary -- the means was the actual point. Just sitting next to these talented singers with strong voices was an education in itself. These women are professional in the truest sense -- they rehearse four hours a day, five days a week, and are paid. (We're told the salary is not high enough to make a living, so all singers have other jobs, teaching or performing with other groups, or non-musical professions.)

This is such a great highlight of our trip. We've heard many true "village" ensembles, who preserve the music and singing in its traditional form; and here is a professional ensemble, which turns the village-style music into a refined art form. The original style is preserved, but the voice is trained. Plus, the multi-part arrangements are stunning, and there's nothing like singing a chord of stacked major and minor seconds and holding it at full volume!

We also had Tzvetanka to ourselves for a couple hours, where she talked more about Bulgarian singing technique and style, taught a four-part arrangement of a popular Shope duet, and at the same time bounced Eleanor so Meredith could focus on singing:

And outside of rehearsal there were other adventures: A visit to Plovdiv, a visit to the Pazardzhik zoo, some shopping, lots of ice cream (Raffy is our favorite brand!)... and of course the festival in Patalenitsa! I wonder who will blog next... :-)

Kyustendil's Silver Buckle Festival: Sreburna Pufta

Ramona writing: 

July 24th marked our debut performance at a Bulgarian festival. We were invited to attend the 10th annual International Folklore Festival "Silver Buckle" in Kyustendil. For this appearance, we are very grateful to have received at travel grant from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through USArtists International in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Three cheers for arts funding! (And again, thank you, to our private donors who helped us accomplish this great feat).

The drive from Bansko to Kyustendil was long and all the ladies were quite tired when we arrived. As we drove into Kyustendil it was rumored that we would visit with the Pautalia Chetalishte as they were the cultural center organizing the festival, however, as we were slightly late in arriving, it was happily decided that we would first eat lunch. The festival director himself, Valentine Kenov, as well as our festival liaison from the chetalishte and municipality, Ludmila "Lucy" Cheresharka, led us directly to our meal. It was served quicker than any other meal we have yet had and for that, we were quite grateful. Once we were shown to our hotel and given a moment to refresh and change into our performance clothing, we again hopped on the bus and gathered with all the other international performers. We all paraded through town and ended at the stage where the performances were held. All the other international groups were both musicians and dancers. This year the other international performers were from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Turkey. We were the only choir group given the privilege of opening the festival!  Also, we are the first American group to perform there. The remainder of the choirs and dance groups who did not parade were from all over Bulgaria and they performed over the course of the next few days.

 The sun was bright, we were sweating profusely, and the sound system was not optimal. However, the songs we chose to sing surprised the audience and caught their attention so that despite the heat and poorer than expected sound, they were really engaged. Once, when we looked at the audience, we recognized the vice-mayor singing along as well as many other faces in the crowd. They enjoyed our "Shopski Pripevki" (medley from the Shope area) so much that there was clapping before the song even finished. Of all the songs we sang, this set of songs has ornamentation and melodies which are closest to the Kyustendil region's traditional songs. The audience really seemed to enjoy this in particular. One lady found us afterward and mentioned how excited she was to have seen us on TV earlier and then to realized that we had come in person to Kyustendil. It makes us feel like celebrities :) Dina was interviewed by one TV station and two other reporters after the parade finished and before the festival officially opened. We have been so busy that we have yet to see the filmed footage of this interview and our actual performance but the camera crew was there broadcasting all along.

 After we sang, we were presented with a very special award which you can see above and below. This is what a "Pafta" or "buckle" looks like and ours is quite heavy! The hosts of the festival were moved by our singing and we were so pleased to have sung well. When they presented the honor to us, everyone was very touched and emotional. Thank goodness our voices were still strong after so much intense traveling.

After we finished singing we were able to meet some of the other performance groups. Jen, in particular, made a potential connection with the group "Kargi" from Tbilisi, Georgia. I was most interested in connecting with the group "Karposh" from Krival Palanka, Macedonia in hopes that we would be able to perform at their home festival. Lucy, our liaison, also turns out to be a wonderful connection. She and Tsvetanka both studied at Kotel together, though they were a few years apart, and while we did not know this when we applied to perform at this festival, meeting her will hopefully be a great boon for us in the future. Dina met with the vice-mayor and her secretary at a special breakfast the following morning. All-in-all, it was a fabulous experience and we are so glad to have this opportunity to share our music with this audience. Thank you, MidAtlantic Arts Foundation and Pautalia Chetalishte's Sreburna Pafta!

Bansko (part 2)

Jen here. Here is the view from Bansko. As Hila mentioned, it's ski resort town, which at this time of year is pretty deserted. We managed to find an open market down the street from us in the pouring rain, and my Shopska Salata for the day was a very ripe tomato and some sirene cheese. 

Dinner with Banski Starcheta was delicious -- foodwise and musicwise! I missed the workshop, so I was even more excited to hear them perform for us... Especially the acappella songs with close, close harmony. I thought about Steve Borzilleri back home who would have enjoyed hearing these powerful men with loud, strong voices. He probably would have joined in and would have been appreciated for his bold voice! 

Dinner finished at a reasonable hour, so we walked around Bansko square and found more traditional musicians playing in an outdoor restaurant. We danced around lawn statues of mushrooms and trolls. The owner of the restaurant gave me a flag to lead the dance with that said, "Freedom or death!"  

Ramona and I continued dancing with the musicians, tipped them, and had a chat with them afterwards. They told Ramona that she danced very well and in the true Bulgarian style, which is accurate -- we've seen her beautiful dancing all over Bulgaria! 

This is the bell tower in Bansko square. If you look closely, you can see a stork nest in the upper left corner. We have been seeing storks everywhere! 

Here is a picture of the market that Hila mentioned that was between Tsigov Chark and Bansko. Bon bons galore! 

The Littlest Dunavite

Meredith here! Bringing a four month old baby along on a choir tour to Bulgaria was a bit of a gamble, to say the least. Friends and family expressed surprise, concern, tut-tuts and shakes of the head. However, I am happy to report that bringing Eleanor along has enriched our experience of Bulgaria in ways I don't think any of us could have predicted. A baby is a natural ice breaker. We are humanized and made approachable just by having her around, and she provides fodder for conversation in our somewhat shaky Bulgarian. Some useful words and phrases I have learned:

Chetiri mesetsa – four months (old)

Spi (spinka) – sleeping (sleepy, diminutive)

Momiche – girl

Sladko e – how sweet

I also discovered that superstition is very much alive and part of the culture here. The idea that many eyes are on baby Eleanor is cause for concern, because of the chance that this may attract the attention of evil spirits. In order to protect her, our new friends have offered many charms: a piece of red string tied round her wrist, a lengthy blessing, and countless "ptu, ptu, ptus."

With the help of Ivan, Tzvetanka, Tedy's sister Didi, and several others, there has always been a ready pair of arms to hold Eleanor so I am able to participate in the concerts and workshops. That's not to say that I haven't done some singing while wearing her in the carrier, but everyone has been so helpful taking turns with her.

Changing dirty diapers has sometimes been challenging. Some of the interesting places this has occurred include on the lap of a friend on a moving bus, under a public staircase, and on the floor in the middle of a workshop. All successful!

Our bus driver is one of Eleanor's biggest fans. "Dedo" (Grandpa) Neno sings her a special little song, we will try to record it to share with you. She always has smiles for him. In fact, Eleanor has been all smiles with everyone she meets. She has already received several gifts. Though she won't remember this amazing adventure, she has certainly helped make it memorable for all of us.