Slavi Trifonov And The Commodification Of Nationalism: Popular

Florida State University Libraries
Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations
The Graduate School
2012
Slavi Trifonov and the Commodification
of Nationalism: Popular Culture, Popular
Music, and the Politics of Identity in
Postsocialist Bulgaria, 1990-2005
Plamena Kourtova
Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected]
THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF MUSIC
SLAVI TRIFONOV AND THE COMMODIFICATION OF NATIONALISM: POPULAR
CULTURE, POPULAR MUSIC, AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY IN POSTSOCIALIST
BULGARIA, 1990- 2005
By
PLAMENA KOURTOVA
A dissertation submitted to the
College of Music
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Awarded:
Spring Semester, 2012
Plamena Kourtova defended this dissertation on March 14 2012.
The members of the supervisory committee were:
Michael B.Bakan
Professor Directing Dissertation
Robert Romanchuk
University Representative
Frank Gunderson
Committee Member
Michael Uzendoski
Committee Member
The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members,
and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university
requirements.
ii
To my mom and dad.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my dissertation committee, Michael B.Bakan, Frank Gunderson, Michael
Uzendoski, and Robert Romanchuk, for their critical commentary and advice. Thanks to your
contributions and suggestions this project took on a more definitive shape during my years of
study as a doctoral student at Florida State University. Multiple individuals were involved in and
contributed to the fieldwork phase of this dissertation. While a number of them have preferred to
remain anonymous, I extend my deepest gratification to Vera, Dika, Rada, Margarita, Nikolai,
Svetlana, Elena, Decho, Raina, Boriana, Veni, Martin, and the students at the National Academy
for Music and Dance in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Thank you all for sharing your time, for our
conversations, for your hospitality, and for your continuing interest and support in my work.
Also in Bulgaria, Professor Clair Levy and her late husband Professor Gencho Gaintandzhiev
deserve a special mention and my sincere gratitude for their receptiveness and fruitful
conversation. Because this project unfolded and developed between two worlds, I also express
my sincere thanks to all of my friends and colleagues in the Unites States. My peers and friends,
thank you for sharing, for listening, and for comforting me in good and bad times. My dear
friend and colleague Ryan McCormack deserves a special thank you for his skill with music
software and his realization of the musical transcriptions provided in the dissertation. Finally,
thank you to my family whose encouragement and support helped both the intellectual and
fieldwork aspects of this project. This dissertation is also about you and about your experiences.
Thank you for allowing me to share them in my own way.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Musical Examples ............................................................................................................. vii
List of Audio Examples ............................................................................................................... viii
List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………….ix
Abstract ............................................................................................................................................x
1.
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background…………………………………………………………………………....4
Purpose and Significance……………………………………………………………...9
Theoretical Approach………………………………………………………………...11
Review of Literature…………………………………………………………………13
Bulgaria………………………………………………………………………13
The Balkans………………………………………………………………….16
Nationalism…………………………………………………………………..18
Manifestations of Nationalism……………………………………………….19
Nationalism and Remembrance……………………………………………...20
Commodification…………………………………………………………….22
Ethnographic Approach……………………………………………………………...23
Methodology…………………………………………………………………………26
Organization and Chapter Outline…………………………………………………...29
2.
3.
CHAPTER TWO: SLAVI TRIFONOV, A BULGARIAN PHENOMENON…………….32
Prelude…………………………………………………………………………………..32
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..34
Trifonov as a Cultural Phenomenon: Biographical Sketch……………………………..36
Episode 1…………………………………………………………………… 37
Episode 2…………………………………………………………………….40
Episode 3…………………………………………………………………….43
Episode 4…………………………………………………………………….47
Trifonov as an Individual……………………………………………………………….49
An Ethnographic Dialogue…………………………………………………..52
Trifonov as a Bulgarian……………………………………………………...54
Trifonov as a Celebrity………………………………………………………56
Celebrities and Audiences…………………………………………………...58
Celebrities on Television and in Music……………………………………...60
Celebrities as Commodity Culture…………………………………………..62
CHAPTER THREE: POP-FOLK……………………………………………………….64
Prelude……………………………………………………………………………….64
Historical Overview………………………………………………………………….69
Chalga……………………………………………………………………….69
Kuchek………………………………………………………………………72
Ethnopop…………………………………………………………………….74
Imagery and Poetics…………………………………………………………77
v
4.
Pop-folk, Trifonov, and Bulgarian Identity…………………………………………..81
CHAPTER FOUR: NARRATIVES OF NATION……………………………………...87
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...87
Nationalism…………………………………………………………………………...89
Narrating the Nation………………………………………………………………….92
Poeticizing the Nation……………………………………………………….93
Sounding the Nation…………………………………………………………99
Performing the Nation……………………………………………………...105
Broadcasting the Nation……………………………………………………108
Remembering the Nation……………………………………………………………112
Remembering……………………………………………………………….113
Space and Place……………………………………………………………..114
Remembering as Social Reproduction……………………………………...115
5.
CHAPTER FIVE: NARRATIVES OF COMMODIFICATION……………………..118
Prelude…………………………………………………………………………….118
Introduction……………………………………………………………………….120
Commodification and the Question of Value……………………………………..121
Narratives of Commodification…………………………………………………...124
The Poetics of Commodification…………………………………………...125
Vignette1 ………………………………………………………………125
Vignette 2……………………………………………………………....126
The Sound of Commodification…………………………………………….132
Vignette 1……………………………………………………………....132
Vignette 2………………………………………………………………133
Value Conflict and Social Reproduction………………………………………….141
6.
CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS……………………………………145
Commodifying Nationalism………...……………………………………............147
In-Betweenness…………………………………………………………………...150
APPENDIX A: SONG TEXTS………………………………………………………………...153
APPENDIX B: MISCELLANEOUS…………………………………………………………..178
REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………186
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH…………………………………………………………………...198
vi
LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES
1
Opening clarinet solo, “Nazad, Nazad Mome Kalino” .......................................................101
2
Partial transcription of opening clarinet solo, “Novite Varvari” .........................................102
3
Opening kuchek variation presented by the percussion section ..........................................135
4
Melodic material of the voice part .......................................................................................135
5
Melodic elaboration of the same material by the brass/wind section ..................................135
6
Bass/Rhythm/Lead guitar variation of the kuchek rhythm presented by the percussion
section ..................................................................................................................................136
7
Main theme of “Rakia Sŭnraiz” where the exclamation “rakia!” is inserted after beat four of
the last measure of the saxophone solo ...............................................................................138
8
Brass/Wind section variation of the main melodic material in pop-folk style ....................139
9
Ostinato pattern emphasizing beat one and four (accented) and therefore implying the
rhythmic sense of kuchek .....................................................................................................140
vii
LIST OF AUDIO EXAMPLES
1
“Neka Me Boli,” transition between kuchek and pop-ballad groove and texture .................82
2
“Neka Me Boli,” brass/wind section improvisational interlude ............................................82
3
“Neka Me Boli,” slapped, funky bass guitar style during brass/wind interlude....................83
4
“Neka Me Boli,” vocalizations by Ku Ku Band’s bass player .............................................83
5
Clarinet solo, “Kalino Mome” .............................................................................................101
6
Clarinet solo, “Novite Varvari” ..........................................................................................103
7
“Katerino Mome,” verse, performed by the Pirin Folklore Ensemble ................................103
8
“Katerino Mome,” orchestral interlude, performed by the Pirin Folklore Ensemble .........104
9
“Katerino Mome,” verse, performed by Trifonov and Ku Ku Band ..................................104
10
“Katerino Mome,” instrumental interlude, performed by Trifonov and Ku Ku Band ........104
11
“Kombainero-Inteligentska,” opening kuchek rhythm variant ...........................................135
12
“Kombainero-Inteligentska,” refrain ...................................................................................136
13
“Kombainero-Inteligentska,” clarinet solo ..........................................................................136
14
“Kamikadze,” opening fast-paced kuchek groove ..............................................................137
15
“Kamikadze,” Latin-influenced montuno groove ...............................................................137
16
“Rakia Sŭnraiz,” opening saxophone solo...........................................................................138
17
“Rakia Sŭnraiz,” brass/wind variation of the main melodic material in pop-folk style......139
viii
LIST OF FIGURES
1
The puppet Mr. Ku Ku with two cast members of the program ............................................37
2
The album cover of Yellow Booklet (1995) ...........................................................................42
3
Trifonov in the process of being shaved, February 19 1998 .................................................45
4
Keyboard player Dimitrov (left) and basist Milchev (right) at a party in 2008 ....................46
5
Trifonov with Gorbachev during the broadcast of Slavi Show on May 7, 2002 ..................48
6
Album cover of a pop-folk collection released by Payner, 2007 ..........................................77
7
Image of a Bulgarian mutra, 2006 .........................................................................................80
8
Trifonov with his security entourage .....................................................................................85
9
Dancers form ensemble Ethnica in a pyramid formation over tŭpan drums ......................108
ix
ABSTRACT
This dissertation is a study of the cultural meanings ascribed to the postsocialist Bulgarian popfolk musician and television personality Slavi Trifonov. Since the early 1990s, Trifonov’s career
and popularity have been intricately linked to the transition from communism to postcommunism and the sociocultural experiences characteristic of that transformation. Based on
audience reflections, my inquiry considers Trifonov and his music as a polarizing discourse that
embodies the competing meanings generated by this shift in economic and political structure in
Bulgaria. I insist that Trifonov’s music and television productions purposefully create an image
of the nation and sell that image as an inconspicuous element of popular music culture. The
success of Trifonov within commercial music and as a polarizing cultural figure also suggests
that the nation and its commercialization have a specific social capacity and are interconnected. I
explore this interconnectedness and argue that it reveals the ways Bulgarian people experience
and make sense of their conflicting social experiences through popular music.
x
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
In December 2010 the Bulgarian television star and pop-folk musician Slavi Trifonov
released a music video entitled “Nema Takava Dŭrzhava” (“There Ain’t a Country Like This”).
Conceived as a rap, the lyrical content of the piece narrates a story about postsocialist Bulgarian
corruption, political oligarchy, and poverty stricken social life. As the rapper and narrator,
Trifonov addresses the listeners and viewers directly through rhetorical questions such as “Are
you sleeping?” “How many times are you going to relive the same old story?” “How long are
you going to live in this lie?” With each verse, he paints a pastiche of fragmented images of
corrupted politicians, crooked journalists, and a pacifist Bulgarian society whose values and
morals have been corrupted by a consumer-driven life philosophy.
Silikonov zhivot,
silikonovi tsitsi,
silikonovi mechti
i falshivi polititsi.
Vsichkite zhiveiat
v edna tŭpa reklama,
v koiato svobodata
e sravnena sŭs salama.
Silicon life,
silicon breasts,1
fake dreams,
and fake politicians.
Everyone lives
in a stupid commercial,
where freedom
is equated with salami.
(portion of Verse 1)
Ne mi govorete
za zakon i konstitutsia.
V taia dŭrzhava
vsichko e prostitutsia!
Don’t talk to me about
law and constitution.
In this country,
it’s all prostitution!2
(portion of Verse 3)
In this context, the term “silicon” refers both to physical and social qualities of fakeness or cheapness. The term is
used in contemporary Bulgarian as a euphemism for the perceived fakeness of pop-folk female performers and their
breast augmentation procedures.
2
See Apendix A, Example 1 for a complete version of the song’s text in Bulgarian and its corresponding translation.
1
1
As a commentary on the social and economic situation in postsocialist Bulgaria, the
lyrical content of the piece also embraces a fragmented visual narrative. In the music video,
footage of homeless children, police violence at street demonstrations, newspaper pages with
pornographic images, communist parades, the National Assembly, and former and current prime
ministers and presidents overlap to form a disorienting collage of the urban, social decay that
constituted the Bulgarian everyday.3 Significantly, the song identifies a number of specific
political figures, including the current Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, as the major
offenders of this dire and deprived life style.4 The direct and vulgar language of Trifonov’s piece
leaves little room for interpreting questions such as “What are we going to do about these
losers?” and “How long is this gonna go on?” To me, and arguably to many other Bulgarians
struggling to find meaning and normalcy within postsocialism, this narrative is a plea to
recognize, voice, and act to change the vicious cycle of media, political, and economic
corruption operationalized by the same circle of powerful people in Bulgaria since the early
1990s.
Once it entered the virtual space of YouTube and other Bulgarian-based social media
cites, however, “Nema Takava Dŭrzhava” generated an intense debate regarding Trifonov’s
positioning relative to the images and critiques he invoked. Some of the viewers and participants
in the virtual dialogues regarded Trifonov as a person of moral standing, a cultural hero, for
voicing the social discontent without disguise or sugarcoating. The registered YouTube user
Ramsey189, for example, shared: “Slavi is a true patriot and I applaud him for this. I don’t think
he will even earn any money from this song, at least certainly not as much as the oriental popfolk crap on the Planeta channel,5 which pretends to be Bulgarian. This song is against our
government, which is why I doubt that any television would air it. I think it’s very truthful.” In
contrast, other respondents identified Trifonov as part of the same circle of oligarchs he attacked.
“It’s true,” pointed out the user izmamnika, “that all politicians are demagogues, but Slavi is
undeniably part of their guild. Does he really think he is some kind of a revolutionary revival
hero?!” Echoing this position, a user named lekotar asked: “Ha, and since when is Slavi the
3
The video may be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQEXGld3vHA, although it has been posted
multiple times on both YouTube and the Bulgarian-based social media site vbox.bg.
4
Specifically, the collage style of the video integrated images of former Prime Ministers Zhan Videnov and Ivan
Kostov (both in office during the late 1990s) with those of Borisov suggesting a line of corruption despite the
difference in their political orientation.
5
Planeta TV is a television channel exclusiveley dedicated to the style of pop-folk and owned by Payner, the top
producer and major market player within the commercial development of the Pop-Folk industry since 1995.
2
defender of the weak and socially deprived? Perhaps he forgot how he gained all of his money
through connections in and outside the National Assembly and has been doing that for over
twenty years.” “He is,” continued the virtual user, “one of the people responsible for the invasion
of pop-folk in politics and culture. He made this vulgarity a life style for an entire generation of
Bulgarians!” Other users called into question Trifonov’s integrity as a musician and a Bulgarian
by citing his specific connections with certain political figures and by critiquing the means by
which he reached commercial stardom within the style of Bulgarian pop-folk. Some viewers,
however, identified Trifonov as a patriot and a social activist committed to the plight of average
Bulgarian citizens and the nation.6 Collectively, these audience reactions articulated a series of
tensions (socialism-democracy, European-Oriental, high culture-low culture, celebrity-audience)
regarding Trifonov’s role in Bulgarian popular culture, as well as their connection to the
experiences of Bulgarian postsocialism.
As a pop-folk performer, politically outspoken television personality, producer, and
entrepreneur intricately connected to Bulgaria’s postsocialist experience, Trifonov has come to
signify both the idealized and detested values associated with democracy and the free market.
His overt commercialism, however, has also positioned him at the intersection of politics,
economics, media, and music; he occupies a discursive space in which negative cultural
stereotyping attached to the pop-folk musical style directly confronts the high value Bulgarians
hold regarding success. Because his story embodies these competing paradigms, Trifonov has
become a cultural phenomenon; he uses specific musical and commercial strategies to navigate
public opinion and to mediate political discourse about nationalism in postsocialist Bulgaria.
This dissertation is a study of the cultural meanings ascribed to the postsocialist
Bulgarian pop-folk musician and television personality Slavi Trifonov. Since the early 1990s,
Trifonov’s career and popularity have been intricately linked to the transition from communism
to postcommunism and the sociocultural experiences characteristic of that transformation. Based
on audience reflections, my inquiry considers Trifonov and his music as a polarizing discourse
that embodies the competing meanings generated by this shift in economic and political structure
in Bulgaria. I insist that Trifonov’s music and television productions purposefully create an
image of the nation and sell that image as an inconspicuous element of popular music culture.
Through a detailed analysis Trifonov’s career, recordings, and performances, I explore the
6
Please see Appendix B for a more detailed account of YouTube users’ commentary regarding Trifonov’s video.
3
connection between Bulgarian nationalism and commerce. I argue that Trifonov’s music exploits
culturally specific experiences to remind Bulgarians of what and where the nation is through an
emotional, patriotic language. Produced and performed through capitalist market strategies, the
nation is then consumed as a musical commodity that simultaneously reproduces and resists the
alienating effects of commodity logic. I frame this relationship through notions of value as a
social process of meaningful distinction. That is, in terms of Bulgarian conceptions of what is
desirable and why it is desirable within a larger code of cultural meaning. I insist that the
distinctions Trifonov’s music elucidates reveal the ways Bulgarian people make sense of their
conflicting social experiences via popular music culture.
Background
Despite the variety of media productions in the 1990s with which Trifonov has been
associated, he is most often identified as a pop-folk, or chalga, performer. This labeling has also
come to denote the relationship of the genre of pop-folk to Trifonov within postsocialist
Bulgarian everyday life, as well as the rise of commercial, popular (music) culture in the context
of free-market capitalism. Because Trifonov’s career developed alongside the commercial rise of
pop-folk during the 1990s, audiences have increasingly linked the genre’s pejorative associations
with low (versus ‘high,’ artistic) culture to Trifonov. As an individual musician, he has therefore
become a potent symbol of cultural value categorizations and, like pop-folk, a subject and an
object of heated debates regarding artistic integrity and national discourse.
The roots of the musical style of pop-folk can be traced to earlier Bulgarian musical
styles of the late communist period and related Balkan traditions such as the Yugoslav newly
composed folk music, or NCFM, which developed out of the urbanization of former Yugoslavia
after WWII and experienced significant commercialization throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The
main musical markers of NCFM in the 1980s were electronically processed vocals, heavy reverb
effects, and drum machine grooves paired with musical expressions such as nasal vocal style,
elaborate vocal ornamentation, and kuchek Roma rhythm (in 2/4). NCFM texts often feature
colloquial expressions and address the transitory lifestyle of an urban, increasingly Westernized,
materialistic way of thinking about the world. According to Rasmussen, the oriental musical
elements and the lowbrow poetics of NCFM collectively gave rise to a broader Yugoslav cultural
4
polarization that was expressed in the negative perception of the style as a regressive musical and
cultural representation (Rasmussen 1995:252).
The sort of broad cultural positioning through music evident in Yugoslav NCFM also
informs the commercial development of Bulgarian pop-folk. Inspired by radio broadcasts and a
rapidly growing cassette culture during the 1980s, pop-folk grew out of popular interests in its
Yugoslav predecessor. During the communist period, Bulgarian music culture was described as
consisting of two officially identified categories of music: arranged folklore music (obrabotena
folklorna muzika) and staged/entertainment music (estradna muzika). The former promoted the
purity of a monoethnic communist nation but aspired to the highest musical standards upheld by
the practice of western classical music. Folkloric musical practices were thus formalized through
orchestral and choral arrangements and written down in western notation and harmony. These
techniques limited the improvisational qualities characteristic of folkloric oral traditions and
formalized its musical practice. Musicians and dancers entered the official labor force as
employees of state controlled folkloric ensembles and were required to obtain formal, western
classical music education.7 Traditional repertoires were arranged and composed by classically
trained composers who acted as ensemble directors, as well as extensions of the ideological grip
of the communist party over artistic production.
Although estradna muzika (or estrada) did not explicitly endeavor to represent the
communist nation, its production and stylistics were still regulated in a manner similar to
folklorna muzika. As an extension of soviet cultural trends, Bulgarian estrada offered a
sentimental and affective way to package state ideology as light entertainment. The control of the
state apparatus was realized in its poetic content, which was ostensibly apolitical. Estrada
performers were not only favored and promoted by the state regulated media but were also the
central entertainment for party officials and party gatherings. Their careers could span over
decades and their music was exclusively produced and distributed by the state controlled
Balkanton8 recording company. The cultural regulation of estrada also included aspects of
7
The formalization of traditional music-making defined the urbanization of the musical profession more broadly.
This process began at the beginning of the communist regime in Bulgaria after 1945 and had a profound impact on
music education and folkloric traditions and musical practices. See further Rice, 1995 for a compelling and detailed
ethnography of this transition and transformation of Bulgarian traditional music during the communist period.
8
In 1952 Balkanton unified three earlier music labels (Orpheus, Melodia, and Balkan) and all other aspects of the
existing Bulgarian music industry into a state-controlled music factory that covered the entire spectrum of music
production (from recording to distribution). Further information is available at http://e-vestnik.bg/3790
5
performance wherein singers and bands appeared mostly in state approved performance venues
and festivals.9
The loosening of the communist ideological grip in the early 1980s allowed for EuroAmerican rock, pop, and jazz musical influences to enter Bulgaria. Incorporating these new
sounds into traditional Bulgarian and Roma/Turkish stylistics, svatbarska muzika (wedding
music) emerged as an opposition to the state supported representations of Bulgarian music
culture (Rice 2002:26). Because it fused idiomatic instrumentation with individualistic, highly
improvisatory musical expression, wedding music (svatbarska muzika) was at odds with the
communist aspirations for a national music culture devoid of markers of Bulgaria’s Ottoman
legacy and ethnic minorities (such as the Roma and Turkish minorities). In 1985 the Communist
Party issued a particularly draconian set of regulations aimed at Bulgarian Muslim minorities.
These policies were meant to suppress the ‘oriental’ heritage of Bulgaria, both musically and
culturally.10 As a blatant expression of such traditions, wedding music and its representative stars
were elevated to symbols of freedom and resistance to oppression.
After the collapse of the communist regime in 1989, the interests of Bulgarian audiences
in Yugoslav NCFM and related Turkish, Greek, Romanian, and Macedonian traditional genres
performed with a Balkan accent became more pronounced and widespread. With the opening of
the national borders of Bulgaria also came increased social and economic freedom as well as the
influences of capitalist marketing, private business, development of the recording industry, and
popular music markets.11 As an outgrowth of svatbarska muzika in the 1980s, the initial versions
of chalga were similar to Yugoslavian NCFM in that they were hybrids of folk idioms, but
chalga more heavily incorporated Turkish and Greek musical elements. In its early
developments, pop-folk simply presented Bulgarianized versions of popular Serbian,
Macedonian, Greek, and Turkish hits by translating and/or substituting their original texts with
9
One of the most prominent venues of estradna muzika was the international festival and competition called Zlatnia
Orfei (The Golden Orpheus). This annual gathering began in 1965 and featured a number of international performers
(mostly from other socialist states), as well as a competition for best Bulgarian estrada song. The Golden Orpheus
was terminated in 1999 but recent interest and support by the Minister of Culture have revived it. The festival
offered its first new edition after a decade of silence in October 2010.
10
These included forced changing of their Muslim names to Bulgarian ones and banning the use of Turkish
language, traditional dress, and Roma and Turkish music. The tension forced many Bulgarian-Muslims to immigrate
to Turkey. The execution of these government policies was met with much resistance by both Bulgarians and
Muslims and was accompanied by a certain degree of physical violence. Prominent wedding music instrumentalists
such as Ivo Papazov (note his Bulgarian name) were also victims of such regulations.
11
For further details and analysis of the political and economic changes in Bulgaria and the Balkan region see
further Bjelic and Savich 2005; Ekiert and Hanson 2003; Anderson et al. 2001; Giatzdis 2002; Pridham 2000.
6
Bulgarian ones. Similarly, the style relies on an electronic, processed sound aesthetic closely
related to mainstream Western popular music (electric guitars, drums, synthesizers, vocal
effects), but with the dominant rhythmic framework based on the kuchek rhythm, which is
associated with Roma and wedding music styles. The textual formulas develop themes of
contemporary life in Bulgaria, albeit with certain simplifications and catchy puns. The format,
unlike in traditional Bulgarian folkloric songs, relies on rhymed verses and singable choruses
that describe the post-communist everyday.12 Much like NCFM in the former Yugoslavia, the
Balkan accent, use of Roma rhythms, the inclusion of modern forms of speech, sultry looks of
female singers, and the seductive dance moves of performers have stirred a broader debate about
its appropriateness as Bulgarian music and, in turn, as a representation of what Bulgaria should
look and sound like generally.
As Rice notes, several key characteristics of the musical roots of pop-folk resemble the
broader cultural perceptions of this style of music in the former Yugoslavia (Rice 2002: 30). On
one hand, the term pop-folk captures the Euro-American popular culture and music that was
forbidden but desired by many Bulgarians during the communist years. This aspect of Bulgarian
pop-folk is reflected, most notably, in the style’s remarkable commercial proliferation, as well as
its mass mediation and professionalization.13 The desire for foreign elements and modernity,
however, is paired with a continued commitment to encoding musical grass roots such as
melodic and rhythmic markers of musics of minority groups (such as the Roma) characteristic of
wedding music, but now presented in commodified terms as “Bulgarian.” This aspect of the style
is captured by the Turkish-derived term chalga (literally, “musical instrument”) often used
interchangeably with pop-folk.14
Through the early 1990s, pop-folk grew rapidly to include multiple media markets,
including radio stations, television channels, and print media. Yet the style’s commercial
12
Popular topics include the devaluation of currency in the 1990s, organized crime, poverty, black market economy,
the new symbols of political freedom such as cell phones and BMW’s, the mundane attractions of the Black Sea
summer resorts, and graphic (but always humorous) sexual relations.
13
There are at least three private television channels and two radio stations in Sofia alone that are dedicated
exclusively to pop-folk. The two major producers of pop-folk are Bulgarian Music Company (BMK) and Payner
Music (both centered in Sofia). Sultry looking female stars with questionable vocal abilities emerge on an almost
monthly basis and are often promoted by these two companies. The president of Payner also owns a private plastic
surgery clinic in the outskirts of Sofia.
14
The root of the word also refers to both a small ensemble of Middle Eastern and European instrumentation
(chalgyia) and a Roma professional wedding musician (chagadziya). Additional common terms used
interchangeably with pop-folk include novfolk (new folk), modern folk, ethnorock, as well as puns like balkanto that
stress the uniquely Balkan musical qualities.
7
proliferation was often, like other economic endeavors in postsocialist Bulgaria, attributed to
both monetary investments of a questionable nature and the debatable tastes of the new economic
elite capable of such investments, a class of postsocialist nouveau riche. Similarly the term
chalga (Turkish for “musical instrument”), used interchangeably with pop-folk, came to denote
not only the oriental character of the music, but also the context which gave rise to this new
economic high class with lowbrow tastes—the political and economic corruption associated with
the transition to democracy and a free market economy. As it has been used colloquially by
Bulgarians since the 1990s, the term chalga embodies both the negative attitudes of Bulgarian
society towards its Ottoman heritage as well as its fractured and traumatic social experiences
with the postsocialist transition.
Trifonov’s involvement with commercial popular music culture began after the collapse
of the communist regime in 1989 when he became a cast member of a satirical television
broadcast called Ku-Ku (Cuckoo). The program was popular, especially among young people,
because it featured a critique of postsocialist political life, because of the cast’s non-conformist
behavior and their undeniable musical talent, and ultimately because the producers had
considerable music business savvy. The Ku Ku Band, which was comprised of Trifonov and the
rest of the television cast, released several albums between 1994 and 1998. These albums were
largely compiled from the sketches and numbers they used in the television show, which aired on
Bulgarian National Television (BNT). After gaining some commercial impetus, however, the
group split up and by 1998 Trifonov, the band, and several of the staff writers formed their own
television show, Khŭshove. Their innovative musical flair and unapologetic, socially relevant
humor became the epitome of non-conformist social and political behavior in the media world of
Bulgaria15 but after their pilot episode, BNT terminated their contract on the grounds of
unregulated sponsorship.16 Following this incident, Trifonov took on the leading role as a
musical and television front man and the show managed to continue airing underground until
new national television channel, Bulgarian Television (BTV), picked up their program in 2001.
The show was then, accordingly, named Slavi Show. Its daily format closely mimicked American
15
In 1998 one of the members of the National Council for Radio and Television (a government agency instituting
rules over the media) publicly labeled Trifonov as “Satan.”
16
The television program Hushove was banned from Bulgarian National Television due to its advertising relations
with a prominent gas company, whose business, at the time, was perceived by economists and politicians as
detrimental to Bulgarian national interests. Because of this relationship, Hushove became the subject of government
propaganda and was replaced by an alternative show, Kanaleto, which was produced by Trifonov’s former
colleagues.
8
variety programs such as The Tonight Show with host Jay Leno, which resonated well with the
owner of the American media conglomerate Fox Television Network. Because of its private
ownership and high-end commercial sponsorship as a result of the switch to BTV, the show
maintained the blatant political commentary and satire; for this reason, it received unprecedented
high ratings until 2004. During this time, Trifonov crafted his image as a new kind of television
showman and he became a cultural phenomenon.
Trifonov’s television presence, however, also aided his commercial status and personal
profit, in a sense closing the circuit of commercial production. On one hand, Trifonov and his
band promote their own albums via the musical interludes on Slavi Show. They avoided explicit
musical affinities with pop-folk by describing their music as “ethno-rock,” yet they generally
employed a similar musical syncretism by combining the idiomatic Roma kuchek rhythmic
frameworks with catchy, singable tunes. They have also successfully revived a body of
traditional folkloric songs, all with a particularly patriotic character, and they refashioned them
as hard-rock popular folklore a practice that falls outside of pop-folk’s musical stylizations.
Trifonov’s staff writers-turned-poets masterfully elevated pop-folk’s trite poetics to sophisticated
poems of national and pan-Balkan unity infused with relevant sociopolitical critiques. The
unique aspects of his pop-folk music have thus positioned Trifonov as both a central and a
contentious figure in the recent sociocultural mediascape in Bulgaria and his success in the
popular music and television markets can be attributed to his controversial reputation among his
Bulgarian audience. That is, the commercial linkage between Trifonov and pop-folk placed him
distinctly in the middle of the existing discourse on chalga as anticulture, while his success was
accordingly attributed to his personal connections with and aesthetic affinities to the corrupted
nouveaux riches who permeated both economic and political life in Bulgaria throughout the
1990s. As a self-made star of music and television, Trifonov and his story demonstrates the
extent to which commercial power can influence social discourse in a capitalist market
environment. The conflict that emerges from his special sociopolitical status lies in the tension
between his music as a form of poetic, nonconformist social criticism and as a well-advertised
and profitable commodity.
Purpose and Significance
This dissertation situates Slavi Trifonov’s commercial success within the broader
sociocultural and economic transformations of postsocialist Bulgaria and expands the theoretical
9
understanding of the relationship of nationalism to commodification. Its purpose is twofold: 1) to
analyze Trifonov’s commercial musical productions in terms of their consistent promotion of
ideas of nationhood and “Bulgarianness” and 2) to untangle the ways in which Trifonov, as a
polarizing figure, has both embodied and manipulated the very sociocultural and economic
contexts to which he belongs. The following principle questions guide my consideration of
Trifonov’s significance with regard to changing notions of economic status and personhood in
postsocialist Bulgaria: 1) What are the meanings ascribed to Trifonov’s identity as a cultural
phenomenon? 2) What is nationalism in the Bulgarian context and how does it manifest itself
relative to Trifonov’s productions? 3) What is commodification in the context of Bulgarian
capitalist-driven pop culture and specifically in relation to Trifonov’s music? 4) How do
commodification and nationalism inform Trifonov’s status as a polarizing figure? 5) What is the
relationship between commodification and nationalism relative to Trifonov’s music? 6) How do
nationalism and commodification express Bulgarian postsocialist subjectivities?
Recent ethnomusicological scholarship on Bulgaria by both Bulgarian and non-Bulgarian
scholars has investigated the impact of changing sociocultural and political conditions on the
traditional musics of Bulgaria and has also explored the development and sociocultural
significance of pop-folk after the collapse of the communist regime (Buchanan 2007, 2006; Rice
2002, 1996, 1994; Statelova 2003; Levy 2000; Peycheva 1999; Kurkela 1995; Dimov 1999).
However, Trifonov’s distinctive musicultural (Bakan 2011:10) synthesis, its relationship to the
style of pop-folk, and the broader economic and sociocultural significance that emerges from this
relationship have not yet been subjects of ethnomusicological inquiry. By looking at Trifonov as
a powerful cultural phenomenon both within and beyond Bulgaria, I seek to extend the scholarly
discourse on Bulgarian music, culture, and history. This approach resonates with the larger fields
of popular music and popular culture studies, for it illuminates the ways global technological
developments and modes of mass communication are shaped by local indigenous contexts. As
globalization and the expansion of capitalism influence popular culture around the world, ideas
about political development, economic systems, and cultural value compete in informing how
people regard themselves relative to the increasingly interconnected and mass mediated world
around them.
10
Theoretical Approach
Ethnomusicologists have recently developed ideas about the relationship between
nationalism and popular music in a variety of historical and cultural contexts (Bohlman, 2011;
Crook, 2009; Moore 2006, 1997; Askew 2002; Turino 2000; Erlmann 1999). While
acknowledging the merits of these ethnographic and theoretical interpretations, I examine
nationalism in terms of three central aspects: land, language, and mass mediation. Building upon
research that looks at relationships between political and social ideologies about nationalism
(Gellner 1997, 1983), emotional attachments to and cultural products of nationalism (Anderson
1983), the specificity and cultural paradoxes of Balkan history (Todorova 1997), and the
reproduction of the nation as an everyday social process (Billing 1995), I argue that Trifonov’s
music is nationalistic because it: 1) exploits culturally specific experiences (including sounds and
images) through an emotional, metaphoric language of patriotism, 2) persists within the recurring
dimension of the everyday wherein it appears as natural, and 3) serves as a reminder of what,
where, and how the nation is through a vernacular, popular ideology.
The concept of the ‘nation’ is also best understood by the material perspective of value
theory. In an attempt to understand the ways nationalistic narratives undercut commercial ones, I
consider the ways that the processes of commodification and accumulation of capital transform
the value of the musical product and I discuss how such processes contextualize both the
meaning of Trifonov’s commercial success and the nature of his postsocialist celebrity. In his
discussion of country music, Aaron Fox (1992) argues that the language and performance of
country both affirm commodity values and transform them into private feelings conveyed within
the public sphere of popular media. These processes are both commodifying and
countercommodifying because they reaffirm the alienating experience of private fulfillment in
public consumption and create specific links to past memories and feelings in which that
experience, and fetish, is transformed and de-objectified (Fox 1992:54). Like Fox, I insist that
Trifonov’s songs resist the market by fully engaging with it, simultaneously creating and
transforming commodity logic, by virtue of objectifying culturally specific experiences related to
the nation (Sahlins 2000; Piot 1992; Gregory 1982). According to theories of value, these songs
neither alienate (Marx 1976; Ollman 1971) nor do they personifying (Gregory 1997). Rather,
they function “in-between” the properties of gift economies and capitalist praxis, or
commodification and countercommodification, to create a categorically different value and
11
social relationship—an individualized socially meaningful relationship between the listener and
the musical commodity as a movable repository of a culturally specific, historical experiences
(Uzendoski, 2005; Orlove, 2002; Fox, 1992).
I choose Trifonov’s story as a lens through which to examine the dynamics of nationalism
and commodification because he has emerged as a powerful cultural manager who is able to
manipulate competing ideologies via the specificity of his musical entertainment. Trifonov is a
vivid example of instantiation or “the embodiment of generals in particulars, as of social groups
or categories in specific persons, places, objects, or acts” (Sahlins 2000:321). As an individual
and a celebrity who communicates the importance of indigenous traditions and values, Trifonov
has become an emblem of a cultural revival while at the same time he profits commercially from
his pop-folk celebrity. This type of mediation illustrates the way Trifonov simultaneously
instantiates ideas of modernity and traditional culture. His unique story illuminates that certain
individuals “stand for and become icons” for the social totality (Sahlins 2000:322). Trifonov is
an icon in this sense; he has been occupied with mediating Bulgarianness throughout his career
and this has made him both a representative of and a challenge to Bulgarian society at large.
In exploring nationalistic strategies, capitalist logic, and meaning of music as a symbolic
resource, I ultimately suggest that Trifonov is a product of the Bulgarian postsocialist experience
and as such embodies a characteristic ambiguity qualitatively linked to this new way of life and
thinking about the world. With specific attention to the ways Trifonov has instigated and/or
participated in a process of defining the image of a nation, I seek to understand how such
operations create and manipulate the laws governing popular culture within the logic of capitalist
consumerism. To explicate how these commercial strategies inform the ways Bulgarians think of
themselves and the world around them through music is another central concern of this study.
Finally, my interest in exploring the interdependent dimensions of nationalism and
capitalism through the musicultural positioning of Trifonov in the Bulgarian popular music
world is informed by the internal relations perspective. Unlike external relations, I view social,
cultural, economic, political, and musical processes as being interwoven and simultaneously
linked to the social whole whose parts they themselves construct.17 Such an understanding also
Here, I draw from Paul Paolucci’s distinction between external and internal relationships often understood in the
context of dialectical philosophy. As he notes in "Assumptions of the Dialectical Method,” the three key differences
in these methods are “the importance of the relations among parts in addition to the parts themselves, the feedback
17
12
underscores my depiction of Trifonov as an individual relative to the social whole of
postsocialist Bulgaria. His case is ripe with cultural paradoxes that defy neat theoretical analysis
and is illustrative of the sociopolitical complexities that define everyday life in postsocialist
Bulgaria. Accordingly, the goal of this project is to unpack and think through the internal
relations within the context of a continuous feedback to the dynamic whole that was postsocialist
Bulgaria between 1990 and 2005.
Review of Literature
As a Bulgarian and a pop-folk performer, Trifonov’s career and music may be situated
within two sets of distinct literature. One part of the literature informs the background of this
study. These resources focus on the musicultural and historical aspects of socialist and
postsocialist Bulgaria and the Balkan region. The second body of literature relates to my
interpretive framework and addresses broader theoretical perspectives such as nationalism,
commodification, textual analysis, and sociocultural and philosophical meaning. These sources
are central to my particular study of Trifonov and his music, but they also relate more broadly to
the experience of postsocialism in Bulgaria.
Bulgaria
In his article “Bulgaria or Chalgaria: The Attenuation of Bulgarian Nationalism in a
Mass-Mediated Popular Music” (2002), Tim Rice reviews the nationalistic discourse of Bulgaria
beginning with the communist period and its remnants in current musicultural forms such as the
musical style of pop-folk. He argues that, as much as communist nationalism represented
Bulgarian traditions as devoid of any cultural markers of the country’s Ottoman past, the current
sociocultural debate over the aesthetic merits of pop-folk articulate these same tensions in the
new Bulgarian commodity market for music. “Pop-folk,” Rice insists, “is at once a popular art, a
commodity with economic value, a site for modeling new behaviors made possible by the
transition from communism to capitalism, and a wildly polysemic symbol” (Rice 2002: 36).
Furthermore, pop-folk participates in many social and cultural domains and is continuously
contributing to a period of attenuated nationalism in postsocialist Bulgaria. Rice provides an
excellent overview of the historical roots of pop-folk and problematizes convincingly the issues
of nationalism and Bulgarian identity embedded in it.
from these relations in constituting the parts in heterogeneous ways, and the dynamic nature of the relationship
between the parts and the whole" (Paolucci 2001:123).
13
Several essays in the volume Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern
Europe (1996) also bear specific relevance to the interest and focus of this dissertation. Donna
Buchanan’s contribution, “Wedding Musicians, Political Transition, and National Consciousness
in Bulgaria,” provides an important review of the processes of development of wedding music in
relation to issues of ethnicity and Bulgaria’s Ottoman legacy. With specific focus on wedding
music’s most famous proponent, Ivo Papazov, Buchanan frames the issue of Bulgarian
nationalism via the cultural tropes of exclusion/inclusion of minorities as signifiers of the
Oriental, foreign aspects of Bulgarian history and culture. She elaborates this national question
by insisting that, “just as post-Socialist Bulgaria is a nation struggling to define its image within
the environment of shifting world power relations, so Papazov’s music engenders this process”
(Buchanan 1996:223). Similarly, in “Soccer, Popular Music and National Consciousness in PostState-Socialist Bulgaria, 1994-96” (2002), Buchanan investigates how sports and popular music
contributed to the formation of national consciousness during the immediate postsocialist period
in Bulgaria. Focusing on soccer and soccer victory songs, she illustrates how, throughout the
difficult summers of 1994 and 1996, Bulgaria's success in international soccer championships
briefly restored hope, confidence and national pride to many. In this dissertation, I expand
Buchanan’s assertions by positing that Trifonov actively participates in defining the Bulgarian
nation from the standpoint of a new capitalist consumerism vis-à-vis the nation’s ethnic minority
cultures. Most importantly for the current study, I challenge Buchanan’s idea that the Bulgarian
public and its leaders have employed popular culture as a coping mechanism through which they
could regain a positive and unified sense of national consciousness.
Monographs by Rice and Buchanan, in addition to the above-mentioned essays and
articles, also inform the background of my study of Trifonov. In May it Fill Your Soul:
Experiencing Bulgarian Music (1994), Rice outlines a history of Bulgarian traditional music
from the beginning of the twentieth century until the late 1980s by focusing on the lives of two
musicians—Konstantin Varimezov and Todora Varimezova. The author not only provides the
first comprehensive, detailed analysis of Bulgarian traditional music, but he also theorizes the
experience of music in relation to tradition and modernity from the perspective of the individual.
Buchanan’s monograph Performing Democracy: Bulgarian Music and Musicians in
Transition (2006) is a continuation of Rice’s historical account in that she focuses on the way
state folkloric ensembles, which were characteristic of the communist period in Bulgaria
14
between 1945 and 1989, experienced the advent of democracy in the postcommunist era. While
her focus is, again, on the traditional music of the country, the author provides lengthy
theoretical interpretations of the way music, economy, and politics inform the experience of
musicians in periods of national transition. Although the present study focuses specifically on the
popular music of Bulgaria in the period after 1990, several key aspects of works that focus on
earlier historical periods provide insightful guidelines for its topical concern. May it Fill Your
Soul is an example of this; although it is almost two decades old, it explores the individual
musician as the locus of study of broader historical, cultural, political and economic changes in a
way that still resonates with contemporary contexts of nationhood. In this way, my approach to
analyzing Trifonov is similar to Rice’s and only differs with respect to post-communist realities
not addressed by Rice. Moreover, Rice and Buchanan each discuss in their monographs the rise
of professionalism in traditional musical forms and the rise of contested musical forms such as
wedding music. Professionalism and controversial musical qualities are both important aspects I
address with in relation to pop-folk and the rise of Slavi Trifonov within that musical and
economic environment.
Although many researchers attend to socioeconomic and political changes, a small
number of Bulgarian scholars who specialize in cultural analysis have also begun to take interest
in the diverse musical changes taking place in postcommunist Bulgaria. Rozmari Statelova’s
monograph The Seven Sins of Chalga (2003) focuses on the problem of pop-folk as an
embodiment of the Oriental Other. She says that Bulgarians assign a sense of shame to Ottoman,
or Oriental, cultural attributes while they clearly favor the forms and ideas of the capitalist West.
This ambiguous dynamic not only reiterates the significance of pop-folk as a broader sociocultural phenomenon in Bulgaria but also as a Balkan regional perception. Alternatively,
Peicheva, Dimov, Kurkela, and Levy explore specific musical, textual, and cultural aspects of
pop-folk as a commercial postcommunist process in series of articles published in the Bulgarian
academic journals Bulgarian Folklore and Bulgarian Musicology between 1995 and 2001.
These ethnomusicologists examine the minority elements of pop-folk in relation to
Bulgarian identity (Peicheva 1998, 1999), the historical development and textual qualities of
pop-folk’s purported ‘low-brow’ poetics (Dimov 1998, 1995), the production of aesthetic
musical meaning within pop-folk via terminology used to describe pop-folk as “ethnic” music
(Levy 2000, 1999), and the regulation and deregulation of national music expressions by media
15
sources in the context of post-communism (Kurkela 1995). The authors address and redress
specific musical and cultural perspectives as well as larger theoretical considerations related to
change, economics, politics and nationalism, ethnicity, and identity. Although the research
mentioned above certainly informs my project by providing a variety of interpretations and
perspectives on the meanings and cultural elaborations of pop-folk, they lack an in-depth cultural
analysis of Trifonov’s role within Bulgarian popular music. I seek to provide such an analysis by
examining the contested position of Trifonov within the context of pop-folk and postsocialist
Bulgarian popular culture.
The Balkans
In the article “From Source to Commodity: Newly Composed Music of Yugoslavia”
(1995) and her subsequent monograph on the subject that was published in 2002, Ljerka
Rasmussen investigates the roots of and cultural sentiments embedded in NCFM, a style that
builds upon folkloric and popular music stylizations from the former Yugoslavia. She not only
provides detailed analyses of the textual and musical qualities of the style, but she also examines
the critical positioning of the style at the juncture of contemporary Yugoslav identity, ethnicity,
and nationhood. As a precursor to Bulgarian pop-folk and related musical phenomena in the
Balkans, NCFM embodies all the contradictions and paradoxes characteristic of a fragmented
country’s attempt to define itself as a nation in relation to the West. Two important points
emerge from the author’s interpretation in regard to this dissertation: first, the understanding of
NCFM as a socially relevant phenomenon is affirmed by the moral panic and public debate that
it has and generated within competing cultural paradigms of East-West and rural-urban; second,
casting NCFM as a catalyst for social change allows us to understand a nation’s experience as it
orients itself within a “European culture while affirming its own identity” (Rasmussen
1995:255). This is a particularly useful and relevant analysis of pop-folk’s precursor and an
excellent framework for investigating the cultural paradoxes of the contemporary Bulgarian
style.
The book Imagining the Balkans (1997) by Maria Todorova is also central to my study
because the provocative narrative featured in it situates my study of Trifonov and his
musicultural influence within a regional, historical, social dynamic. The author is concerned with
the origins and development of balkanism; she investigates the central discourse regarding the
political history of Europe from the eighteenth century to the present day, and she explores the
16
stereotypes ascribed to people from the Balkan region as being backward, primitive, and
barbaric. Todorova elaborates the specific ways that the us-them dichotomy created a derogatory
image of the Balkan as an Other in order to help shape a self-congratulatory image of Western
Europe. The author not only articulates the ways in which this process was supported and
perpetuated by a Western European intellectual tradition, but she also examines the ways in
which the Balkan Other became mythologized, transmitted, and internalized within the region
itself.
Todorova’s in-depth analysis informs in multiple ways. First, because she is both
Bulgarian and an academic, her work provides a history of relations between East and West
within the Balkan region that is rendered both from a scholarly perspective as well as from her
personal experiences. This provides a point of departure for my own reflexive positioning in the
dissertation as a cultural analyst and Bulgarian national. Second, her research helps frame the
debates surrounding the cultural and social value of pop-folk, as well as Trifonov’s place within
it. Finally, she acknowledges a common thread between countries in the Balkan region on the
basis of a shared experience of sociocultural separation from and conceptual opposition to the
rest of Europe—a regional dynamic that contributes both to the pan-Balkan sentiments present in
Trifonov’s songs and the positioning of this study in geographical terms.
The collection of essays entitled Balkan Popular Culture and the Ottoman Ecumene:
Music, Image, and Regional Political Discourse (2007) echoes Todorova’s analysis of the
Balkans and responds to the changing cultural conditions of the region and its views from both
insider and outsider perspectives. The contributors address balkanization as a polarizing
discourse but many of the authors also analyze its relational nature wherein the Eastern Other
“plays up (and sometimes with) the Other within” (Buchanan 2007: xviii). The volume presents
various ethnographic perspectives from Albania, Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria,
Croatia, Greece, Serbia, Kosova, the Republic of Macedonia, and Turkey. Each essay focuses on
styles of music that have influenced or related to the history of Bulgarian pop-folk. Many
contributors to the volume also discuss the role of minority cultures and attend to current social
politics in the region, since these issues shape the nature of balkanization.
My research not only fills a gap in the scholarship on popular music in the Balkan region,
but it also addresses one of the central debates about pop-folk in Bulgaria: the value for
representations of Bulgaria’s Ottoman heritage and minority subcultures in nationalistic popular
17
music. The specific ethnographic vignettes from various Balkan countries that comprise the body
of the volume’s research also help this project situate some of the controversies surrounding
Slavi Trifonov’s music and pop-folk music broadly within an emerging regional pan-Balkan
dynamic.
Nationalism
In this dissertation, I consider ‘the nation’ to be a culturally specific construct and my
exploration of nationalism focuses on the manufacturing and reproduction of emotional
attachments to this notion in postsocialist Bulgaria. In that sense, I do not theorize about the
origins of the Bulgarian nation. I instead attempt to discover how Bulgaria is constructed in the
cultural dimensions of the everyday. In tracing the trajectory of ideas about nationhood through
stories about musical and social life in Bulgaria, I build upon several works that illucidate the
nation.
In the milestone works entitled Nations and Nationalism (2006) and Nationalism (1997),
Ernest Gellner approaches nationalism as a political ideology that is used in conjunction with
terms like “nation” and “nation-state.” He acknowledges that, as a principle of political and
social organization, nationalism originates in the modern industrial period and he insists that an
understanding of particular nationalist experiences should be rooted in ideas of power
distribution, cultural diversity, and education. Although I do not intend to build upon the polemic
critiques Gellner puts forward, his works establish firm guidelines for my analysis of the specific
nationalism emanating from the works of Trifonov in relation to postsocialist popular culture and
political scenarios. Furthermore Gellner’s perspective is particularly relevant to my research,
which features a critical analysis of the processes and contexts underscoring Trifonov’s
crystallization as a figure of national awakening. A critical analysis of the conditions that foster
such nationalist experiences is, accordingly, a central concern to this project.
In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (2006),
Benedict Anderson explores the origins of ‘the nation’ and nationalism as cultural artifacts, he
investigates how their meanings have evolved over time and he claims that these ideas have
acquired a “profound emotional legitimacy” (Anderson 2006:4). Anderson’s analysis and
positioning of nationalism as a universal sociocultural concept and a political ideology that
contests the particularity of its own concrete manifestations makes this work particularly
valuable for and informative to my study. Specifically, I build on the view of the nation as a
18
critical juncture wherein imagined political communities, or nations, create cultural continuities
by associating with an immemorial past to which they give political expression (ibid., 11).
Anderson insists that such attachment is characterized by a simultaneous expression of love and
hatred in nationalist feelings and through specific cultural products such as poetry, prose, music,
and art. This argument not only articulates my understanding of the discourse surrounding
Trifonov but it also situates my analysis of nationalistic strategies relative to music and
performance. As communities imagine themselves as nations through language and expressive
culture, they fuse memories of personal experiences with tropes of national identity. This
resonates closely with my study of nationalism, since Trifonov’s songs are cultural products that
naturalize the dynamics of remembrance through an imagined history of a nation.
Manifestations of Nationalism
In exploring Trifonov’s music from the perspective of language, imagined history, and
tropes of national identity, I rely on several key works from the field of ethnopoetics. The ideas
in these works shape the way I view Trifonov’s nationalism and these scholars provide tools for
the investigation of its manifestation poetically and musically. While ethnopoetics often focuses
on the analysis of indigenous poetry and detailed poetic analysis (Hymes 2003, Tedlock 1983),
my approach departs from the line-by-line method modeled by these authors because I focus
instead on larger units, or themes, and metaphors in pop-folk that are both culturally specific and
socially significant for the postsocialist Bulgarian experience and sense of self.
In the Singer of Tales (2000), Albert Lord traces the entire oral system of learning for
South-Slavic guslari and charts out the ways they rely on themes, formulas, and performance to
pass down this complex verbal art of storytelling and singing. Based on ethnographic work in the
early twentieth century, the author posits that themes are central to the oral tradition of these
poet-singers and their process of learning. To him, themes are basic incidents and descriptions
met again and again within an oral tradition; they are “groups of ideas regularly used in telling a
tale” (Lord 2000:68). He also says that themes, however, by no means represent fixed sets of
words that are reproduced in performance contexts by different narrators.
In A World of Other’s Words: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Intertextuality (2004),
Richard Bauman explores the nuances of intertextuality in relation to genre theory and
performance dynamics in various cultural and poetic contexts. The author notes that the narrative
performance is often subject to subsequent processes of transformation, wherein the narrators
19
frequently seek to establish a direct line in the process of transmission through “webs of
intertextuality” (Bauman 2004:26).
I use these ideas as a basis for a textual analysis of Trifonov’s songs, wherein thematic
and intertextual connections reveal complex relationships between culturally specific historical
narratives. While I use the author’s approaches selectively and briefly, their insights shape my
methods of analyzing the ways the nation is narrated, broadcasted, and sung by Trifonov and his
audience of Bulgarian nationals. My intent is to show: 1) the aesthetics in the performance of
nationalism wherein the powerful tools of mass media replace those of oral narrative; 2) that
such performance is central in the articulation of identity and memory in the context of
postsocialist Bulgarian subjectivity.
Nationalism and Remembrance
In addition to providing a microanalysis of Trifonov’s repertoire, I aim to demonstrate
that these texts constitute a body of symbolic resources that connect Bulgarians to both their
forgotten past and to their imagined future. This quest for meaning is informed by scholars and
philosophers who address place, memory, and experience.
In Lines in the Water (2002), Benjamin Orlove shares his discovery of an important
sentiment that stems from the linguistic discourse in the Quechua fishing community near Lake
Titicaca. According to the author, ‘forgetting’ is a central trope in this group’s struggle for
cultural preservation. Inherent in forgetting is an association with abandonment of value; to
forget is to ignore an important connection with the lake, with its history and people, and, in turn,
with one's value as an individual. In the face of transformations and economic developments in
the twentieth century, the fishermen of Lake Titicaca face the temptation to forget with particular
force. Building upon such understanding, the author notes that the request “not to forget”
demonstrates a peculiar tenacity with which villagers are able to hold on to the past “that has
enabled them to make a place for themselves in the contemporary world” (ibid., 16). The concept
of forgetting also becomes significant with respect to metaphorical and literal pathways. As lines
on the land, paths have material existence but also symbolize movements through time that are
less tangible than movement through physical spaces. Among the villagers of Lake Titicaca,
pathways structure their movements between the lake and the mountain and between past and
present ways of living. In Orlove's view, they can be both tangible and ineffable ways of
20
remembering; that is, ways of record keeping that animate important realms of memory and
generational linkage (ibid., 210).
In a related perspective, Tim Ingold insists that “to tell a story is to relate the occurrences
of the past” (Ingold 2007:90). Far from connecting points in a network or establishing a
connection between pre-located entities, relation here must be understood as “a path traced
through the terrain of lived experience” which the story re-traces by recursively picking up the
threads of past lives (ibid). To Ingold, lines are both metaphorical and concrete. They signify a
constellation of interwoven trails and a fusion of past and present lives, histories, identities, and
memories. This definition not only brings about a renewed understanding of history, but it also
resonates with the way human experience unfolds in stories; as interwoven moments of the
ongoing activity of knowledge and experience.
In recounting the phenomenological significance of place, Edward Casey insists that we
can feel out of place even when we are at home. Beginning early in life, we suffer a series of
separations, all of which involve aspects of place: detachment from caring parents, siblings,
native region, and familiar beliefs and dialect, displacement from things we have done and
witnessed, and disconnection from places full of experience and memory. Still, the experience of
being unplaced without memories, sensations, forms, and thoughtsis more extreme. Casey
explains that “we rarely linger enough in one particular place to savor its unique qualities and its
local history” (Casey 1993: xiii). This process thus contributed to the loss of place and the
experiences and memories associate with it. Sense of place is a central concern of this project as
well, since much of the emotional qualities and deeper meanings of Trifonov’s songs and
nationalistic overtone address memories of place.
By applying the concepts of narrative and intertextuality to a specific musical context,
ethnomusicologist Aaron Fox argues that the texts of country music songs systematically
denaturalize and renaturalize the linguistic and ideological categories of capitalism and that
“country’s deconstructive semiotic play occurs in the interstices of two competing yet
interdependent metanarratives.” (Fox, 1992:54) To Fox, these metanarratives “diffuse cultural
stories which make sense of and reproduce social and psychological experience in capitalist
society” (ibid). In the context of country music commodification, narratives of, for example,
“loss and desire,” create poetic subjects that are consumed with memories of an objectified past.
21
These narratives are dense with intertextual references but also negate the logic of capitalism by
fully engaging in it.
Commodification
These fundamentally interrelated ideas of the commodification and
countercommodification of music also inform my discussion of Trifonov’s music as a unique
product of postsocialist Bulgarian capitalist logic. While scholarship on popular music in
ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and the social sciences has engaged Marxist
perspectives frequently (Shoesmith 2004; Qureshi 2002; Middleton 2000; Negus 1999; Mattern
1998; Firth 1998; Manuel 1993; Waterman 1990), my analysis of nationalistic commercial
strategies relative to Trifonov’s music focuses on the cultural constructions of value specifically,
and its production and transformation as illustrative of internally related but often contradictory
processes embedded in commodification as a social process18 more broadly.
To Wallerstein, the capitalist economy is both a global social system and an international
economic entity because the basic linkages between its parts are economic even though they are
reinforced by cultural, political, and confederal structures (Wallerstein 1980:15). Wallerstein
understands the capitalist world-economy in terms of its internal spheres of exchange core,
periphery, semiperiphery, and external areas wherein the whole of reproduction or interaction
between spheres of exchange is informed by the relationships between individual parts, such as
production-consumption or center-periphery. These constituent parts are internally related to
each other as much as to the whole of the system. It is from this understanding of capitalism,
with a specific focus on these internal relationships and their feedback, that I will develop my
analysis of Trifonov’s commercial music making within a capitalist economy.
Wallerstein’s theory of the world system echoes a central tenant of Marx’s examination
of capitalism as a system of social relations. In Capital (1976), Marx begins his study of
capitalism from its most elemental aspect - the commodity. Because of the labor required to
produce it, a commodity has value in the capitalist model and it can be exchanged for other
valuable goods or services that are available in the commodity market. In Marx’s perspective,
commodification is a process of multiple levels of internal relationships wherein commodities
objectify social human relations and produce commodity fetishism and social alienation. Central
18
The way parts are related to and constituted within the social whole in a continous process simultaneously relating
the parts to each other and to the whole which constitutes them.
22
to the process, however, is the understanding of commodity circulation as social reproduction.
That is, value created and transformed via the processes of consumption and production. As
value arises only in the moment of exchange, it is also transformed from a thing to a social
relationship of alienation and an unequal distribution of resources.
Economic anthropologists have used Marx’s theories of labor value and commodification
as a system of social praxis. Many authors have nuanced the way value acquires culturally
specific characteristics when capitalist commodity logic is considered and some have suggested
alternative systems of economic relations. Gregory (1997, 1982), Piot (1991), Sahlins (2000) and
Uzendoski (2005) discuss the ways competing notions of economic development and circulation
interact under the rubrics of gifts versus commodity systems. Central to my application of their
work is the understanding that regional expressions of global capitalism are dictated by the logic
of cultural value (Gregory 1997). From the indigenous point of view, be it in Africa or
Amazonia, capitalism is an enrichment of the local value systems. This is a nuanced view of
capitalism, which casts it as an external pressure to which indigenous people respond in
consumption and production. As the authors show, the conflict of value emerging from the
relationship between gifts and commodities does not involve a negation of materiality. Rather,
“native people often domesticate and transform the meaning of commodities into gifts, which
they use to produce their own identities and relationships” (Uzendoski 2005: 152). In this sense,
as local value systems interact with hegemonic capitalist paradigms in meaningful and unique
ways, capitalist social and cultural categories are appropriated and actualized by specific local
and indigenous cultures. It is this view that informs my concerns with the appropriation of
capitalism in the context of the popular music market and with the social world of post-1990s
Bulgaria, more broadly.
Ethnographic Approach
The approaches I utilize in analyzing Trifonov and his audiences also include a specific
conceptualization of ethnographic writing and representation. The ideas I review below
constitute this additional interpretive position that specifically informs structure and writing style
of the dissertation. As abstract ideas, however, they are meant to simply mold the ethnographic
data into a form that reflects and follows the trajectory of the character and nature of data itself.
The notion of ‘literary’ approaches to ethnographic writing frequently raise academic
eyebrows due to misconceptions about the term fiction. Yet, this term has come to denote the
23
partiality and construction of cultural and historical truths, and many critics have insisted that
ethnography, like any other form of narrative, is “something made or fashioned” (Clifford 1986:
6). This mode of understanding, for example, was further explored in reflexive writing wherein
accounts have come to specify the discourse on informants by “fashioning” dialogues or
narrating interpersonal confrontations so as to suggest a certain collapse of the subject-object
divide and illustrate the intersubjectivity of all cultural discourse (Khandelwal, 2003; Qureshi,
2007; Jackson, 1989; Levin, 1999; Fox, 2004; Bakan, 1999; Rice, 1994). Clifford insists that
these strategies of dialoging and experience not only shift the focus from a general world view to
a specific instance but also renders culture as “relational, an inscription of communicative
processes that exist, historically, between subjects” (ibid.,15). Dialoging, then, has the potential
to recast conventional paraphrased stories of quoted informants or self-indulgent stories of
ethnographers’ field experience.
Deep analysis of dialogue through thick description (Geertz 1973), however, is not
exclusive to anthropology or the modern ethnographic tradition. For example in The Republic
(ca. 380 BCE), Plato presents his classic philosophical and political theories regarding justice,
the just city, and the individual through Socratic dialogue. The goal of this style is to present
various philosophical arguments in a continuous dialogue by relating speech to past conversation
through fictional figures; most frequently, Socrates is a character in the dialogue. The complexity
of cosmology and religion undercut later philosophical inquiries, including the works of
Enlightenment philosopher David Hume. Hume intended Dialogues (1776) to be a sharp critique
of organized religion and is yet another example of the ways narratives undercut assumptions
about the human condition and religiosity, given the various ontological positions embodied by
different characters. Like Plato’s interactive conversations, Hume’s dialogue ultimately reveals
his most controversial opinions about reason and science.
Similarly, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard explored the concrete human reality of
the single individual by taking the idea of the dialogue even further in the nineteenth century. In
each part of the two-volume work Either/Or (1843), Kierkegaard writes from the perspectives of
a fictional narrator and presents diametrically opposing life views. Each of the perspectives, one
hedonistic and the other virtuous, features a narrative style reflective of its positioning. Thus, arts
and pleasure take on the form of short essays full of poetic interjections and metaphor, while
reason, morals, and critical reflection are in the form of long letters with stronger argumentative
24
gestures. The element of Kierkegaard’s work that is most relevant to my own approach is the
manner in which he presents his philosophical arguments; he constructs a dialogue between two
anonymous individuals that spans their lifetime.
In a compelling and approachable set of personal dialogues titled Lost in Transition:
Ethnographies of Everyday Life after Communism (2011), social theorist Kristen Ghodsee
situates the conversational nature and philosophical meanings of experience geographically and
historically. By exploring how ordinary Bulgarian people dealt with the transition from stateplanned economy to capitalism through a series of ethnographic snapshots, the author portrays
both the opportunities and disappointments associated with the coming of democracy and the
sense of confusion and social hardship that followed therein. Her narrative is centered on the
everyday lives of ordinary people and, through dialogue, Ghodsee shows how the transition to
capitalism in Bulgaria had a disastrous effect on the rhythm of daily life creating
disorientation, confusion, and an overall fractured social reality. This sense of fracturing,
however, did not come from the violence or shock normally associated with economic and social
turmoil Rather, people felt disoriented and fractured because they were forced to renegotiate an
entirely new terrain of values that was unfamiliar to them (Ghodsee 2011:180).
In a special issue of the journal Anthropology of East Europe Review, Narcis Tulbure
provides a comprehensive review of recent anthropological perspectives regarding the theoretical
underpinnings of the kind of postsocialist social fracturing Ghodsee speaks of so sensitively.
Tulbure argues that “postsocialism has recently come to stand for a particular style of
ethnography that is more attentive to meanings, values, and local experiences through themes
such as memory, consumption, identity, and nationalism” (Tulbure 2009:4). As a reaction to
analyses that focused on accounts of abstract institutional processes and state subjects and
echoing Ghodsee’s approach, Tulbure insists that postsocialist ethnographies have come to, and
should, embrace all of the ambiguities inherent in the processes of social change. By bringing in
micro level insights and favoring dialogue with people, the author models the potential ways in
which ethnographies might illuminate how transformations take place in the personal lives of
postsocialist citizens, in everyday discourse, and through their own voices and experiences with
postsocialism. Tulbure contends that such a shift in emphasis towards experience and the
reconfiguration of values has resulted in a revolution of writing styles and textual registers to
25
include a specific focus on conversation and its capacity to clarify how macro political and
economic processes are manifest in everyday socialities and experiences (ibid., 5).19
Inspired by these various ethnographic styles, philosophical positions, and their
theoretical underpinnings, I too draw attention to the ways the fractured experiences of
postsocialism, and by extension postsocialist popular culture, should be reflected
ethnographically. By reshaping traditional ethnographic descriptions into a series of fragmented
and heterogeneous dialogues, I seek to refocus the meaning of Trifonov towards his audience.
That is, as an embodiment of postsocialist processes and dynamics, Trifonov’s celebrity is given
meaning through his audience’s experiences of his music. It is in Trifonov, and in his dialogic
relationship with his audience that I find the multiplicity of meanings that define him as a
polarizing pop culture figure of postsocialism.
Methodology
The field research for this dissertation was undertaken between 2008 and 2010. In each of
three fieldwork stays in Bulgaria, I was in residence there for the duration of the summer season,
dividing my time between the capital city, Sofia, and Plovdiv, my hometown and the second
largest city in Bulgaria, which is located about an hour and a half southeast of the capital. Sofia
is the city in which Trifonov works, lives, and realizes his musical projects and television show
and it is the current economic center of Bulgaria. Most significantly for this project, Sofia is also
the center of the media and popular music industries in Bulgaria, as many major record
companies, performance venues, television channels, radio stations, and newspapers are located
here. In these respects, it is analogous to Los Angeles, New York City, London, or Tokyo, but on
a scale commensurate with the smaller size and market scope of Bulgaria.
Despite Trifonov’s celebrity in Sofia and nationally, acquiring information about him
proved to be a surprisingly tricky endeavor. On one hand, scholarly and other substantive
publications regarding his career or musicultural and social significance are practically
nonexistent. On the other, informal discourse about Trifonov has been nearly ubiquitous in
Bulgarian households and in the popular media, due to his popularity as a television personality,
especially through the 1990s. Thus, my fieldwork experience took on two distinct directions one involving data collection of available scholarly research and related data on Trifonov and his
19
See further, Asad 1997; Chari and Verdery 2009; Lampland 2000; Hann 2002; Hemment 2003; Verdery 2002;
Ries 2000; Kurti 2000 for discussions regarding the relaionship between fieldwork and ethnographic practice and
conceptualization in the context of postsocialism in Eastern Europe and the Balkan region.
26
operations in Sofia and Plovdiv and the other focusing on interpersonal interaction and
communication. The convergence of these two research directions informs my understanding of
Trifonov as an individual, as a celebrity, as a musician, and as a Bulgarian. Through this
sometimes cumbersome process, I also became increasingly convinced that the status of
Trifonov as a cultural phenomenon is a conflicting network of meanings ascribed to him by his
audiences. The intimate relationship between Trifonov and his audience, in turn, shaped my
fieldwork experience and the multiple dialogues in which I participated while in Bulgaria.
I first began collecting academic and non-academic sources about Trifonov’s story in the
summer of 2008. The primary locales were the City Library Ivan Vazov in Plovdiv and The
National Library Ivan Vazov in Sofia. There, with the help of a surprisingly curious library staff,
I collected academic and non-academic sources that address the cultural, economic, and
sociopolitical dynamics characteristic of Bulgarian life after 1989 and these sources comprise the
background context of my project. A large portion of these sources came from newspaper and
magazine articles from throughout the 1990s and many position Trifonov in relation to specific
political and social events and incidents. The rest of the materials I found, many of which were
authored by Trifonov’s postsocialist commercial brethren, consist of more conventional
academic analyses of the musical characteristics and significance of pop-folk.
During 2009 and 2010 I returned to Bulgaria with a focus on the ethnographic aspects of
my dissertation project. In the summer of 2009 I observed the live broadcasts of Trifonov’s
popular talk show, Slavi Show, wherein ideas of nationalism were often prominently displayed,
both conceptually and musically. The show is also Trifonov’s most lucrative commercial vehicle,
and my observation of and participation in its production enhanced my understanding of the
inside operation of both Trifonov, as a host, as well as of live television. In the small studio of
Slavi Show in the center of Sofia, I was also an audience member, laughing to the jokes and
clapping on cue with the rest of the hundred or so people who had also purchased tickets for the
broadcast recording.
To expand my understanding of the audience and of Trifonov’s standing as a musical
mega-star, I also attended two of the ten concerts comprising Trifonov’s 2009 national tour to
promote his latest music album, No Mercy (7/8). Being part of these elaborate media and musical
spectacles at ten thousand seat soccer stadiums exploded my perceptions of the consumption of
Trifonov’s music both experientially and theoretically. In this context, the phenomenology of
27
‘being’ with others in music (Berger 2008:71) proved illuminating vis-à-vis the experiences of
Trifonov’s fan base, a broad spectrum of people from various age groups, social standings, and
levels of musical sophistication.
I discovered another layer of Trifonov’s significance by engaging in a series of face-toface and online conversations with various Bulgarians who had one thing in common—a
position regarding Trifonov. The aspects of interest and polyvocality shifted my analytical
interests in Trifonov, his band, and their broad, dynamic, and opinionated Bulgarian audience.
The nature of this study is ubiquitously qualitative and, as such, I purposefully do not engage in
measuring, testing, and/or distributing questionnaires in an attempt to provide proof for
Trifonov’s significance. Instead, during the summers of 2009 and 2010 I conversed with
university professors, middle and high school students, family members and friends, friends of
friends, artists, fellow performing musicians, retirees, unemployed, and intellectuals about
Trifonov because their experiences with his music are also their experiences with postsocialism,
music commercialism, and popular culture. I consider the way people communicate about music
as a “metaphoric process, a special way of experiencing, knowing, and feeling value, identity,
and coherence” (Feld 1994: 91). In light of the ways Trifonov’s audiences experience and talk
about music, I insist that people listen from their particular social and historical situation and that
their experiences with music provoke “interpretive tensions” that are interconnectedmental
and material, individual and social, formal and expressive (ibid., 84).
These ideas and perceptions were also complemented by my participation and cyber
lurking in Bulgarian online forums and fan-built websites throughout 2009 and 2010, wherein
registered users posted information and commentaries regarding Trifonov’s music, career, and
persona. This type of discourse, however, was different for these cyber contexts also provided a
certain level of anonymity which users, most notably YouTube users, embrace fully in a wide
display of extreme opinions and vulgar language.20 Yet, despite the dynamics of online
communities, this discourse provides a wider view of Trifonov’s audience and constitutes a
major aspect of my understanding and theoretical positioning of Trifonov as a cultural
phenomenon in postsocialist Bulgaria.
20
See further Muelen 2009; Ajana 2004; Saco 2002; Sternberg 2001; Jones 1998; Adams 1997 for further
discussion of the social and cultural dynamics of virtuality and cyberspace and Cooley et al. 2008; Crichton &
Kinash 2003; Gauntelett 2000; Mason 1996 for ideas on on-line interviewing and ethnography as a methodology.
28
The informal, dialogical nature of these experiences is also at the hearth of my approach
to translation. In both the ethnographic dialogues and the poetic analysis of Trifonov’s songs
interspersed throughout the dissertation, I utilize an aesthetic translation that is meant to capture
the spirit and color of colloquial Bulgarian. In some cases, certain idiomatic Bulgarian
expressions have a close English colloquial equivalent. In others, I use specific Bulgarian words
as foreign terms within the English translation of the conversation narrative or the poetics of a
particular song text. These two techniques render a type of a Bulgarian/English hybrid translation
that is meant to convey the experience of Bulgarian contemporary life and communication to a
non-native speaker without an overwhelming amount of technical detail. In certain cases,
however, I give significant Bulgarian terms full attention and analysis in text and/or within
footnote references. All of Trifonov’s songs, Bulgarian names, and terms have been
transliterated according to the guidelines provided by the Romanization tables of the Library of
Congress (2011).21 As with translation, the Romanization of Bulgarian Cyrillic is meant to ease
the reader’s comprehension and ability to navigate through the text.
Organization and Chapter Outline
This dissertation includes an ethnography of Trifonov’s audience and their responses to
the issues that he addresses regarding Bulgarian sociocultural order. Because I am inspired by
the variety of perspectives and positions discussed in the review of literature, I have chosen to
present the story of Trifonov through the direct speech of his audience in the form of dialogue. I
use this commentary to structure the dissertation by placing excerpts from conversations at the
outset of each chapter (see Chapters 2 and 3) and at various places in the analysis in the form of
brief ‘ethnographic snapshots’ (Ghodsee 2011). In all cases, the purpose of the dialogues is to
situate issues put forward in each chapter through audience members’ perspectives and
impressions in a dynamic, interactive way. To that end, they unfold as a type of a play
conversation between specific individuals and myself, or amongst multiple individuals, but this
commentary lacks conventional ethnomusicological description.
This absence of situatedness (as in place-time and its experiential dynamics) in
combination with dialogical, conversational representation of the ethnography captures the
multiplicity of places (various cities, back yards, living rooms, pubs, and coffee shops) and
individuals (of various social backgrounds, experiences, and age brackets) that contributes to the
21
The ALA Library of Congress Romanization tables are available at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html
29
narrative, as well as the fragmented nature of their postsocialist lives and experiences with
music. In that sense, I operationalize the dialogues as an ethnography of Trifonov’s audience and
I construct a conversation between multiple individuals. Some of the participants in these
dialogues have stated a preference for anonymity and therefore I use non-specific descriptors
such as “student” or “woman” when they are part of the ethnographic dialogue. Moreover, the
people I do name in the dialogue, including myself, are identified by their first name to reflect
the informal, interpersonal, and dynamic nature of the discourse.
Within the larger structure and organization of writing, the dialogical nature of my
approach also unfolds in two, interconnected ways and ultimately reflects my general
understanding of the hybrid nature of ethnography as textual activity that “traverses genres and
disciplines” (Clifford 1986: 26). First, I use the online and real-life dialogues between myself
and Trifonov’s audience to present overlapping and often contradictory discourses. Second, I use
these interactions, in all of their dynamism, complexity, and contradiction, “in dialogue” with the
narrative style I employ in other portions of the chapters. My strategy is to link the voices of
people in everyday dialogue with scholarly discourse in a way that mutually reinforces yet
preserves the uniqueness of each of these perspectives.
Chapter 2 frames the role and position of Trifonov as the epitome of Bulgarian culture
and music. I situate significant moments in his biography relative to postsocialist processes of
change in Bulgaria and I explore the literature on musical individuals, cultural icons, and
celebrities. Building on audience dialogues about Trifonov, I insist that, rather than casting him
simply as a subversive performer, he should be thought of as a mediator who transcends selfreference and as the embodiment of all of the conflicting meanings of the social totality (Sahlins
2000:321). This position, however, is also dialogical in nature, for Trifonov’s capacity to
polarize, represent and/or misrepresent the postsocialist Bulgarian nation is only possible by
virtue of the power afforded to him by his Bulgarian audience.
Chapter 3 situates Trifonov in terms of his musical and commercial affiliations with popfolk. Here, I look specifically at the history of the commercial development of the style and the
ways that it has prompted a polarizing cultural debate concerning representation of the nation. I
identify the musical and poetic underpinnings of the style in order to explicate the uniquely
Bulgarian qualities therein and I explore how Bulgarians associate these qualities with their
30
experiences in the postsocialist era. More broadly, this chapter addresses the way Bulgarians
make sense of and interpret pop-folk and postsocialism in conflicting and paradoxical ways.
In Chapters 4 and 5, I focus my discussion on specific aspects of Trifonov’s productions
and repertoire in order to identify the ways the image of the nation is constructed and sold.
Chapter 4 delineates the ways Trifonov creates an image of the Bulgarian nation in song poetics,
musical gestures, daily television broadcast, and in live performance. I situate these narratives
within specific literature on nationalism and I insist that Trifonov’s construction of the nation is
particularly affective and effective because it exploits culturally specific tropes in a variety of
mediums—from private listening to the public everyday. Based on audience members’
experiences and opinions, I argue that the nation is remembered, reimagined, and ultimately
reproduced through these narrative strategies.
Chapter 5 explores the way Trifonov’s commercial success is intricately linked to his
frequent invocation of nationhood. I focus on selected parts of Trifonov’s repertoire that
audiences interpret as overly commercial, lowbrow embodiments of the Bulgarian nation. I
consider the musical cues in Trifonov’s songs to be cultural cues because the audience links
them to his success, to the postsocialist economic struggle, and to ideas of national culture. I
analyze several songs by Trifonov and suggest that his commercial strategies must invoke the
nation in order to be of value; when Trifonov does not express nationalistic sentiments, the
cultural value of these songs change. I consider this dependency in terms of commodity logic,
social production, and consumption. I insist that, because Trifonov’s musical commodities are
imbued with complex cultural meanings relative to the Bulgarian nation, their value as such is
implicated and transformed in culturally specific ways.
Finally, I explore this transformation of value as a cultural paradox that is characteristic
of both postsocialism and Trifonov’s capacity to polarize. I elaborate the ways Trifonov’s
nationalist and commercial strategies cooperate. I insist that the theoretical implications of this
connection are significant for popular music studies because: 1) Trifonov’s story demonstrates
that social experiences and categories can be performed, sung, and commodified by building on
variety of conflicting cultural resources; and 2) it is within this process of construction and
performance of a commodity world that Bulgarian people construct their own subjectivities.
31
CHAPTER TWO
SLAVI TRIFONOV, A BULGARIAN PHENOMENON
I am a part of a grand, ancient Bulgarian choir composed of my ancestors and my unborn
children. This choir has swallowed millions of moments of happiness and sorrow that have been
spilled upon our lands through the centuries. Without this choir, my voice is meaningless. I do
not want to be anything else but a part of it!
- Slavi Trifonov
Action begins and ends in structure, begins from the biography of the individual as a social
being to end by absorption of his action in a cultural practico-inert, the system-as-constituted.
- Marshal Sahlins
Prelude
Plamena: What do you think of Slavi Trifonov?
Student: He’s the best showman in Bulgaria.
Vera: I’m pretty sure he started chalga in Bulgaria.
Decho: I cannot stand him.
Plamena: Why?
Decho: Because his Slavi Show is like a bad copy of say someone like Letterman. But,
Slavi is too simple, not on the intellectual level like him. Overall, the show is too vulgar.
Plamena: How is that?
Rada: Every night he came on the screen and was shoving these jokes this down in
people brains, you know. One minister one was portrayed as gay, the rest of them as jail
mates, and, Nadezda Mihaylova22 was a whore. And so, he took down UDF23! Literally!
22
Nadezda Mihaiva was the minister of Foreign Relations between 1997 and 2001. As part of the center-right,
democratic majority government, she was the official who signed an agreement that effectively allowed Bulgarian
citizens to travel within the European Union without the restriction of entry visas. She is often cited as a major
contributor to Bulgaria’s integration within NATO and the EU but has often been the subject of multiple satirical
portrayals in Trifonov’s shows as a woman using her looks to achieve her political goals.
23
UDF refers to the Union of Democratic Forces, which is the political party formed immediately after the collapse
of Communism in 1989 that became the major political opposition to the Bulgarian Communist, later Socialist,
Party (BCP/BSP).
32
Iveta: I think he was paid to do that, deliberately.
Dika: He’s spreading poor taste in our culture.
Tommy: To me, he’s the man.
Plamena: Why is that?
Tommy: Because everyone listens to his songs and he’s achieved so much
Plamena: How do you think he achieved so much?
Tommy: With hard work and dedication.
Veni: Yeah, right?! He was trying to do a revolution against the politicians, but according
to gossip when he first started out with the student activists groups and such and the
shows like Ku Ku and Kanaleto, he became involved with a certain political party and
that is how he made it. What hard work are you talking about?! Someone was behind
him!
Krasi: Look, everybody knows that he was connected and sponsored by these mafia guys,
Overgas.24 They financed him and they popularize him. His concerns for the people are
all a show, an act!
Anna: Well, he made it during a time when the mafia became very rich and they created
and forced this anti-culture because they’ve got the money.
Ivan: Exactly, he’s making mass culture because that’s where you get the big bucks. I
think he has found this little niche and is comfortably sitting, that is also in addition to
also being a political figure. And, there are political forces behind him that keep him in
this place.
Rada: Yes, but people want to hear what he has to say.
Decho: Well, this is why Slavi Show is not just a show; it is also a political tribune.
Vesselin: But isn’t that the reason people respect him?! He’s become his own star with
complete control. As an individual, he’s achieved a lot by himself and is the most famous
person in Bulgaria. This is what I like about him!
Vera: Yes, but in the beginning nobody took him seriously.
24
Overgas was a Bulgarian company with shares in the Russian-Bulgarian conglomerate Top Energy and the
biggest deliverer of natural gas to Bulgaria. In 1997, the company became implicated in the so-called Gas War
involving Bulgaria, Russia, and various trade and energy policies they fought over.
33
Woman: And yet a whole young generation was going like crazy to his concerts. He’s
brainwashed the whole society now. For ten years now Bulgaria listens to chalga because
of him.
Decho: Agreed. He is satisfying the tastes of exactly this new generation, which grew up
during the transition. He is their idol! Meaning, he is the product of the times we live in!
Plamena: How is it possible, though, for Slavi to affect a whole nation in this way?
Dika: Because the times determined it. The mafia came to the surface and this social
“foam” had the need for this kind of fake, anti-art. They helped Slavi emerge with their
money and they are his audience. I think people listened to Slavi because until that
moment everything was really tight, restricted. Muted!
Vanya: I agree but I also think he was a necessary voice in the 1990s. I remember the
little cable channel that was airing Hushove. He created professional opportunities for
many young musicians and singers, like Nina Nikolina.25 And, despite the fact that all of
his commercial sponsors backed out and they aired the show from that nasty basement,
we all remember how pathetic it looked [when] the studio was full of young people. You
cannot make young people do something like that, and he certainly did not have enough
money to pay them. They were there because they needed to hear the kinds of things he
was saying. So, I think he was a phenomenon, a Bulgarian phenomenon!
Introduction
Slavi Trifonov, the central figure of this project, is a Bulgarian pop-folk musician, a
television personality, a successful music and television producer, and a pop culture celebrity
whose career is intimately tied to the Bulgarian postsocialist experience of the 1990s. My
examination of Trifonov came to fruition slowly over the course of five years but it is rooted in
two complementary positions of my own. One has been formulated from a distance, since,
although I am Bulgarian, I am attending graduate school in the United States and do not
currently reside in Bulgaria. The other has emerged from my visits to Bulgaria between 2005 and
2009; during these trips I was confronted with multiple conversations and debates about the
meanings and significance of Trifonov’s actions, successes, musical projects, political criticism
25
Nina Nikolina is a Bulgarian pop music singer that began her commercial career within the style of Pop-Folk. She
was also a member of Trifonov’s band and this allegedly jump started her career in the late 1990s.
34
and satire. Like the meanings assigned to Trifonov as a celebrity and as a polarizing cultural
figure, these opinions created certain tensions between abstract ideas and lived experience,
between theory and fieldwork, and between insider and outsider. Rather than dissolving the
meaning of these seemingly conflicting categories, however, I let them inform the meaning of
Trifonov within the postsocialist Bulgarian life world—using such ‘in-betweenness’ as a
productive interpretive stance.
My competing experiences with Trifonov, from afar and from within Bulgaria, frequently
took the form of casual dialogues with other Bulgarians. Many of them dismissed my
understandings because I no longer resided in Bulgaria while others valued my view from the
outside and looking in on postsocialist cultural processes and social dynamics. In all of these
interjections, however, Trifonov was framed as a commonly familiar and important person; his
relevance is, in part, signified by the multiplicity of labels attached to him. As an individual he
appeared to be a product, as well as a manager, of specific cultural meanings and values that had
no precedent before the 1990s. It became increasingly evident that the love-hate relationship that
had developed between Trifonov and his Bulgarian audience was also indexical of their
experiences of postsocialism. As a celebrity, Trifonov articulates various sociocultural meanings
and associations with a uniquely Bulgarian lived experiencehe simultaneously specifies and
transcends larger processes that shape life in postsocialist Bulgaria.
This chapter explores the role and position of Trifonov as a polarizing figure and an
individual who has come to stand for Bulgarian music culture and the postsocialist experience as
whole. I address these issues via two interrelated methods: 1) the factual approach highlights
significant episodes in Trifonov’s career relative to the postsocialist experience and 2) the
conceptual approach examines theories that explicate the meaning of Trifonov as an individual.
In an attempt to understand the variety of labels ascribed to him by Bulgarian audiences, I
position him at the intersection of three related theoretical issues and bodies of literature—as a
musical individual, as a celebrity, and as an object of fandom and antifandom. By employing
these analytical categories, I attempt to show the variety of roles Trifonov plays within
postsocialist Bulgarian culture, as well as the competing and/or ambiguous meanings they
generate. I suggest that Trifonov should be thought of as a mediator who transcends selfreference and stands for all of the conflicting meanings of the social totality (Sahlins 2000: 321).
This capacity, however, is intimately linked to his audiences, which suggests that the relationship
35
between Trifonov and his audience is equally dialogical he is able to represent or misrepresent
the Bulgarian postsocialist nation only by virtue of the power the audience assigns to him via
their consumption of and discourse about his (musical) image.
Trifonov as a Cultural Phenomenon: A Biographical Sketch
In his discussion of the broader relationship between historical events and cultural
structures, Marshal Sahlins insists that events have two distinct aspects. First, they are the most
elemental unit of a historical context. Much like Marx’s definition of commodity and its role
within the capitalist system, events are “like the atoms to physics and the cell to biology”
(ibid.,297) relative to history. Second, events encompass both an actual material happening and
the meaning attributed to that happening by participants in it. These material and symbolic
characteristics configure the relationship between history and cultural structure and are internally
related. The event has the capacity to intersect, interject, and articulate different registers
including the social, the individual, the institutional, the local, and the global. Because of that, an
event can be considered to be a momentous human action, with the potential to shape social and
historical totalities. An individual can experience an event as a disruption of the structural order
and the event can shape collective destinies and alter the entire course of history.26
To Sahlins, events develop reciprocally between higher and lower orders, wherein each is
a translation into the register of the other. This movement between higher and lower cultural
orders yields mediations, which emerge through intricate and interrelated processes of
intersection. These mediations, in turn, consist of multidirectional, independent, and yet
complementary processes of instantiation, or the reduction from system to action, and
totalization, or the amplification from action to system. That is, persons, acts, and objects may
achieve systematic significance by fostering relations between groups. Within connections
between the structures of culture and historical events and between instantiation and totalization,
the social-historical individual emerges (Ibid, 322).27 Such an individual, argues Sahlins,
“personifies the clan or the land because their acts, universalized through the acquiescence of the
historic group, then signify its dispositions. Of course, everybody’s action signify, are
26
Sahlins also clarifies that events can be distinguished from actions or happenings that repeat themselves because
these reproduce general order and, in that sense, not every action is an historical event. “In the general category of
human action,” he insists, “historical events are a subclass only, consisting of those actions that change the order of
things” (Sahlins 200:302). Yet, event and structure, or individual action and socio-historical totality, are not
reducible; rather, they determine each other.
27
Sahlins explains that the term and its meaning build on Hegel’s idea of the ‘world-historical individual.’
36
meaningful. But what distinguishes social-historical individuals is that their acts transcend selfreference” (Sahlins 2000:321). The relationship between socio-historical individuals and the
structural order of history and culture is one of interjection of that order. Because these
individuals stand for the totality itself, the structures of history and culture of the highest level,
their individual action represents the larger system and configures or directs the collective
destiny of the whole .28
Trifonov’s significance as an individual lies precisely in his associations with “events,”
broadly conceived, as acts or incidents that are “in contrast to the going order of things and
disruption of that order” (ibid.,301). Following Sahlins’ argument, I treat Trifonov as an
individual with a unique biography, as a “social-historical individual,” while at the same time
focusing on the ways in which he reacts to the generalized sociocultural order interjecting and
embodying it by “rearranging its categories in the projects of personal being” (ibid., 285). Thus, I
present Trifonov’s biography and career through four specific episodes, because each articulates
the ways he mediates between and within lower and higher cultural orders, self and totality.
Episode 1
Stanislav (Slavi) Trifonov was born in 1966 in the city of Pleven in northwestern
Bulgaria. As a musician, he was brought up in the specialized, secondary school system
equivalent to private arts academies in the United States. The music centered K-12 educational
system, as it was in my case, allowed children to focus on music studies since primary school at
one of the seven music institutions located in major Bulgarian cities such as Pleven. Upon
completing high school, and like many of the other products of this performance-centered music
education, Trifonov was accepted into the State Conservatory of Music in Sofia, where he
majored in viola performance. His college-level studies, however, coincided with the collapse of
the communist system in Bulgaria in 1989 and the sociopolitical and cultural transformation that
followed therein.
Trifonov’s involvement with the television, music, and entertainment industries began
during the early period of the postsocialist transition-around 1990. At the time, he was a student
at the music conservatory and was recruited to join the cast of a new satirical television program
Although Sahlins’ conclusions stem from the context of wars in Polynesia/Fiji in the nineteenth century, his
explanation of higher order relations (as in between warring clans of the Fiji states) as they are configured into
practice and his outline of the trajectory of war through individual accounts actions is what is applicable in the case
of Trifonov.
28
37
called Ku-Ku. The show first aired on Kanal 1 (Channel 1; also BNT), the former socialist statecontrolled television station, in January 1990. The term ku-ku (‘cuckoo’) is used colloquially to
refer to craziness, silliness, and/or foolishnessqualities that are arguably characteristic of the
life and experiences of the early years of postsocialist transitionand describes the behavior of
Mr. Ku-Ku, the puppet that hosted the show (see Figure 1). The meaning of the phrase extended
to the participants and creators of the program, who became known as Kukuvtsi (“Cuckoo-ers”)
because they engendered qualities of craziness and silliness.
Figure 1: The puppet Mr. Ku Ku with two cast members of the program. 29
Along with the writers and creators of the show, Trifonov was a part of the membership and
leadership of the Federation of Independent Student Unions and formerly university-based
Comsomole (State Communist Youth Council)—organizations comprised exclusively of student
activists who were instrumental in igniting the mass protests in the Fall of 1989 and the regime
change in November of the same year. Alongside ninety other staff members, Trifonov became
one of the six on-camera personalities, all of whom were students at the National Academy of
Theatrical Arts. In part due to their involvement with the events surrounding the fall of the
communist regime, the Kukuvtsi created a television program marked by satirical, political
content and comprised of fake newscasts and sketches in which former and current political and
public figures were impersonated and lampooned. The show’s structure and its use of colloquial,
29
The image is available at http://www.trud.bg/Article.asp?ArticleId=369415.
38
humorous language had no precedent in Bulgarian television history and it quickly established a
reputation as a non-conformist venue for sociopolitical criticism.30
Within its first few episodes, Ku-Ku created much controversy with a sketch that attacked
the integrity of then-president Petâr Mladenov,31 which ultimately led to his resignation. It was
evident that the show could to raise questions about sociopolitical processes and in 1991 they
aired a fake newscast convincing the Bulgarian audience that the Nuclear Power Plant located in
the town of Kozlodui had exploded.32 The episode caused public panic, the program was
cancelled for a month, and the screenwriters and cast were prosecuted.33 The sharp satire of KuKu became the template for “free speech” within a transforming sociopolitical culture and
Trifonov and the Kukuvtsi were the primary authors of this rhetoric.
Between 1992 and 1994 Ku-Ku expanded its commercial operations and media influence.
Merchandise related to the television show included everything from a humorous newspaper
called Ku-Ku to a variety of snack products, from toothpaste with the label Ku-Ku to even Ku-Ku
cigarettes. The primary way Trifonov and the rest of the cast earned a living, however, was by
performing live at small clubs and soccer stadiums in productions that often featured standup
comedy and musical numbers. The sketches in these shows were largely improvised and often
recycled stories that had previously aired on the television show. The musical interludes, songs,
and underscoring was performed mostly by Trifonov and pianist Evgeni Dimitrov, a close friend
of Trifonov who subsequently became the leader and main arranger of Trifonov’s Ku-Ku Band.
With regard to the early part of his own career, Trifonov shares that “this is where we gathered
the fruits of our newly gained fame, gained enormous experience, and also made a buck. We
travelled a lot, with different number[s] of people from the show, and because of that, there was
no established or predetermined repertoire” (Dilov 2002: 45).
30
To a North American audience, the style and content of Ku-Ku may resemble various aspects of shows such as
Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, and Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
31 Mladenov was appointed as prime minister after the former head of the communist Bulgarian state, Todor
Zhivkov resigned in November 1989. Mladenov was forced to step down in July 1990 after a video recording
circulated the media and allegedly showed him calling for military reinforcements to suppress the anti-communist
demonstrations in December 1989. The sound quality of the tape, however, was so poor that it was impossible to be
certain what he really said (Bideleux and Jeffries 2007:96).
The Kozlodui Power Plant is responsible for the production of over forty percent of Bulgaria’s electricity. Due to
the memory of the Chernobil Nuclear Power Plant disaster of 1986, the Bulgarian public was less than impressed
with the joke.
33
The Committee for Radio and Television, a state organization responsible for the control and censorship of all
media, called for parliamentary hearing of the case and, as a result, the First District Court of Sofia officially
prosecuted the program creators and actors. The lawsuit lasted three years.
32
39
Through these performances, Trifonov and the rest of the cast became celebrities and
their show gained national recognition. Yet, Trifonov’s involvement with the commercial
operations of Ku-Ku was limited because he was not invited to be part of the show’s production
company, Ku-Ku, Inc. He offered to expand the commercial potential of the show towards
popular music34 and through his efforts Ku-Ku released its first coherent musical product,
entitled Rŭgai Chushki v Boba (Stuff Them Peppers in the Beans) in 1994. The album name is a
play on words relating to traditional Bulgarian cuisine and it explores a wide range of stylistic
influences including rock, blues, and jazz, which are set against folkloric Bulgarian music idioms
like wedding music, and the songs include a mixture of Bulgarian and English lyrics. Such an
interplay between broader Euro-American popular music aesthetics and Bulgarian colloquial
poetics and meanings is a central characteristic of Ku-Ku’s satire; this feature became one of the
most identifiable qualities of their brand of commercial entertainment and it is an aspect that
would also define the tenor of Trifonov’s subsequent musical and television productions. In part
due to the continuity between satirical writing and its metamorphosis in musical stylistics, the
album sold about forty thousand legitimate copies and over a half a million others on the black
market. Trifonov played a central role in the album both because he sung the lead vocal part on
most tracks and because he invested his personal savings to cover half of the production cost.
Episode 2
By the end of 1994, the program Ku-Ku had established a national reputation but its
producers and cast disagreed about its artistic and commercial direction. As a result Ku-Ku was
reformatted into a new show named Kanaleto, which aired on April 1, 1995. Together with
Liuben Dilov, Jr., who was the senior writer for Ku-Ku, and another cast member, Kamen
Vodenicharov, Slavi Trifonov helped produce Kanaleto. The name “Kanaleto” was derived from
one of the sketches on Ku-Ku: a fake news cast mostly inspired by the style of prime time news
typically presented on the Bulgarian National Television (BNT, formerly known as Channel 1).
This program established a complete continuity with its previous version since it retained its cast
members, including Trifonov, as well as its flavor for non-conformist satire.
In the winter of 1996, Bulgaria experienced an unprecedented economic crisis due to a
failing banking system and the emergence of shady financial conglomerates deeply embedded in
34
Trifonov had larger shares in the music production house Ku-Ku and took over the company in 1994. Evgeni
Dimitrov became his partner and co-chair and they renamed the company “Bulgarian Music Company” (BMC).
40
political decision-making.35 The industrial chaos ensued under the rule of the former communist,
now socialist, party, which won a parliamentary majority during the election of 1994. On par
with its credo to question and satirize those in office and the general principles of politics,
Kanaleto aired a series of comical sketches portraying Prime Minister Zhan Videnov, the
political figure responsible for the ensuing mass crisis, as a passenger leaving for Russia. The
joke satirized Videnov’s political leanings towards Russia and his lack of interest in integration
with Western Europe36 by creating a word-play slogan based on his name—“passenger Viden,
passenger off”—suggesting he should leave office. The wide popularity of the show and the
unprecedented levels of poverty urged millions of people in the capital Sofia to take to the streets
in protest and to go on hunger strikes in the winter months of 1996. A number of these civil
protests were patronized by Trifonov and the Kanaleto cast, giving a symbolic voice to the social
discontent and solidifying the show’s role as a corrective force for politics. As a result of this
upheaval, Videnov resigned in December of the same year.37
By the summer of 1996, Kanaleto also established a series of musical successes including
the largest live ticketed concert in Bulgarian history (with an audience of sixty-five thousand
people in the city of Plovdiv) and four albums. These albums follow the tradition of colloquial
humor that had become characteristic of the show and they feature Trifonov and other cast
members as lead vocalists. Each of the albums contains the juxtaposition of seemingly
contradictory musical and lyrical elements and each retain and explore satire. For example, Shat
Na Patkata Glavata (Cut Off the Duck’s Head) features a version of the jazz standard
“Summertime” with an entirely Bulgarian text that depicts images of a postsocialist Bulgarian
winter.38 Similarly, the album Roma TV, which was released later in 1994, exploits imagery and
language idioms characteristic of the Roma Bulgarian minority in combination with EuroAmerican ones, as in the songs fittingly titled “Roma Rap” and “Sweet Chalga in Time.”
35
Between 1994 and 1997 large portions of the Bulgarian industrial sector fell into the hands of financial
conglomerates with close ties to the Russian mafia. These conglomerates used inside knowledge and connections to
obtain low-interest loans from the state banks and obtain grain export permits. This eventually led to the collapse of
the banking system in May 1996 and an inflation rate of 242 percent. The exporting agencies not only had
questionable legal connections to a number of ministers, including Videnov, but they also created an acute shortage
of bread on Bulgaria’s home market (Crampton 2006:231).
36
Upon taking office, Videnov affirmed that he would seek to establish political ties with the European Union but
not with NATO, which was in a tense relationship with Russia. As Prime Minister, he sought to rejuvenate close
trade, energy, and defense relationships with Russia, arguably due to his communist political leanings (Crampton
2006: 230).
37
Videnov resigned after surviving a vote of no confidence at the socialist party meeting a month earlier.
38
See Appendix A, Example 2 for the song lyrics.
41
Political satire is also central to the content of albums; various political figures are portrayed as
characters in a children’s fable, as in the track “Malka Antipoliticheska (Little Anti-Political
Song),” or are mocked collectively through a mosaic of communist-inspired parade music and a
mash-up of verses from patriotic songs, as in the title track “Shat na Patkata Glavata (Cut Off the
Duck’s Head).”39
The next two albums, Zhŭlta Knizhka (Yellow Booklet, 1995) and Khŭshove (1996),
contain a more serious lyrical and compositional character in that each features a significant
number of original compositions and arrangements of traditional folkloric and late nineteenthcentury revolutionary songs. The title track of Zhŭlta Knizhka, for example, refers to the yellow
paperwork issued by psychiatric institutions for committed patients during the socialist years (see
Figure 2). In the song’s lyrics, everything in Bulgaria appears to be yellow, or certifiably crazy
and out of control.40
Figure 2: The album cover of Yellow Booklet (1995).41
Khŭshove, a reference to a nineteenth-century revolutionary resistance movement, features
arrangements of patriotic songs such as “Kŭde si Viarna Ti Liubov Narodna (Where Are You
Truthful Love of the Nation)” and “Viatŭr Echi, Balkan Stene (The Wind Blows and the
Mountain Moans).” Other original tracks in this collection capture the tumultuous postsocialist
times with tracks such as “Ne Sŭm Izbiagal (I Am Not Running Away),” “Revoliutsia v Glavata
39
See Appendix A, Examples 3, 4, 5, and 6 for a full translation of the lyrics.
For the complete content of the song please see Appendix A, Example 7.
41
The image is available at http://www.slavishow.com.
40
42
(Revolution in the Head),” and “Boiat Nastana (The Fight Has Come).”42 According to Trifonov,
the album was intended as a metaphorical protest against the socialist government headed by
Prime Minister Videnov, but a number of songs were performed at rallies in the troublesome
winter months of 1996 and 1997, which transformed them into a concrete sound of the public’s
discontent.
Episode 3
By late 1997, the relationship between Trifonov and the producers and cast of Kanaleto
started to dissolve. Rumors of financial greed and artistic differences eventually materialized in
their official professional separation. Some of Kanaleto’s scriptwriters and Ku-Ku Band
followed Trifonov as he took creative and business matters into his own hands by making formal
arrangements to start a new television show called Khŭshove, which is also the title of an album
he released in 1996.43 The program, which was also hosted by Trifonov, premiered on BNT in
January 1998 and featured a comical impersonation of the current Prime Minister, Ivan Kostov,
stealing the watch of German Prime Minister Helmut Kohl.44 The Bulgarian Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Nadezda Mihailova, was also satirized as an exotic dancer dancing around a pole.45 The
sketch was intended to represent Bulgaria’s foreign policy and the nature of its political relations
with European Union members. After this episode, BNT terminated its contract with Trifonov
and Khŭshove was cancelled after its inaugural, and ultimately infamous, episode. The show was
officially cancelled due to the use of unregulated commercial time because Trifonov had sold
commercial time to a gas company, Overgas, without the television channel’s knowledge.
Incidentally, the show’s cancellation precipitated a public debate that was covered extensively by
the media.
See Appendix A, Examples 13 and 18 for translations of “Boiat Nastana” and “Kŭde si Viarna Ti Liubov
Narodna.”
43
Khŭshove is a term that refers to young revolutionaries of the last decades of the five-century Ottoman rule.
Between1840 and 1879, they plotted the liberation of the Bulgarian lands from the Ottoman Turks. Khâshove
revolutionaries included a number of intellectuals, poets, and writers, who subsequently became the pillars of the
Bulgarian literary tradition and nationalistic political philosophy.
44
On May 21, 1997, Kostov was appointed as Prime Minister following the resignation of his predecessor Videnov
in December 1996. In an attempt to stabilize the ramping inflation and economic crisis in July 1997, Kostov
introduced a currency board, which fixed the Bulgarian lev to the Deutchmark in a ratio of 1000 to 1. This was also
at the heart of the comical sketch.
45
In Bulgarian, “kol,” as in the German chancellors’ last name “Kohl,” means “pole.” In the sketch, the foreign
relations minister was thus portrayed as dancing around a pole, just as she was thought to be dancing politically
around Prime Minister Kohl.
42
43
Overgas was Trifonov’s main advertising sponsor and it was part of the largest
Bulgarian-Russian conglomerate that delivered natural gas for commercial use in Bulgaria.
Significantly, the company was a subsidiary of a well-known oil and gas company called
Multigroup, which was reputed to have strong ties to the Bulgarian mafia.46 The president of
Multigroup was also a close friend of Trifonov. Despite pressure from Kostov’s cabinet, Overgas
had refused to sell its shares cheaply, which would have served the political aim of the Bulgarian
government to cut off commercial relations with Russia.47 Due to both Overgas’ sponsorship and
to the satirical portrayals of the cabinet members on the show, Trifonov, his writers, and the band
found themselves in the middle of a government witch hunt. They were followed by the secret
police and all of the advertising prospects were manipulated into avoiding commercial
relationships with them. The show’s positioning, at the intersection of international economic
and political interests, therefore impacted their reputation as an agent of companies with
questionable morals and business operations.48
Trifonov managed to find a local cable channel, 7 Dni (7 Days), to air his show from the
basement of a hotel in downtown Sofia. Like the original Khŭshove, Trifonov’s new program
and band went literally and metaphorically underground, which was a move indicative of the
same revolutionary non-conformism engendered by the intellectuals who had helped regain
Bulgaria’s independence from the Ottoman Empire a hundred years earlier. From an audience
perspective, these events formed conflicting perceptions vis-a-vis Trifonov as a purported mafia-
46
Since 1994, the term “ Bulgarian mafia” has come to refer to a large portion of the semi-privatized industrial
sector, which fell into the hands of financial conglomerates with close ties to the Russian mafia and connections
within the former Bulgarian Communist Party. These conglomerates used inside political knowledge and
connections in high places to siphon off ever-larger subsidies from the state budget and obtain low-interest loans
from the state banks. The nature of their business operations involved a variety of illegal operations including an
illicit trade of drugs and arms, human trafficking, mass production of pirated CDs as well as a number of shady
deals related to the Russian and Caucasian energy and pipeline industries (Bideleux and Jeffries 2007:104).
47
Multigroup was created shortly after the end of the communist regime by former State Security agents under the
influence of former communist minister of foreign relations, Andrei Lukanov. Between 1994 and 1998, the
company was a major player in the so-called ‘Energy Wars’ as a Bulgarian shareholder of the Russian-Bulgarian
energy corporation Topenergy, chaired by Lukanov. The reluctance of Videnov’s and Kostov’s government to
comply with the terms of Topenergy’s gas/oil pipeline project resulted in the severing of commercial energy
relations between Bulgaria and Russia between 1997 and 1998. Both Lukanov, as the chair of Topenergy, and Ilia
Pavlov, president of Multigroup and reportedly close friend of Trifonov, were assassinated (Bell 1998, 375).
48
The commercial sponsor of the show, Overgas/Multigroup, and the comedic sketch ridiculing the current cabinet
and its political relationships with the West were interpreted as a purposeful attempt to destabilize the government
and popularize and legitimized the credibility of purportedly shady conglomerates involved in organized crime. See
further, Khristova, 1998; Khristovska, 1998; Zhekov, 1998.
44
sponsored entertainer49 on one hand and as a socially conscious voice of the people on the other.
In an attempt to make a statement about the harassments he suffered, Trifonov and the staff
writers of Khŭshove shaved their heads in front of the Bulgarian parliament building in
downtown Sofia on February 19, 1998 (see Figure 3). They sent their hair to the Prime Minister
and the President and announced that they were cleaning themselves up in a way that was
‘fitting’ for the government. Their show also explored the same theme by screening a bitter
message in the opening and concluding credits that read: “this program is being aired because of
the ‘help’ of the Bulgarian government” (Dilov 2002: 281).
Figure 3: Trifonov in the process of being shaved, February 19 1998.50
Between 1998 and 2000, Khŭshove gained momentum as an underground political satire
and was endorsed by a number of guests with social and artistic significance. As both the head of
Bulgarian Music Company (BMC) and as a music producer, Trifonov was an influential
promoter of new artists and his role as the leader of Ku Ku Band became more pronounced.
After the termination of Khŭshove’s contract with Bulgarian National Television in Februrary 1998, the show’s
legal team challenged the decision insisting that the television acted as an extention of goverment interests and
continued to serve party rather than public interests, as it had done during the socialist period. A public debate
ensued during which a member of the Committee for Radio and Television, a goverment aparatus responsible for
regulating media, stated that “the show Khŭshove and its sponsor Overgas was the ugly face of the mafia presenting
itself to the larger public” (Veleva 1999).
50
The image is available at http://spock.blog.bg/politika/2011/06/03/vsichko-e-prostituciia.759116.
49
45
During that period, they released three albums, Deveti Tragichen (Ninth Tragic), Vavilon
(Babylon), and Niama Ne Iskam (No I Won’t), all of which fuse traditional Bulgarian repertoires
and patriotic songs with rock and pop music stylistics. Ku-Ku Band espouse a loose format, like
a jam band; it is comprised of an extended percussion section, two rhythm guitarists, one solo
guitarist, an electric bass player, a trumpeter, a clarinetist, a saxophone player, one person on
keyboard, and a back-up vocalist.51 Trifonov was the lead singer of the band and he participated
actively in the artistic creation of the albums. The bass player, Georgi Milchev-Godzhi, and the
keyboard player Evgeni Dimitrov were responsible for most of the compositions and
arrangements (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: Keyboard player Dimitrov (left) and bassist Milchev (right) at a party in 2008.52
Increasingly, the style of their productions molded into four distinct types of musical/lyrical
content: 1) late-1980s and early-1990s pop ballad inspired arrangements of pre-existing folkloric
and patriotic song material; 2) original compositions inspired by and emulating the lyrical or
musical stylistics of folkloric repertoires; 3) original compositions that blended idiomatic
musical gestures from variety of styles including rock, 90s pop, jazz, and blues; and 4) pop-folk,
or chalga, songs that built on the kuchek rhythmic framework, on folkloric melodic
ornamentation featured through the wind/brass section, and humorous but often suggestive
51
Since 2000, Ku Ku Band has experienced few personal changes and expanded to include two percussionists, two
back vocalists, and on occasion, two keyboard players.
52
The image is available at http://bulevard.bg/pictures/lichnosti/georgi-milchev-godzhi/evgeni-dimitrov-maestrotoi-georgi-milchev-godzhi-na-parti-na-btv.
46
lyrical content. Selections from each of these categories typically appeared on the same album
and albums continued to serve as musical responses to sociopolitical issues. The album Babylon
(1999), for example, is a reaction to the atrocities committed during the war in former
Yugoslavia and the cultural impact of these atrocities on the Balkan region. Similarly, the album
Ninth Tragic was conceived as a response to tensions imposed on Trifonov and the band by the
Bulgarian media and government between 1998 and 2000. In the selection entitled “Studio Khŭ
(Studio X),” Trifonov sang how Khŭshove were bad guys in a bad movie but how such faith was
of their own making.53 The song title is a play on the Bulgarian pronounciation of the letter ‘x,’
which is sounded as –khŭ, and it mimicks the begining of the word khŭshove.
These musical albums and the previous ones became popular commercial hits mainly
through the individual tracks that Trifonov performed on his show or through the ones played on
the radio. Trifonov’s leading role on the program Khŭshove impacted the individual and the
collective creative endeavors of the show. Trifonov was increasingly equated with the meanings,
controversy, and positions of Khŭshove as a whole—he stood for the television production, he
was a musical entity, and he was the voice for an entire postsocialist generation. By the end of
the 1990s, the name ‘Slavi’ was symbolic of a variety of conflicting meanings, including the
non-conformism of Khŭshove, mafia conglomerates, the public’s discontent, the fusion style of
Ku-Ku Band, and finally, the commercialism of pop-folk.
Episode 4
In early 2000, the Bulgarian government endeavored to deregulate the media and began
to sell radio and television air licenses in order to attract foreign and private investors to the
postsocialist Bulgarian economy. Rupert Murdock and his Balkan News Corporation gave the
highest bid and the first privately owned television channel in Bulgaria with national coverage,
BTV, was launched. Trifonov pitched an idea for a talk show to the executives and Slavi Show,
hosted by Trifonov and backed by his Ku-Ku Band, aired on November 27 of the same year.
Slavi Show mimicked the format of American television programming such as Late Night
with David Letterman and the Tonight Show with Jay Leno—it featured a charismatic host who
reviewed and satirized political and social events and figures and interviewed celebrities and
politicians as featured guests. Following the talk show’s format, the host also had a comedic
sidekick, Ku Ku Band’s bass player, Georgi Milchev-Godzhi. In terms of Bulgarian media space,
53
See Appendix A, Example 8 for the song’s text.
47
the content, structure, and the level of production of the show, had no precedent or competition.
By 2004, Slavi Show had established itself as the highest rated entertainment program on
television by featuring an impressive lineup of Hollywood star guests and Bulgarian artists and
musicians, as well as local and foreign politicians, including Mikhail Gorbachev (see Figure 5).
Trifonov was able to address millions of viewers regarding a variety of issues by entertaining
them through comedic skits and musical numbers, mostly from his own repertoire and with the
help of the band.
Figure 5: Trifonov with Gorbachev during the broadcast of Slavi Show on May 7, 2002.54
Yet, as the face and voice of the program, Trifonov continued to relate a sense of civic
and political engagement through frequent, notably emotional, political monologues. He used the
show as a stage for political debates.55 The dynamics of production and meaning also continued
to inform the content of his albums Novite Varvari (The New Barbarians, 2001), Vox Populi
(The Voice of the People, 2002), and Prima Patriot (Prime Patriot, 2004). More specifically, all
of these productions followed the tradition of fusing and the re-interpreting of traditional
Bulgarian song repertoires characteristic of his earlier work.
From a commercial media standpoint and as a television personality, Trifonov was able
to both expand the meaning of primetime television, since Slavi Show aired at 10:30 in the
54
The image was retrieved from http://www.slavishow.com.
Prior to the presidential election of 2002, for example, Slavi Show hosted a debate between the presidential
candidates.
55
48
evening, and to solidify and magnify his role as a producer. His Bulgarian Music Company
(BMC) transformed into 7/8, which now produced both Slavi Show and all of its musical
offshoot productions and commercial releases. The high ratings and success of the television
program also attracted powerful sponsors such as mobile phone and beer companies who ensured
funding for Trifonov’s annual concert tours and musical productions. The relationship between
these various aspects of commercial media—television, music, and live performance—created a
sense of continuity between social criticisms and satire presented on screen and their
reformulation in musical compositions and live concerts. Trifonov stood at the center of the
production as the front man of the band, the host of the show, and the chairman of the production
company; in a way, he completely closed the circuit of production as each dimension
interconnected and reinforced the other in terms of profit.
This position of economic power and success had a twofold effect on the perceptions of
Trifonov as an individual. First, he became a moderator in the commercial music business
because of the magnitude and level of production of his own work. Thus, his interests in
expanding the show increasingly turned towards reality programming and a variety of musicoriented competitions.56 Second, his multidimensional career made him a popular culture
celebrity. He was the object of a continuous public discourse that dissected his character, career,
and personal life. His importance in sociopolitical terms, however, was not minimized, for
audiences watched his show, listened to his music, and deferred to his scripted opinions and
positions on the postsocialist economy, politics, and life. Trifonov actualized the intersection of
commercial musical products and sociopolitical meanings, as a person living within
postsocialism and as the speaking and singing voice of these times of transition.
Trifonov as an Individual
The individual has been a significant lens through which ethnomusicologists enter
musicultural worlds and it will therefore be useful at this point to briefly account for some of the
specific ethnographies that have especially influenced my approach.
In their respective ethnographies May it Fill Your Soul and Music of Death and New
Creation, Timothy Rice and Michael B. Bakan extend the understanding of the individual
56
7/8 produced all of the following Bulgarian versions of the global reality television formats: Idols, Dancing with
the Stars, Survivor, 5 Stars, and Master Chef.
49
through the lens of experience. Both authors treat the individual as a repository of social,
musical, and historical knowledge. Similarly, individuals are situated within a specific
relationship to change so that a focus on individual experience sheds light on both specific
musical change and broader sociocultural change. On both theoretical and ethnographic levels,
aspects of the individual’s world, such as musical sound, performance, and cultural context,
bridge experience with history and social life and provide insights into the ways music lives in
the lives of its makers. Significantly, both authors also operationalize their own experience as
musicians so that the individual, as a theoretical focus, becomes central to a polyphonic
conversation of interlocking experiences between author and informants, between informants
and their worlds, and between the author and the world of his informants.
Virginia Danielson and Michael Veal also explore the life of individual musicians in
depth, but these authors do so in terms of their status as musical stars and cultural icons. In The
Voice of Egypt (1997), for example, Danielson examines Umm Kulthum as an individual who
enters into a particular relationship with her audiences to both construct and constitute her social
and musical world. That perspective on the singer’s life and artistry renders an understanding of
stylistic intricacies of the music as well as musical institutions and music market. The musical
practice of an exceptional individual is thus considered as social practice that includes the
material circumstances of both the performer and the listeners who participate in this process. In
Veal’s discussion of the Nigerian Afrobeat star Fela Kuti, the individual is treated similarly
through an interpretive biography, but with an emphasis on the individual’s political and
ideological beliefs. Through an analysis of musical elements and songs texts and by dividing
Fela’s career into significant periods, the author explores how the meaning of his music carried
through into the larger public discourse about him. While Veal’s approach offers an impressive
continuity, the focus is on the theoretical suggestions and questions that are generated by figures
like Fela rather on his audiences.
The ethnomusicological foci on individual experience and individuals-as-icons is further
complemented by the work of Theodore Levin and Regula Qureshi who explore multiple
individuals in dialogue. Levin assembles a travelogue-style musical ethnography of Transoxania
by exploring the way music exists in the everyday lives of ordinary people. At each geographical
location, the reader enters a musicultural landscape through an ethnographic dialogue between
Levin and his travel companion, who is a source of local knowledge, as well as an individual
50
proponent and practitioner of a musical tradition. The specific ethnographic choices of the author
create a musical picture of a vast and diverse yet ambiguous region of the world, which the
reader enters first through the narrator’s understanding and further through his informants’ local
knowledge. In Master Musicians of India (2007), Qureshi develops a related perspective by
mapping out the social history and collective knowledge of several generations of sarangi
teachers and musicians. Unlike Levin however, she focuses on the generational linkage between
musicians while still emphasizing connections between musical practice, tradition, modernity,
and globalization through the learning and knowledge of music. Qureshi’s ethnographic stories
are composed of extensive transcriptions of conversations, alongside minimal biographical detail
and description, so as to create a unique fusion of individual voices. Through such ethnographic
dialogues, the author reveals the unique stories of generations of sarangi musicians without
imposing a narrator’s voice.
My view of the individual is inspired by and builds on three contrasting but intertwined
perspectives, as well as on the aspects of the approaches I addressed above. One, I focus on the
ways Trifonov reflects and embodies the sociocultural, musical, and lived experience of his
audiences rather than his own. Similarly, the iconic status of Trifonov as a polarizing figure
lends itself, as have the celebrities of Fela Kuti and Umm Kulthum, to a particular focus on the
linear, biographical treatment of the details of his career. Yet, I consider these only with broader
issues in mind, thus shying away from creating a story about Trifonov and instead generating a
story about his audience. Lastly, inspired by the dialogical aspects of ethnographies that deal
with multiple individuals, I present issues of nationalism, commodification and socioeconomic
and cultural change in the form of a dialogue amongst Trifonov’s audience. In that, the
experiences attached to the individual surface as dialogues of experience with him and about
him. As I highlighted briefly in the biographical sketch, Trifonov appears to reflect, translate,
and embody aspects of the broader sociocultural order of postsocialist Bulgaria and the emergent
popular culture and music scene of the country, because of the power he exerts onto these
contexts as an integral part of it. The ethnographic vignette I present below is a vivid example of
the conflicting meanings assigned to Trifonov, as well as the benefits of thinking through and
presenting these meanings in the form of a dialogue.
51
An Ethnographic Dialogue
It was an oppressively hot afternoon in July of 2009 and both Svetlana and I were
comfortably enjoying the coolness of the air conditioning in her apartment’s shady living room.
Svetlana is a professor at the Academy of Folkloric and Performance Arts in Plovdiv and has
been a close friend of mine for years. For several hours, we talked, drank coffee, and debated the
meanings of Bulgarian postsocialist music culture without reaching too many conclusions. On
the topic of Slavi Trifonov, however, Svetlana did not hesitate to vocalize her discontent and
dislikes. Broadly speaking, she did not enjoy him, his show, or his music but approached their
meaning analytically and from the standpoint of someone who had lived with and through the
times of Trifonov and postsocialism.
“I think that this type of TV programming, specifically with Slavi as a host, came in so
that people could let out some steam. And, as they watched his political criticisms on the screen,
they thought that this is freedom and democracy,” said Svetlana with urgency and a serious look.
“The issue is that his whole thing was and still is simply an example of low-brow
commercialism. And, there’s something very suspicious about it,” she continued before I was
able to respond, as if sounding out a distant thought.
“What do you mean?” I urged her to continue.
“In all of Slavi’s shows, one sees particularly talented, qualified musicians, highly
educated, culturally sophisticated, and capable. Yet, they are forced, I’m assuming for purely
financial reasons, to practice an art that is, in fact, anti-art. Of course, there is a grain of the
artistic in what they do, but generally I can only describe it as aggressive vulgarity.”
“What about Slavi?” I asked again.
“Ah, and then, there is Slavi,” she exclaimed with an ironic tone in her voice and
continued. “Slavi is obviously a person of some quality and charisma. But, he is also a person
with severe insecurities and is trying to work them out publicly through some boorish, macho
arrogance and cheap, vulgar humor. That is simply unacceptable in the twenty-first century! I
don’t think that this type of show would exist in a civilized country. I mean, there is a level of
decency that he steps over every single day. So, you want to know what I think of him?!” She
repeated the phrase twice, raising her voice ever so slightly. “Repulsive” she said with what
resembled a mixture of disappointment and disgust. “He is repulsive as a host and that makes the
content of his program repulsive. He constantly interrupts his guests, talks about himself, which
52
suggests some kind of insecurity, lack of good manners, low culture. He is like some low level
intellect that wants to show off in front of others by acting like a monkey.”
Svetlana continued on, telling me that she welcomed new ways of thinking and making
art but as an artist she feels that art that creates negative values, or poor taste, should be resisted
socially and culturally. To her, Slavi Trifonov was the embodiment of such processes, as his
“art” started out with some pretense of intellect and value but ultimately downgraded to a level
of utter vulgarity. As a musician and an artist, Svetlana was troubled by the ways Trifonov’s
work forced artists to compromise their own integrity and values. “Clearly the strive to survive,”
she told me bitterly, “has taken a precedent over more idealistic values. I am troubled by it
deeply because people have lost the sense of what is valuable and what is not. It is all confused
now and Trifonov is a major contributor. He is both a producer and a product of this confused
system of values and of these times!”
“Is this why Slavi became so popular during the 90s?” I asked in an attempt to interrupt
Svetlana’s lengthy stream of thought.
“Look,” she said, “it’s not particularly difficult to become a celebrity in Bulgaria. You
get yourself a few bodyguards, the gossip papers publish intimate details of your personal life
and when you make the millions, you have the power to influence. Slavi may not have real
power, in the sense that he is a politician, but he has social power because he instills taste. In this
sense, he is a celebrity, a star.”
“Does this make him a manipulator?”
“Yes, because money determines your place in society more or less. What disturbs me is
that Slavi is a poorly educated person who got his diploma from the Music Conservatory dean of
the school on screen, on his talk show. That makes me question his intellect and his musicianship
and the meaning of it in our culture. At the same time, he is receiving his paycheck through
instilling low taste in a generally lowbrow, vulgar show for mass consumption. It seems to me
that he is serving some kind of interest. This interest is called the destruction the nation!”
“How would you explain his presentations of Bulgarian history and folklore on his show
and in his music?”
“As I said, it is all a show off. He is an insecure small person that wants to show that he
belongs to a rich culture and a nation that is valuable worldwide. There is nothing wrong with
foreigners listening to Bulgarian music or learning about folkloric instruments but it should be
53
done in a more delicate manner. I do not understand why they have to learn about it from
Trifonov’s show or his music.”
“So what does this all boil down to?” I wanted to know.
“It boils down to the production of “art” for the masses and for mass consumption,”
Svetlana answered. “For the truck driver and the construction worker who have finished a day of
manual labor and poured a rakia, Slavi Trifonov is the anticipated part and the point of their
evening rest. It is conceivable then to say that his music and his show are made to serve precisely
this part of society. This is the ritual of the regular working man: the rakia, the salad, the woman,
the kids, and Slavi Trifonov; all of it replaces the book, the theatre, and the concert hall. Even if
they can afford it, the Bulgarian redneck, the Bai Ganio, will inevitably choose another Bai
Ganio like Slavi instead.”
Trifonov as a Bulgarian
In her discussion of balkanization, Maria Todorova (1997) insists that the pejorative
association with the Balkan region, including Bulgaria, is also paired with a peculiar
internalization of the region’s Western-induced derogatory status. By elaborating on that specific
aspect of the discourse which echoes Said’s orientalism but is distinctly regional, the author
insists that the way Balkan people think of themselves, and by extension the Western world, is
qualitatively linked to specific emotions and images articulated in the region. To situate her
argument, Todorova analyzes an iconic figure of Bulgarian literature, the character of Bai Ganio,
created by the late nineteenth-century novelist and poet Aleko Konstantinov (1863-1897).57 A
popular literary image, Bai Ganio58 is putatively linked to the term and image of the Balkans,
and perhaps, most significantly in terms of this project, with Slavi Trifonov. In Aleko’s novels,
this character is often portrayed comically as an emergent, and subsequently successful,
businessman whose fortunes and successes in the early twentieth-century Bulgarian capitalist
environment are often rooted in shady business schemes and operations. The deceitful qualities
of the character are also worked out in terms of his personality and the way he interacts with the
Aleko Konstantinov, or “Aleko,” was a pivotal figure in the emergent literary tradition of Bulgaria after the
liberation from the Ottoman rule in 1876. He studied law at the University of Odessa, Russia and worked as a juror
before embarking on a writing career. He was a cosmopolitan traveler, visiting both of the World Exhibitions in
Paris (1889) and Chicago (1893), and he was the first to reflect on such experiences in writing. For further
information see Panchev (2008).
58
“Bai” is a rather archaic Bulgarian honorary title, usually used in reference to an older person of some notoriety.
“Ganio” is the character’s first name. Konstantinov’s uses Bai Ganio as the protagonist of series of short series that
are ultimately connected to form a novel-like narrative.
57
54
Western world. Bai Ganio’s travels through Western Europe for purposes of business but these
experiences confront him with the European high-class lavishness, the values of aristocracy, and
the significance of higher education and mannerisms. Aleko’s works have been praised as pivotal
in Bulgarian literary tradition, for they brilliantly embodied the cultural, social, and economic
clashes of the transition Bulgaria was experiencing in the early part of the twentieth century
between an Ottoman imperialist domination, a capitalist enterprise, and a nationalist discourse.
In that, Bai Ganio, became a metaphor for the ways the negative image of the Balkans was
informed by expectations, values, and ideals shared by both external and internal observers
(Todorova 1997: 32).
More often than not, Trifonov’s audiences interpret his celebrity status and the
characteristics of his public persona as arrogance, impoliteness, boorishness, and lacking taste,
intelligence, and class—all qualities cited by Trifonov’s audiences in my conversations with
them. Over time Bai Ganio’s name has evolved into a popular derivative term, baiganiovshtina
(Bai Ganio-ness), as a byword standing for the perceived attributes that separated Bulgaria and
the Balkans from Western high culture. In other words, the character and the derivative
terminology associated with it became the embodiment of undesirable Bulgarian national
qualities.
In popular parlance then, the term “Bai-Ganio” represents and expresses a qualitatively
Bulgarian view of Trifonov as a specific type of Bulgarian and a metaphorical figure on several
levels. First, Aleko’s fictional character is, in part, a playful interpretation of and commentary on
the clash between lofty ideals and the rapid bourgeois corruption of ‘free’ Bulgaria in the
Revival period. These historical dynamics are easily translatable within postsocialism as a
conflict between communist autocratic rule and an idealized capitalism and democracy. Second,
Bai Ganio is also a character who experienced significant personal transformation, from a comic
buffoon to a nouveau riche and corrupt politician. The condition of “the savage among the
civilized,” has thus become a euphemism linked to the label Bai Ganio. Trifonov’s career
parallels Bai Ganio’s fictional one, in that both figures had humble beginnings and evolved into a
triumphant businessmen.
Trifonov’s stardom is often negated to a degree that demonizes him and makes him into a
symbol of a general cultural embarrassment reminiscent of the emotions people associate with
the figure of Bai Ganio as a ubiquitous Balkan male. That is, like Bai Ganio, Trifonov reminds
55
Bulgarians of a perceived intellectual class and a large percentage of the Bulgarian population of
their worst national characteristics. Finally, Aleko’s articulate commentary regarding the values
of an emergent Bulgarian society informs the perception and labeling of Trifonov as an
embodiment of social relations driven by ideas of predatory accumulation. Like Bai Ganio,
Trifonov’s success in the realm of popular media echoes the capitalist values and selfish
mechanisms of the free market that took root in Aleko’s lifetime. In that sense, Trifonov is
similarly viewed and may be considered as a character who is organically related to the
mechanisms of capitalism, a wheel in the machine so to speak, and he is a metaphor for the
nature of its operation.
The interpretations attached to the label Bai Ganio also express a connection between the
negative self-imagery of Bulgaria and the Bulgarian individual and group identity. In that regard,
he can be thought of its most potent symbol and mediator, a Bai Ganio of postsocialism. I
believe that Trifonov illustrates the clash between communism and capitalism, in all its
crudeness and ambiguity, relative to a putative Bulgarian identity. That is, his offensiveness and
vulgar imagery, here postulated as nonconformism and critical directness, are wrapped into a
similar comedic buffoonness and in an environment of predatory accumulation. Perhaps as a
viable example of capitalist hypocrisy, Trifonov is equally and originally a part of this cultural
paradox much like Aleko’s Bai Ganio was supposed to be. This paradox is not only informative
in terms of understanding Trifonov’s cultural positioning, but also in the way it expresses a
broader sociocultural ambiguity relative to ideas of competing political and economic paradigms
as structural operations in an ontology of the self. As Todorova eloquently states relative to the
Balkan region (and in terms that reflect how I personally regard Bulgaria):
The phrase ‘how Balkan people think of themselves’ should be understood to mean how
the ones among the educated elites of the Balkan nations who are charged with or are at
least conscious of their ethnic, national, religious, local, and a variety of other multiple
identities define (i.e. reject, accept, are ambiguous about, or indifferent to) their link to a
putative Balkan identity (Todorova 1997:38).
Trifonov as a Celebrity
Despite the pejorative labeling attached to Trifonovhis personification of undesirable
Bulgarian qualitiesTrifonov has always, in the multiple conversations I have engaged in over
the past five years, been recognized as an individual of particular power. That type of conflicting
56
power described simultaneously as negative and manipulative and positive and unique was
also ambiguous since his achievements as an individual were both admired and contested. This
polarized discourse can be best situated within: 1) ideas of celebrity, as in the relationship of the
individual to the status thereby attached to him or her as a celebrity; and 2) ideas of fandom, as in
the ways audiences engage with celebrities as media texts in emotionally invested ways.
The term celebrity originated as early as the 1600 and it was closely connected with the
idea of being ‘in the public eye.’ Most significantly, celebrity was a measurement of
achievement through which these types of public personas attracted the admiration of others so
much so that they were elevated to become role models “whose exploits embodied broader
sociocultural ideals” (Drane 2005:15). That is, celebrities represented what constitutes greatness
as a part of a specific worldview and thereby became projections and vehicles through which
these ideas and notions were celebrated to affirm a particular cultural value and aspect of
selfhood.
With the development of technology, media, and in turn a newly emerging realm of
popular culture, twentieth-century celebrity involved a new complexity. On one hand, the poise
and greatness of celebrity status became increasingly visible and visual through the realm of
media such as the movie industry and gossip journalism. On the other, the lack of clear
distinction between fact and fiction about individuals of particular standing in the public eye
blurred the lines between fact and fiction and public and private domains thereby creating a
‘character’ out of the individual. Through that process, the celebrity inevitably became an image
that could no longer be divorced from its function in and among the public, or its consumption
by the public. The implicit connection between consumerism and celebrity, specifically in
American society, was not only qualitatively an aspect of the rise of entertainment industry, but
also a tenet of change— in culture, society, lifestyle, and ultimately identity.
In Celebrity Culture (2005), Drane unpacks the peculiar rise of celebrities as
embodiments of the clash between individual values and sociocultural and economic transitions
insisting that celebrities became ‘texts,’ which audiences deferred to in times of social upheaval.
Thus, American movie stars during the first half of the twentieth century became role models for
how one was to function meaningfully in a new consumer culture. In other words, they
exemplified how and what it meant to be a person in a new situation. Because such individuals
57
seemed to embody an emergent, collective identity their role in social life and cultural process
became intricately linked to cultural change (Drane 2005:42).
As an index of both identity struggles and commodity culture, Trifonov has also become
a celebrity of his own accord. In the context of sociocultural fracturing and economic
reconfigurations in the decade of the 1990s, Bulgarians faced significant challenges in terms of
life style, sociality, and cultural value. As a public figure persistently on display throughout that
period, Trifonov exemplified what it meant to be a person of and within postsocialism. Identity
struggles are always subject to polarizing or conflicting ideas regarding selves and others and
Trifonov also embodied the perceived negative aspects of self within a cultural transition from
authoritarianism to democracy and from a state to a capitalist economy. The relationship between
being Bulgarian and thinking about postsocialism is reflected in Trifonov’s intricate relationship
to his audience, specifically, and in the interdependency of the celebrity and his fans, more
broadly.
Celebrities and Audiences
In Celebrity and Power (1997), David Marshall addresses this dynamic by discussing the
function of the celebrity as a complex cluster imbued with social conflicts, ideological positions,
and individual and group identifications. “The concept of the celebrity,” he insists, “is best
defined as a system for valorizing meaning and communication” (Marshall 1997:19). With the
general objective of detailing how power is articulated through the celebrity, the author argues
that the celebrity is an ambiguous social construct. To Marshall, this construct positions the
celebrity in a particular power relationship with the audience, which should be viewed as a social
category instrumental in dividing and/or differentiating the social. The power of the celebrity is
always embodied and constituted within the social collective whose individual and shared
identifications are then projected back to the celebrity. “Celebrities,” stresses Marshall,
“represent subject positions that audiences can adopt or adapt in their formation of social
identities. The celebrity then is an embodiment of a discursive battleground on the norms of
individuality and personality within a culture. The celebrity’s strength or power as a discourse on
the individual is operationalized only in terms of the power and position of the audience that has
allowed it to circulate” (ibid.,65).
The relationship between celebrities and audiences in the context of popular culture is
also the subject of multiple theoretical and methodological inquiries of fan studies (Harrington &
58
Bielby 2005; Jancovich 2002; Thomas 2002; Dell 1998; Jenkins 1995, 1992; Fiske 1992, 1989).
Significantly, these explorations of fandom have moved the understanding of audiences from
passive, mass media consumers to active agents whose activities as fans have a growing cultural
currency extending into multiple pockets of everyday life. At a micro level, the study of
audiences as fans provides powerful insights into the ways they approach and experience fan
‘objects’ (musicians, actors, genres, television shows) and how that shapes their intrapersonal
socialities. A wide range of dialogical relationships emerges through discussions of fandom as
fans and antifans constantly mold and shape the meanings of their fan objects thorough their own
interrelated, polarized cultural activities as fans. Similarly, at a macro level the fan/antifan
readings, tastes, and interpretations of personalities, or celebrities, as media texts potentially
reveal the interconnectedness of social, cultural, and economic transformations within a localglobal dialectic.59
In her analysis of Martha Stewart fans, for example, Melissa Click (in Grey et al. 2007)
insists that audiences’ experiences often reveal a contradictory and ambivalent picture of fandom
as fans move freely between categories of fandom and antifandom based on the social position of
their fan object. The selectivity with which audiences position themselves relative to celebrities
suggest that fan, and antifan, positions should never be thought of as stable or final (Grey et al.
2007: 314). Because fandom is an emotionally invested, historically specific cultural activity, the
study of audiences as fans inevitably involves and operationalizes the fundamental polarities of
human emotions. Within fandom then, such polarities articulate not only the relationship of the
fan to the object (celebrity, musician, or television show) but also between fans themselves. Thus
fandom (or audience consumption) can be thought of as a particular type of sociality that
constitutes the entire spectrum of like to dislike, distaste, and hatred. Most importantly, the
dialectic of fan and antifan within the discourse of fandom should always be approached in terms
of its relationship to the construction and the meaning of the media text itself.
The dialogical, interrelated conceptual polities within fandom (fans/antifans) and its
external relationship to the object of these social positions and emotional feelings also inform my
understanding of the position of Trifonov within Bulgarian popular culture. As a media text (a
fandom object), his persona, actions, and media products (musical or otherwise) are always
59
See further, Hills 2005, 2002; Sandvoss 2005, 2003; Scodari 2004; Juluri 2003; Brooker 2002; Brown 2001; Aden
1999; Barker and Brooks 1998; Harris 1998.
59
constituted within a wide spectrum of polarized audience interpretations. In turn, these mold and
articulate the stylistics and sociocultural meanings of his productions in a continuous, dialectical
relationship of interdependence. As a form of individualized social collective then, the Bulgarian
audience is crucial in assigning power to him as a celebrity for his power cannot be discerned or
sustained without the social collective. In that vein, Trifonov’s voice is often legitimized as
significant because it actually embodies the voice of the social collective. Like Click, I consider
Trifonov’s audience as an active, emotional collective that is always unstable in its responses
with and to Trifonov’s celebrity. It is in these ambivalent and contradictory responses of
selective love and hate that I also position the meaning of Trifonov as a projection of audience
subjectivities, which he alternatively mobilizes and crystallizes back to the audience. Because the
relationship between Trifonov and his audiences is always mediated, it is also important to
consider the mediums through which their mutually reinforcing dialectic is channeled and
enacted.
Celebrities on Television and in Music
One of the central aspects of Trifonov’s television celebrity is his appeal to familiarity.
On one level, this particular type of power connection, between audience and celebrity, is related
to the domestication of television, and related entertainment technologies, specifically in
American society. On another, its context contributed to the emergence of a particular kind of
celebritythe television show host. On that level, familiarity took on an even more intimate
form through various strategies such as continuous address of the audience by the host, direct
gaze into the camera and to the audience, and finally the frequency of appearance in formats like
daily talk shows on late-night television. By virtue of such techniques of inclusion, the television
medium created a celebrity that was not necessarily a “star” but a “personality” (Marshall
1997:122).
In guiding the audience through the disjuncture of other media events directly and
humorously, Trifonov has established a more familial, relatable, and intimate connection with
the audience. That aspect of the relationship celebrity-cum-audience is thereby normalized and
ultimately linked to everyday discourse, which further deepens the understanding of the host as
‘one of us.’ This dynamic is frequently reflected in the daily discourse surrounding Trifonov, as
the information and commentary on his show are often widely discussed each day after its
broadcast. In that, Bulgarians often reflect on such proximity by noting, “Did you hear what
60
Slavi said last night?” The lack of embellishment in the television personality, alongside features
of regularity, points to the ways the television format enables connection and proximity to reality
via the television celebrity whose purpose is to reinforce the feeling of proximity to the real and
the familial (ibid.,192). The intimate reference to Trifonov as “Slavi” suggests that indeed the
familial is very much enhanced through the television medium so as to accept the celebrity
Trifonov as a peer. This makes his commentary more effective and affective.
Complementing the feeling of familiarity on television is the position of Trifonov as a
celebrity of pop music. In that context as Marshall suggests, the connection between celebrity
and social collective is further reinforced via listening. The familiar here is broken down into two
directions that emphasize the nature of audiences as collective individualities enacted and
embodied by the celebrity. These are the private experience of consuming the celebrity’s music
by listening and the public, collective lived experience of the live concert performance. Between
these interrelated experiences the power of Trifonov as a celebrity interjects the experiences of
the audience between the private and public, thereby mimicking the very ambiguity and inbetweenness characteristic of the status of the celebrity within the domain of the social. That is,
by purchasing Trifonov’s records, the Bulgarian listener first privatizes the experience with a
song in terms of intimate ownership. Trifonov uses the music from that album in a live concert
format during his annual national tours to promote more consumption of that commodity. The
listener’s intimacy, however, is not destroyed in this process, as he or she can now elevate their
connection to Trifonov by virtue of his or her lived experience at the concerts alongside other
listeners. I can attest personally that Trifonov’s live performances enhance the meaning and
pleasure of his records because they complement the public’s private listening experience
through a shared, communal musical event. As collective celebrations of a performer’s abilities,
concerts not only reveal the audience’s commitment to the musician but also index the power
bestowed on that celebrity by virtue of the shared tastes and lifestyles displayed collectively in
that context.60
60
The dynamics of manufacturing intimacy in the process of recording music and in live performance are elegantly
analyzed by Turino (2009:87-89) who insists that studio art production and live performances invoke not simply
different socialities but also different processes of value production and music making. While I agree that these
different contexts of music production render different social results (as in goals, attentions, ways of
creating/performing), here I simply stress the continuity of experiences available to Trifonov’s audience. That is, the
variety of mediums and types of experiences through which they can develop a relationship with or invest power in
the celebrity Trifonov.
61
In rendering significance to specific pop music celebrities, such as Trifonov and his Ku
Ku Band, the audience provides evidence for its support, ritualizes the communal experience of
the live performance, and tightens the connection between performer (as in celebrity, media text)
and audience in concrete physical rather than abstract terms. This is significant because the
audience’s reactions demarcate the power of the celebrity from other forms of stardom and these
opinions can also be viewed as an overarching metaphor on popular music, the ways in which
“the formation of taste cultures, where the expression of a particular consumption style becomes
more central to the public presentation of identity” (ibid., 164).
Celebrities as Commodity Culture
One of the central aspects of the discourse surrounding Trifonov is his image as a
promoter of mass culture and commercial forms of entertainment, which is ultimately associated
with pejorative characteristics like negative stature, social disgrace, and cultural digression. In
this sense, his celebrity status and social power are ambiguously oriented to the values of
consumer culture that are undeniably unfolding within a broader capitalist driven popular
culture. Marshall’s interpolation of celebrity culture and ideas of power, however, suggests that
there is not only an intrinsic connection between these elements of popular culturecelebrity,
audience, consumerism, and power but also that celebrities articulate the internal paradoxes
and ambiguities of the capitalist system as products.
The idea of celebrity can be seen as an extension of capitalist individualism, which is an
idea rooted in the period of Enlightenment. Between discourses of capitalism and democracy, the
celebrity moves effortlessly to promote the ultimate form of individuality that these systems of
social and political praxis propagate. As Marshall states, “despite evidence for the disintegration
of individual power through the establishment of mass society, the individual continues to
represent the ideological center of capitalist culture” (ibid.,17). The self-professed freedom to
exercise consumption and capital accumulation inherent in the values of capitalism, then, is
articulated most significantly through the individual most triumphantly through an individual of
celebrity status. As a part of the capitalist praxis, the celebrity is also viewed in a most
unsympathetic manner and is ridiculed for lack of substance or value. The celebrity is a
contradictory composite of media images, audiences’ projections, and actual physical
characteristics. He/she is linked to the influence that these collectively constructed characters
carry within modern society. The celebrity, insists Marshall, is entirely an image that lacks
62
materiality and productivity. The celebrity has false value. It is “pure exchange value cleaved
from use value” which articulates the individual as commodity (ibid.,xi).
Trifonov is a metaphor for value in a Bulgarian society that is faced with confronting and
configuring new, and contrasting, systems of value. In that regard, his role as a celebrity allows
the audience to celebrate and/or ridicule and deride values, through an individual. Such a
perspective not only emphasizes the interconnected, discursive realm in which the audience
shapes and renders a celebrity’s status but it also elucidates the ways in which “the celebrity
embodies the empowerment of the people to shape the public sphere symbolically” (ibid.,7).
Thus, the celebrity Trifonov is intricately linked to processes of social construction by virtue of
his articulation of the tension between the individual and the collective while at the same time he
commodifies the self as a form of cultural representation and idealization of society. His story
demonstrates the potential for choice and freedom within a self professed and long awaited
democratic society as well as the valorization of the individual within capitalism.
These issues of social construction, cultural value and their refraction through the
individual, however, characterize the conflicting perceptions of the style of pop-folk music to
which Trifonov is pinned. Like his involvement with political criticism through television, popfolk has scrutinized Trifonov’s position as a musician, as a celebrity, and as a Bulgarian.
Accordingly as a pop-folk performer who embodies the polarizing meanings therein, he is the
subject and object of socioeconomic and musicultural debate. Chapter 3 situates Trifonov in
terms of his musical affiliations with pop-folk through a historical overview and analysis of the
style’s main musical and cultural cues.
63
CHAPTER THREE
POP-FOLK
Prelude
Plamena: What do you think of chalga/pop-folk?
Crusher: The issue of chalga is a complicated one. Whereas I have little right to
stereotype people intellectually based on some or other characteristic of theirs, I
cannot get past the fact that in most cases the people who listen to chalga with
dedication and exclusively also embrace it as a life style and ideology. Chalga is
scary as a philosophy and a way of being in this world, not as music. In terms of
music, it is simply cheap: it is done by people who write music without interest,
with even less interesting lyrics, and all of that is put together badly. Only in the
last few years can we see the emergence of pop-folk wherein instrumental tracks
are not midi-based. So, pop-folk is much scarier thing than chalga because chalga
is that old school gem in the history of contemporary musical art that developed in
the second half of the 90s. Gem because it was filled with ethno elements of every
Balkan corner and offers unpretentious lyrics, mostly nonsense with pure
entertainment value. Pop-folk is the same thing but a disgusting aspect is added
on, a level of seriousness. The music of Preslava,61 for example, is considered
serious music and that is tragic because it’s simply not true. Chalga is simple,
easily digested music, with equally simple lyrics, intended for the not-so-elevated,
intellectually. Pop-folk is the same thing but with a pretense of seriousness and
quality.
Chavdar: Yeah, when I think of chalga I think of many other things outside the
obvious, self-professed definition as music. These other things are the mafia, the
women who sell themselves for money, the shitty politicians we have, the lack of
morality in all of us, our mindset, the corruption.
61
Preslava is the artistic pseudonym of the pop-folk performer Petya Ivanova. Preslava has been one of the leading
stars of the pop-folk music company, Payner, Inc, since 2004.
64
Margarita: Chalga is absolute crap! It’s a mix of kuchek, Serbian pop-folk, stuff
like that. Chalga sounds vulgar!
High school student: I think it is the dumbest music in the world!
Nikolay: To me, chalga is light music for eating, for dancing, for drinking that is
rooted in some folkloric elements.
Margarita: More like borrowed from Serbia and Macedonia.
Nikolay: Well, yeah. It’s a kind of a mix of Serbian, Greek, and even Turkish
sometimes if you will.
Plamena: Is your association with chalga with minorities such as the Roma?
Margarita: No, with prostitutes! Lowbrow people like soccer players, models, and
prostitutes.
Plamena: Really?!
Veni: It’s true though! Have you noticed the exaggerated, overexposed quality of
the chalga videos? Who does that?! It’s like a porno film. And so are the video’s
main characters, the so-called singers.
Anton: As one American genuinely noted upon visiting a Bulgarian bar in
America and seeing the Planeta channel62 on the plasma TV on the wall: ‘Oh,
porn actresses singing, what a great idea!’ Indeed, the question of chalga as porn
is very clear as in that everything seems to fit right into place. All of the silicon
implants, naked asses, admittedly quite entertaining for the men’s eye, make-up
and outfits worthy of prostitutes: it all fits right in there. And the sound, well,
we’re used to watching porn with the sound muted because it’s bad anyways.
Borislava: Pop-folk is pretty much all girls that are, well, indecently dressed!
Atanas: And, with fake boobs and lips and some girls who pretend they can sing
but can’t and a lot of the girls my age like them and want to look like them a lot. I
really don’t care for them at all.
Kristina: My perceptions are also mostly negative. It’s just that people who listen
to chalga have kind of a reckless and inappropriate behavior
62
Planeta is a music television channel operating since 2001 and dedicated exclusively to pop-folk. It is owned by
Payner, Inc, the leading producer of commercial pop-folk since 1990.
65
Independant1: To me chalga is a parody of music. This is a mish mash of various
styles from various corners of the world, most specifically the Balkans. It’s
something of a mix of Serbian, Greek, Turkish, Macedonian, Arabic, and in
general all type of folklore mixed in with pop, rock, jazz, and disco elements with,
usually, some kind of nonsensical lyrical content. It is a stew, thrown together.
The other thing is, people often confuse pop-folk with chalga, even though most
chalga performers strongly believe they sing pop-folk. Pop-folk is a song within
the so-called pop or popular style combined with folklore elements. It is
something totally different and many a times more acceptable.
Elena: It’s decoration not art!
Plamena: So chalga is a negative thing?
Vera: Of course, it’s a bad thing.
Dika: It’s kitsch! The kitsch of music!
Boy 1: I thought chalga means something like a “celebration”?!
Nikolay: Yes, it is! If you go to a club or restaurant, even if it’s not chalga club,
just watch what happens when they play chalga. People get up and start dancing.
That’s what’s up!
Iveta: It seems to me that young people like that music very much. There seems to
be no fun and enjoyment without chalga.
Rada: They like it. Every high school graduate is dancing kuchek.
Plamena: Is kuchek vulgar?
Vera: No, when it’s real, no.
Iveta: When you’re listening to it in Turkey, it’s not.
Plamena: So, is chalga Bulgarian music then?
High school student: No, it’s more like stolen music.
Veni: Well, I think the chalga can be defined by the manner of singing but these
types of lines and ornaments, that are characteristic of pop-folk music, are
actually, not even pop-folk but the folklore traditions of certain countries. Just not
ours! It’s typical for like Turkish music, some times Greek, I think these types of
ornaments come from there.
66
Rada: Look at the brothers Serbs?! I mean, they have it but it’s not chalga, it’s
their music, folklore music.
Dika: It’s their traditional music.
Nina: Our Bulgarian, mixed Turkish with Bulgarian and Serbian and who knows
what else, and came up with something disgusting!
Rada: It’s like mutated folklore, shoved together form here and there but people
go crazy for this music, what can I say?!
Plamena: What makes chalga vulgar: the music or the text?
Vera: Both, the text and the music.
Anna: I cannot think of anything worse than chalga in terms of music.
Petio: The first thing is: the texts make no sense. Most performers are female and
I want to add that to me, personally, this is not music but rather a show off.
Krasimira: Well, yeah. Pop-folk, shall we say, are like the more popular songs
and they include also folkloric/traditional songs while chalga songs are always
using almost the same text and music; only the rhythm changes slightly but it’s all
rather redundant. I personally don’t listen to much chalga. It just seems so
overexposed and unnatural. I don’t want to impose my opinion but I personally
don’t see anything specifically special in the chalga.
Plamena: Well, as musicians, do you find that there is there anything particularly
crafty or valuable in this style of music called chalga?
Irina: Well, for me personally, no! Not in terms of music nor textual meaning...
Plamena: So, is chalga the commercial music of Bulgaria?
Veni: Well, yeah. Many pop-folk performers are trying to overcome these labels
but it’s not possible. They’re trying because they have some kind of insecurity, I
think. I don’t know why though. They are the highest paid performers in Bulgaria,
they have gigs, it’s not like they don’t, and they’re still insecure. It could be
because the national media was keeping them out for a while. But honestly,
they’ve gotten in there too. There is a stock of shows that always invite them. So,
now they take an equal part of public life, perhaps even too much.
Vera: Yes, of course chalga is commercial. It’s anti-art!
67
Rada: I mean, back in the day we used to call the gypsy songs chalga, the chalga
is coming!
Vera: Yeah, but now the meaning has changed. Now it means haltura, fake
culture.
Plamena: What is the new generation of Bulgarians learning from chalga then?
Decho: I don’t know but I think chalga has successfully ruined them, the whole
generation!
Vera: Well, I find it preoccupying, you know?!
Rada: Look, chalga has been an object of a lot of ridicule and critique but the fact
is, it is now mass culture! It formed people in a certain time. It shaped them!
Margarita: It is the music of lowbrow, working class people.
Rada: I think, this chalga thing will remain a cultural parameter.
The history of contemporary Bulgarian pop-folk is relatively short, yet it is complex and
multifaceted. As the dialogues above suggest, the multiple sociocultural meanings this musical
style has elicited since its inception in the early 1990s inform the ways Bulgarians identify with
their own cultural heritage and the traditions of their Balkan neighbors, as well as with emerging
cultural values associated with commercial musical forms and consumerism. I believe that the
meaning of pop-folk bears particular significance to Trifonov’s musical and cultural importance
because the qualities attached to pop-folk, and deemed culturally regressive, have been mapped
directly onto him. In this respect, Trifonov has also been intrinsically linked to these qualities as
their major perpetrator and engineer even though his music often departs from pop-folk’s general
stylistics. There are, however, several key aspects of the style that are particularly potent vis-àvis Trifonov’s commercial enterprise, as well as the local nationalistic discourse and Trifonov’s
role in it in the context of the postsocialist 1990s: the orientalist qualities of the music as aspects
of a nationalistic discourse and the understanding of pop-folk as form of anti-art that embodies
the values of a shallow consumer society.
This chapter situates Trifonov in terms of his musical affiliations with the commercial
style of Bulgarian pop-folk. It specifies the history of the commercial development of the style
and the ways it has stirred a polarizing cultural debate regarding representation of the Bulgarian
nation. I identify the musical and poetic underpinnings of the style in order to delineate what is
68
deemed Bulgarian and what is not within commercial music culture and I explore how
Bulgarians transfer these understandings to their experiences with the postsocialist transition.
Finally, I address how Trifonov plays a central role in the way Bulgarians make sense of and
interpret pop-folk and postsocialism in conflicting and paradoxical ways.
Historical Overview
Pop-folk represents a diverse mix of musical and cultural influences and is a uniquely
Bulgarian postsocialist phenomenon. Its contents are quite complex and embrace the eclecticism
of Yugoslav newly composed folklore music, the jazz-oriented Bulgarian wedding music made
famous internationally by Ivo Papazov and his wedding orchestra in the 1980s, and various
popular music idioms to varying degrees (Buchanan 2007: 229). Characteristically, pop-folk
combines synthesizers and drum machines with a collage of Turkish scale types (makamlar,
sing. makam), melodic motifs and rhythmic patterns (kuchek), and ornamentation. Like many
Arab musicians, a few bands electronically simulate the timbres of indigenous Middle Eastern
instruments. Wailing, virtuosic, and solo instrumental introductions and interludes, usually
played by reeds or synthesizers, recall both Middle Eastern improvisation (taksim-s) and to a
lesser extent, solo moments in Bulgarian wedding music (ibid., 234).
This stylistic multiplicity is also reflected in a variety of labels used in reference and
interchangeably with pop-folk. These include: 1) chalga, which reflects the repertoire, musical
idioms, and performance aesthetics of the style; 2) kuchek, which is the main rhythmical
framework and a dance style employed within pop-folk; and 3) ethnopop, which reflects the
capitalist market strategies which helped disseminate and popularize it. The labels chalga and
kuchek inform the historical dimension and ethnic politics characteristic of the understanding of
pop-folk as an extension of earlier musical styles and as a part of a nationalistic discourse. In
turn, ethnopop captures the dynamics of pop-folk as a postsocialist music phenomenon that is all
culturally specific, regionally relevant, and globally aware in terms of its market dynamics.
Chalga
Historically, the term chalga refers to an urban ensemble of mixed Turkish and
symphonic (clarinet, violin, accordion) instrumentation that arose in the late Ottoman period and
flourished through the WWII era. Its instrumentalists, called chalgadzhii, were largely Romani
professionals and their repertoire included Ottoman Turkish folk tunes in the languages of the
69
many ethnic groups found in the surrounding area. Characteristically, their performance style
built on improvisation, technical instrumental fluency and virtuosity, melodic variation, and
Turkish derived extensive melodic embellishments (including pitch bending, grace notes,
mordents, glissandi, timbral nuances, and turns). Similarly, their performance contexts ranged
from family celebrations, such as weddings and circumcisions to coffee houses, which were
central to social life.
By the late 1800s, Bulgarians used chalga to refer to an entire class of urban, professional
musicians many of whom were Roma. Between the first and second World Wars, they became
known as salon orchestras and their similarly eclectic repertoire explored traditions from
neighboring Balkan countries to Western European ballroom dance musics. They were hired to
play at commercial venues as well as taverns and pubs, which further modified their name to
tavern music or urban folklore. With the advent of radio by the 1930s such orchestras
transformed into trios and quartets of indigenous instruments as well as Western instruments
(clarinet, violin, accordion, bass) and were referred to as modern orchestras. All of these types of
ensembles (salon and modern orchestras) carried the performance aesthetics of Ottoman chalga
into the twentieth century and effectively merged it with the emerging Bulgarian urban culture,
and despite the multiplicity of descriptors, continued to be associated with the label chalga (ibid.,
237). 63
During the period of socialism (1945-1989), these orchestras continued to employ similar
chalga elements: virtuosity, improvisation, eclecticism, and musicians of minority status. By the
1980s, they became restaurant bands and fed directly into a new grassroots movement, which
was in opposition with the officially promoted narodna muzika—that of svatbarska muzika
(wedding music). Wedding orchestras represented the late twentieth-century transmutation of
earlier chalga traditions such as the modern orchestras and restaurant bands by virtue of
eclecticism displayed in instrumentation (clarinet, saxophone, accordion, synthesizer, electric
bass and drums, and indigenous instruments like kaval, gadulka, and/or violin), repertoire, and
performance style.
The repertoire of wedding bands is normally comprised of a medley of Bulgarian,
Romani, Turkish, Serbian and other Balkan folk songs played at weddings. Similarly, the variety
63
For detailed history of the musical life of Bulgaria relative to instrumental ensembles of both Slavic and minority
descent, see Buchanan (2006: 79-132).
70
of traditions are weaved together by virtue of equally heterogeneous musical stylistics that
embrace both Ottoman inspired rhythmic and melodic idioms rooted in the chalga tradition, as
well as electric instrumentation and complex harmony akin to Euro-American popular music and
jazz. The technical virtuosity, attention to minute ornamentation, and solo improvisation by all
band members in both measured and non-metric sections were key components of the
performance practice of this style.
Because of wedding music’s transregional repertoire, performance practice, and
instrumentation, and performers who were mainly Roma or ethnic Turks, chalga came to signify
Romani-Turkish musicianship generally. Relative to that association, the word chalga also was
used as a slang term referring to social uncleanliness and anti-Bulgarianness; the music and its
performers became outsiders to the “pure,” ethnically “clean” traditions promoted and indeed
enforced by the socialist state. The head of the Communist party, Todor Zhivkov, launched the
infamous “Regenerative process” in 1984, which enmeshed wedding music and its performance
in a project of ethnic cleansing directed towards Bulgaria’s Turkish, Roma, and Pomak
(Bulgarian-born Muslims) minorities. The set of policies forbade the use of Turkish language,
traditional clothing, and music in public, banned the teaching of Turkish or Islam, and required
the changing of Turkish names to officially approved Slavic/Christian names. The assimilation
was on par with a vision of a communist society that was ethnically and culturally monolithic but
it was met with significant resistance and a level of violence amongst the Muslim communities
(Bideleux and Jeffries 2007:91). Wedding music’s Turkish and Roma performers and the style’s
eclectic, ethnically diverse, and improvisatory qualities were similarly subject to these racial
policies for they embodied the uncleanliness that the socialist state sought to get rid of through
political means and on a national level.64
The position of wedding music within the communist monoethnic agenda was also
reflected in its musical and cultural opposition to the officially sanctioned folklore music
(obrabotena folklorna muzika) and staged/entertainment music (estradna muzika). Thus as the
latest permutation of the eclectic chalga tradition, wedding music also became an object of
despise for musicians trained and indoctrinated within these official categories on similar
grounds of uncleanliness. These attitudes extended to the academic discourse on traditional
64
For a contextual and historically sensitive interpretation of the political and cultural implications of wedding
music during the late Bulgarian socialism period, see Rice (1994: 237-260, 1996) and Buchanan (1996, 1991).
71
music, wherein musicologists extended the state’s monoethnic vision in their own analysis. As a
part of such an historico-cultural continuum, the terminology and history of chalga, its
derivations in wedding music, and the political and cultural implications it rendered were
mapped onto 1990s pop-folk as anti-Bulgarian and as anti-culture.
Kuchek
Complementing the label chalga and its transforming historical meanings is the term
kuchek (also, kyuchek) a prevalent dance rhythm underlying the rhythmic framework of popfolk repertoires and also of Romani-Turkish origin. Characteristically, kuchek is an ostinato
rhythmic pattern of cyclical nature that exists in several variations in different Balkan countries,
but is specifically utilized in Bulgaria as: “Turkish” kuchek in 8/8 (3-3-2) and “Gypsy” kuchek in
9/8 (2-2-2-3) (Buchanan 2007: 241). Its musical role within contemporary Bulgarian pop-folk is
ubiquitous; the majority of songs feature instrumental interludes with kuchek patterns as the
rhythmic framework for lengthy solo improvisations performed by electronic instruments.
The history of kuchek is rooted in the practice of professional Jewish, Armenian, Greek,
and Romani male dancers called kocek, who danced during imperial Ottoman court celebrations.
In that context, the dance was accompanied by an outdoor ensemble of mixed instrumentation
that performed repertoire based on the makam system. The dancers were organized into guilds
and often blurred gender and sexual norms by cross-dressing and engaging in prostitution.65
While scholars disagree on the exact details of the kuchek choreography, the dance
characteristically involved a range of combinations of movements and bodily gestures including
extended arms, a relatively composed upper body, and intense hip gyrations and movements
reminiscent of belly-dance. In part due to its underlying eroticism, the dance was banned by the
mid-1800s but Romani continued to perform and popularize it amongst all social classes of the
Ottoman Empire. The practice continued to exist throughout the twentieth century but it
increasingly became the domain of Romani women and was considered of poor taste and low
class for mainstream Bulgarian society. By the 1980s however, the sensuous eroticism of kuchek
resurfaced to become a main component of the Bulgarian wedding music repertoires and
performances, wherein audiences danced kuchek style to the wedding music (Buchanan 2007:
236). By the 1990s, pop-folk’s stylistics also embraced the rhythmical and bodily dimensions of
kuchek thereby morphing the two terms into interchangeable labels and establishing a firm
65
See Seeman (2002) and Feldman (2002, 1996) for further details on Ottoman court music culture.
72
connection between Romani dance practices, as lowbrow minority cultural forms, and pop-folk,
as a commercial form of anticulture that capitalized on such “Gypsiness.”
“Gypsiness” and “Gypsy business” (in Bulgarian, “Tsigania” and “Tsiganska rabota”)
are colloquial expressions that permeate the Bulgarian everyday and express, much like chalga,
ideas of contamination, destruction, decay, and lack of effort. As Peicheva explains, in Bulgaria,
tsigania is the status of an individual and communal philosophy that explains the country’s
economic and cultural decay. The term tsigania is still a prevalent label for the Bulgarian
Romani minority and is used in reference to the musical and cultural elements of pop-folk that
signify Romani or Gypsy culture. Significantly, the aural dimension and stylistic dance of kuchek
are always associated with Gypsy culture and as such, of low social and cultural quality—that is,
kuchek is lowbrow because it is Gypsy and is an expression of tsigania.
Like the meaning of chalga, however, this sociocultural position is also informed by a
historical dimension relative to the role of Roma in the history of Bulgarian music making and
practice in the past one hundred and fifty years. Apart from their ethnic status within Bulgarian
society during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the music profession was
dominated by the Roma and was considered immoral. The role of Roma musicians within
musical life, in part, broke the closeness and the ethnic purity of folklore music and gave birth to
the urban musical entertainment tradition, as the history of chalga suggests. Yet, within the
intellectual discourse they are seen both as modern bards necessary for the emergence of
nineteenth-century Bulgarian revival musical culture and as corroding forces of traditional
Bulgarian folklore music. That is, the Roma’s exclusivity over the craft of music contributed to
their negatively perceived low social status, which is articulated in the notion of tsigania and the
phrase Tsiganska rabota that both connote the contamination and the nature of the musician’s
work as an easy way to make money without enough effort (Peycheva 1998:139).66
This historical dimension gained cultural momentum in the context of 1980s as Roma
musicians developed and performed wedding music and as they became part of the discourse
about tsigania. The title “Gypsy” is a euphemism for anti-Bulgarianness, for kitsch, and for
subversive attributes that did not fit the communist monoethnic vision of society. As a precursor
to pop-folk, wedding music and performance was often couched between the ‘real’ and clean
66
For further analysis and consideration of the role and significance of the Roma in Bulgaria and the Balkan region
see Silverman (2007, 2003, 1996).
73
Bulgarian traditional folkloric style and the unclean, Gypsy, kitsch that threatened to destroy it.
As such, the notion of gypsiness and the label kuchek further crystallize a prevalent cultural
paradox. On one hand, the Roma’s artistry and musicianship exhibited by performers of wedding
music, and related styles, is highly regarded and the qualities of gypsiness are celebrated as
musically experimental, virtuosic, and eclectic. On the other, the label kuchek and the notion of
tsigania are frequently used to refer to everything that is socially and culturally unclean and
unprofessional. This discourse continues to inform the perception of Roma as performers within
pop-folk through pejorative notions of primitivism, commercialism, and bad taste. The
characteristic use of kuchek, as pop-folk’s rhythmic idiom and dance style, is similarly
considered tsiganska rabota irrespective of the participation of actual Roma musicians.
Ethnopop
The initial stage of pop-folk’s commercial development took place in the mid-1980s and
in the context of informal wedding music festivals. These performances were disseminated
outside of state control through video and audio recordings since the display of Roma and
Turkish music in these festivals was illegal.67 The distribution of the demos of wedding music
festival repertoires through illegal cassette tapes set the stage for a general public interest in an
early permutation of ethnopop music in Bulgaria. This early stage of development was defined
by a heightened interest in the musical traditions and related styles from neighboring Balkan
countries, especially Greece and Serbia.68 The reason for this gaze towards the outside, insists
Dimov, was that the local urban folklore musical traditions were restricted based on displays of
pan-Balkanism, hybridization, and borrowing during the communist regime. Because musical
heterogeneity was not cut off in Bulgaria’s Balkan neighbors but was considered undesirable,
unclean, and kitschy in Bulgaria, the public had a natural desire and interest to consume it at
large (Dimov 1995: 12).
67
These National meetings were inforced by the state as a mechanism for monitoring the content of musical practice
of narodna muzika (people’s music). They took place in the town of Stambolovo (in Southern Bulgaria) in 1985,
1986, 1988, and 1990 (Buchanan 2006: 172). This musical context was instrumental for the popularization of
wedding music and related phenomena such as postsocialist pop-folk.
68
The general stylistics features of pop-folk correlate to other Balkan popular music phenomena such as: the
Yugoslav NCFM (newly composed folk music) and its Serbian successor turbo-folk, Romanian manele, and Turkish
arabesque. See further, Rasmussen (2007, 2002) on NCFM and turbo-folk, Voiculescu (2005) and Beissinger on
manele, Stokes (1992) on arabesque for detailed analysis of the musical and cultural implications of these styles
within a Balkan regional historical discourse.
74
The arrival of postsocialism in the 1990s led to the proliferation of this existing market,
which also built on festival culture but took on an ostensibly Bulgarian format as ‘new’ folk
music through Pirin Fest and Pirin Folk—both are events that occur in Southwestern Bulgaria,
known as the Pirin region.69 The stylistics of these songs were broadly similar to those of light
pop songs about love, family, and emigration; these songs employed lyrical melodies, familiar
rhythmic and melodic idioms, and accompaniment by ensembles featuring symphonic
instruments (clarinet, saxophone, trumpet and strings), accordion, indigenous Macedonian
instruments (tambura, tŭpan, tarambuka), synthesizers, electronic drums, electric guitar, and
electric bass in a wide variety of combinations (Buchanan 2007: 232).
As the state no longer regulated and censored musical or ideological production in the
early 1990s, folk forms now became a central medium for the expansion of the music market and
technology. The contributing factors to this expansion of the genre were the private radio
stations, which began catering to local pop-folk fan bases, the development of audio-visual
technology in the commercial market, and the emergence of festivals such as Pirin Folk.
Initially, this development did not involve the production of original compositions but rather
Bulgarianized versions of hits from Turkish arabesque and Serbian turbo-folk repertoires. This
process of direct borrowing involved the substitution of foreign text for Bulgarian words as well
as the selection of musical elements like orchestration or single motives. These processes were
mainly aided by the use of similar synthesizers and sequencers, which created unified formulas
for harmonization and timbre. The demand for these musical products also affected the
development of the quasi-professional recording and distribution industry.
Many of the pop-folk publishing houses emerged in the wake of the political
liberalization after 1990 and, while initially focusing on Western popular and rock music,
quickly changed suit to the popular and profitable pop-folk. By 1995, the private music houses
producing and distributing pop-folk numbered about thirty and all were located in major urban
centers in Bulgaria. These companies constituted a somewhat closed circuit of production. That
is, they discovered, recorded (in their own studios), produced, and distributed pop-folk
repertoires and performers. As early as 1995 however, one house emerged as a major player on
the market, Payner from Dimitrovgrad (Dimov 1995:16).
For details on Bulgarian festival culture, including Pirin Folk, relative to narodna muzika (people’s music,
folklore music) and the tradition of state folkloric orchestras instituted during the socialist period (1945-1989), see
further Buchanan (2006: 169-176, 256-276).
69
75
As a music production venue, Payner still dominates the music market of pop-folk and
specializes in the recording and distribution of pop-folk; they control virtually the entire circle of
the commodification process. Around the mid-1990s, the production cycle of the company
included a modern recording studio, a cassette tape-manufacturing unit, a design department
where the cassette tapes and the advertisement materials were assembled. The music was
distributed at stores in Bulgarian cities and via Payner’s own mobile unit, which transported the
products. In 1994 Payner also organized one of the biggest forums dedicated to the contemporary
pop-folk music in Bulgaria—the festival for Thracian and Balkan music called Trakia Folk—
whose prize fund is half a million leva (ibid).
Dimov insists that these were indications that pop-folk had transformed into an industry
and the music of pop-folk was, by the mid-1990s, a commodity. Another layer was added by the
participation of mass media wherein pop-folk gained a permanent place by 1993. The Saturday
edition of 24 Chasa (24 Hours), for example, began a section called “Folk” in which was
included a top ten list of the highest selling singles and information about new folk album
releases. Similarly, other daily newspapers (Standard, Novinar, Trud) created sections dedicated
to the music and the stars of pop-folk. In all cases, this commodification was perpetuated by an
element of scandal and sensationalism in all media domains from newspaper to home video.
Radio stations and television channels that had previously silenced this music began dedicating
entire programs to it such as Signal + (Sofia) and Veselina (Plovdiv, Iambol, Stara Zagora) and
national television channels aired live footage from Pirin Folk two years in a row between 1994
and 1995. These processes, in effect, created a focus on the performer as a celebrity rather than
as the author of the music, which is a shift indicative of the increasing commercialization of popfolk (ibid., 17).
By the mid-1990s, pop-folk received considerable press coverage, including from regular
TV and radio broadcasts, periodical rubrics, and top ten charts, and was supported by an industry
of pirated cassettes, videocassettes, CDs, and DVDs . By the late 1990s this type of productive
dissemination had gained such a tremendous public support that ethnopop discothèques were
established (referred to as ‘chalga clubs’), periodicals included gossip columns about pop-folk
stars, and local satellite television promoted pop-folk channels that featured music videos. In
turn, Payner records, had become one of the chief producers of pop-folk, established its own TV
channel on which it broadcasts, and through it popularized and advertised its latest video
76
recordings. By the end of 1999, the pop-folk market had grown so large that it “eclipsed even
Euro-American-style pop music in popularity” (Buchanan 2007: 245).
Imagery and Poetics
These aspects of pop-folk present a pastiche of meanings; they build on each of its
alternative labels (chalga, kuchek, and ethnopop), which often results in conflicting visual and
linguistic musical products. One of the central visual characteristics of pop-folk is its perceived
sexual suggestiveness, which has allusions to soft porn and is layered with manufactured
orientalist imagery.70 These visual aesthetics encompass the entire spectrum of production in
pop-folk, from album covers with pornographic displays of anonymous females, to the visual
stylistics of pop-folk’s music videos, to the fashion sense of the majority of pop-folk’s female
star performers. These gratuitously sexual elements are normally incorporated by way of direct
images of female nudity and depictions of provocative choreography akin to belly dance, which
is a seductive narrative strategy common in pop-folk. This physical explicitness has also
contributed to the perception of pop-folk female singers as gendered, stereotyped idols
associated with a commercial, materialistic, and romanticized lifestyle, which they display both
on and off stage (see Figure 6).71
Figure 6: Album cover of a pop-folk collection released by Payner, 2007.72
70
See further, Kurkela (2007) for detailed analysis of the construction of orientalist imagery and sexuality in popfolk videos.
71
A popular visual and dressing style of pop-folk stars, for example, includes open collars and gold chains for the
males, and Barbie-Doll make-up with tight skirts and fake cleavages for the ladies.
72
The image is available at http://www.payner.bg.
77
This type of sexualization, however, is not without precedent and is in part tied to the global
world of popular music and its market strategies, wherein performers such as David Bowie and
Freddie Mercury blurred gender boundaries by cross dressing and adopting androgynous looks.
Similarly, the rise of female pop divas such as Madonna, Shakira, Beyonce,73 and Christina
Aguilera (to name only a few) has further contributed to the relationship between sexuality and
its open visual display on the stages of popular music. Within pop-folk, however, the
performance of sexuality is implicated by both the conceptions of folk artistry as pure and pop as
characteristically degrading tsigania. Thus unlike their views on Euro-American pop diva
imagery, Bulgarian audiences view pop-folk’s sexuality as a type of a degrading, internal
otherness and a cheap imitation of its western commercial variants.
The textual qualities of pop-folk are similarly cast as pornographic, dirty, lacking a
coherent narrative, featuring thematically unconnected words and lines, and employing
ungrammatical verb forms and erroneous declensions of personal pronouns and adjectives. Yet
the enormous popularity of the style in terms of consumption is often justified by virtue of the
songs’ lighter content, which is comparable to elitist views of Hollywood mass culture as easily
digestible but low in quality and shallow in poetic meaning.74 The texts of pop-folk songs
principally address the variety of interpersonal experiences that constitute romantic relationships,
but the lyrics often relative to the everyday experiences and socioeconomic dynamics of
postsocialist turmoil and distress. These everyday social experiences are often explored through
vulgar and humorous lyrics on a variety of topics including the devaluation of Bulgarian
currency, the markers of capitalist success (ownership of western cars and fashionable clothes),
and the importance of personal profit relative to romantic and sexual relations.
While the poetic formulation of such topics within pop-folk is considered problematic
and lowbrow, artists ironically explored a set of emerging cultural values and experiences
associated specifically with the culture of consumerism, economic distress, political instability,
and the idealization of western popular culture mythologies. Thus, the light content of pop-folk
73
The celebrity life style, attitudes, and relationships of these pop music divas is emulated by local Bulgarian popfolk female stars, who also adopt similar stage pseudonyms consisting of their first name: Preslava, Kamelia, Anelia
and many, many others.
74
The perceptions of pop-folk’s content and quality can be easily contextualized in terms of Adorno’s notable
critique of mass culture as the total commercialization of life and the complete integration of the individual into the
principles of exchange. Like Adorno, a portion of the Bulgarian audience maintains a distinction between art and
mass culture (high and low art). As a product of Adorno’s “culture industry” pop-folk is seen as a demonstration of
the ways commodity structure penetrates the very form and content of the artwork. See further, Adorno 1991:100.
78
addressed the highly turbulent political times of Bulgarian postsocialism. This was reflected in:
1) the genre’s commercial boom, which was revolutionary in the context of liberalization and
deregulation of Bulgarian media in the 1990s, was a reaction to previously silenced musical
expressions such as wedding music;75 2) the 1997 media war of pop-folk aesthetics in which
performers of estrada and pop-folk engaged in a heated debate linking their respective musical
styles to political parties and their associated platforms and ideologies;76 and 3) the portion of the
pop-folk repertoire that critiqued the corrupted Bulgarian political life either by direct reference
to prominent figures or the social and economic results of their policy decisions.77
Another element of the textual aesthetic of the pop-folk repertoire and its inadvertent
political dimension is the articulation of yet another aspect of Bulgarian postsocialist culture and
everyday life experiencesthe figure of the wrestler, or mutra (lit. “ugly face” but used as a
slang expression for a “mafia guy” and/or “bouncer,” “hit man”). In Bulgaria, the wrestler is a
social product that is ubiquitously associated with postsocialism and is also the hero of pop-folk
songs; this figure typifies the expressions of the contemporary Bulgarian media culture and is a
source and a context for the realization of that very music.
The wrestlers, often both as poetic protagonists and characters, are the operative hit men
of mafia conglomerates that emerged in relation to the developing grey economy in Bulgaria
since the early 1990s. They display, like the sexualized and fashion-conscious imagery of popfolk, particular visual aesthetics (wearing sweat pants, gold chains, and sun glasses) and a lack of
intellectual potential and education. They are the perpetrators of much violence within the
postsocialist everyday (see Figure 7).
“From the perspective of its producers, performers, producers, and audience,” affirms Dimov, “pop-folk was
revolutionary after November 10, 1989 because it was in fact a dissident music before that” (Dimov, 1999: 46).
76
The pop-folk or chalga war unfolded within the printed media in 1997. Within the debate, which took on national
proportions, proponents and performers of the estrada circles (entertainment music of the socialist past) and popfolk supporters and performers voiced heated opinions regarding each style’s positioning and merits within
Bulgarian music culture and politics. See further, Dimov (1999).
77
Titles include, “Piramidi, Faraoni” regarding the pyramid financial schemes, “Nema Mamo Voda y Sofia”
regarding the water crisis in Sofia, broader social issues such as lack of social security, poverty are sung about in
“Lubofta e samo za bogatite” and “Parliament”, and specific figures such as president Zhelev and King Simon
become protagonists in these songs as well (Dimov 1998: 48).
75
79
Figure 7: Image of Bulgarian mutra, 2006.78
The label wrestler, or mutra, has become the signifier of an entire social class of economic mafia
and it is intimately connected to the culture of pop-folk because these men are both its main
producers and consumers. Around 1995 it became fashionable for albums to be insured and
guarded by insurance companies against piracy.79 At the same time, the wrestlers firmly entered
the music business: they created their own distribution and recording companies as well as their
own pop-folk clubs, wherein pop-folk is the required music program. The prevalent role of this
economic mafia, within the production of pop-folk specifically and Bulgarian social dynamics
broadly, has perhaps logically extended to the colloquial poetics of the pop-folk repertoire,
which has typically depicted the mutra as a poetic protagonist and has glorified him as a cultural
hero (Dimov 1998:145).
Pop-folk, Trifonov, and Bulgarian Identity
As a pop-folk musician, Trifonov is related to and implicated by several significant
musical and cultural perceptions that articulate the Bulgarian audience’s understanding of the
style itself. Trifonov’s music differs from the main stylistics of pop-folk in that it incorporates a
78
The image is available at http://robstvo.wordpress.com.
VIK and SIC were two of the most powerful Bulgarian insurance companies and were, in effect, mafia
conglomerates intimately tied to the black market and grey economy of the early postsocialist period in Bulgaria.
Insuring, as such, usually took on the form of racketeering and the hitman characterized in pop-folk songs executed
such forms of “protection.” The business of insurance and the types of companies that practiced it were banned in
1997.
79
80
variety of pop, rock, and jazz idioms that are associated with Euro-American popular music
traditions. As I discussed in Chapter 2, his repertoire also effectively reimagines traditional
folkloric and patriotic songs within postsocialist, commodified musical and performance
contexts. However, a significant amount of his work is labeled as pop-folk or chalga and is
thereby interpreted by Bulgarian audiences in these terms.
First, this perception is rooted in Trifonov’s use of the kuchek rhythm and its associations
with cultural labels such as tsigania as well as the rhythmic and bodily aesthetics of pop-folk.
That is, once the listener audibly recognizes the rhythms, it is framed as pop-folk despite other
musical features and/or gestures that may differ from mainstream pop-folk. The song “Neka Me
Boli” (“Let Me Hurt”) from the album Edno Ferari s Tsviat Cherven (One Ferrari Colored Red,
1996) provides an interesting example of the ways that such gestures can be reconfigured as a
pop-folk idiom of a unique kind. The main distinction between pop-folk’s and Trifonov’s style
lies in instrumentation. While pop-folk generally relies on processed, electronic reproductions of
a variety of wind and brass instrument sounds, Trifonov’s recording uses live performers that are
a part of his Ku Ku Band. Since brass and wind instruments such as clarinet, saxophone, and
trumpet play a prominent role in both predecessors of pop-folk as well as its contemporary
versions, they are also most often identified as markers of its sound. On this track, Ku Ku Band’s
brass section plays a prominent role in signifying this perception through both rhythmic and
melodic material. Significantly, the brass/wind instruments always outline the kuchek rhythm
and employ ornamentation that is characteristic of both pop-folk and Balkan fusion idioms.
“Neka Me Boli” also shows how the perception of Trifonov’s music can be conflicting
even at the micro level. The subtle ways through which Trifonov’s music encodes both folk and
pop is most clear in the song’s formal structure and specifically relative to the presentation of the
kuchek rhythmic framework. The piece switches between two contrasting textures and rhythmic
feels in the following way: 1) medium-fast kuchek in 4/4, which is outlined by the brass section
and 2) medium-fast pop ballad in 4/4 outlined by the bass/rhythm guitar section and lacking
brass instrumentation. Each of these textures and rhythmic grooves complements the other in the
sense that the overall feel of duple rhythm is retained (audio example 1).
Audio Example 1: "Neka Me Boli," transition between kuchek and pop-ballad groove and texture
81
The change of instrumentation from a texture dominated by brass instruments to one featuring
mainly guitar creates a clear break in the textures of the piece. This switch is rendered even more
effective by the alternate presentation of the textures and rhythmic emphasis in the verses of the
songs versus the refrains. That is, while the verse can be easily interpreted as a popular music
ballad, the refrain can be interpreted as a genuine example of a pop-folk kuchek. Because the
lyrical and musical material of the refrain is more prominent and arguably more memorable,
“Neka Me Boli” can easily be framed as an example of pop-folk.80 This is also reaffirmed by the
extended, one minute repetition of the refrain after the second verse as well as the
improvisational interjections of the brass section in between the lyrical content (audio example
2).
Audio Example 2: “Neka Me Boli,” brass/wind section improvisational interlude
Like mainstream pop-folk and its employment of kuchek framework, this instrumental interlude
retains the kuchek rhythm in a clear recognizable way while the wind instruments, trumpet and
clarinet, take turns in presenting melodic material with an ostensibly ‘folk’ character.
Yet, “Neka Me Boli” also subtly transforms and complements some of these pop-folk
elements by way of employing melodic and rhythmic elements that can be generally identified as
a part of the mainstream Euro-American popular music vocabulary in the late 1980s and 1990s.
For example, during the extended improvisation of the brass section after the second verse of the
song between 3:15 and 3:55, the bass accompanies the folk ornamentation and melodic motives
of the clarinet and trumpet in a particularly funky, slapped manner—a stylistic that lies
completely outside the musical vocabulary of commercial pop-folk (audio example 3). Similarly,
a vocalization by the bass player in the opening thirty seconds of the song and prior to the second
verse, echoes the timbre and style of pop ballads akin to those of the American band Chicago
(audio example 4).
Audio Example 3: “Neka Me Boli,” slapped, funky bass guitar style during brass/wind interlude
80
See Appendix A, Example 14 for the complete text of “Neka Me Boli.”
82
Audio Example 4 “Neka Me Boli,” vocalizations by Ku Ku Band’s bass player
The opposition of such seemingly conflicting musical textures and rhythmic frameworks
suggests that the quality and level of detail with which Trifonov and Ku Ku band approach popfolk departs significantly from the mass distributed, overproduced mainstream versions of the
style. To audiences, however, the link between the rhythm (and movement) of kuchek is a
recognizable and an inseparable marker of all pop-folk.
Second, and on par with the humorous interplay of colloquial language Ku Ku had
established from the beginning of the show, Trifonov’s songs frequently play with jargon,
expressions, and suggestiveness. Arguably craftier than pop-folk and in part due to the sounds of
kuchek, these lyrics are still filtered through and configured as pop-folk. The track “Frenskata
Gimnazia” (“The French High School”) from the compilation Vavilon (Babylon, 1998) is a vivid
example of the manner in which musical gestures are paired with lyrical content to formulate a
perception of Trifonov’s songs as low-brow music. Unlike “Neka Me Boli,” this piece uses a
pronounced kuchek rhythmic framework throughout. The rhythmic content is a signifier for a
degrading musical expression and supports a lyrical content concerned with the protagonist’s
sexual exploits. The title, “Frenskata Gimnazia” is a reference to a circle of specialized language
schools in Bulgaria wherein students focus on mastering different foreign languages. These
institutions have a reputation for creating a higher standard for general education and more
rigorous language skills. As the protagonist, Trifonov addresses and flirts with a student
attending the French high school. He teases her about her good grades and persuades her to teach
him French so he can improve his chances in getting a date with other female students at the high
school.
Ti si mnogo pechena,
znaesh gi ezitsite.
Frenskata gimnazia
pishe ti shestitsite!
Khaide nauchi i men,
shtoto frantsuzoikite
chakat vseki denchakat da go broikame!
You are very cool,
you know languages.
The French high school
gives you all the A’s!
Common, teach me too,
cause’ the french girls
wait up every daythey’re waiting to be picked up!
“Frenskata Gimnazia”: Verse 1
83
In the song, Trifonov makes several references to the French language and its study as a
metaphor for sexual relations. For example in the first verse, the word ‘languages’ literary
translates into the Bulgarian term for ‘tongue’ (ezik; pl. ezitsi). In this context, the meaning of the
phrase, “you know languages/or tongues” suggests a double entendre regarding the girl’s sexual
prowess as well as her intellectual abilities. In a less subtle metaphor within the second verse, the
protagonist asks the female student to close her notes and books so the two of them can open
something else. The verb otvariam (‘to open’) in this expression refers to ‘deflowering’ or losing
one’s virginity.
Zarvori tetradkite,
Zatvori bukvarite!
Neka dvamata sŭs teb,
drugo da otvariame.
Close the notebooks,
Close the textbooks.
Let the two of us,
Open something else.
“Frenskata Gimanzia,” Verse 281
This line of suggestive metaphors culminates at the end of the second verse when the protagonist
professes that he does not need to go to France to get what he needs. The colloquial, suggestive
nature of the lyrics mocks education and intellect and gives primacy to female students’ image as
the object of sexual desire and, most directly, to their sexual skill. Thus in this song, the French
language school is also a place students learn the language of love; its female students, its most
gifted practitioners.
Despite the suggestiveness of the lyrics, Trifonov’s “Frenskata Gimnaizia” departs from
mainstream pop-folk colloquial expressions in terms of the character of the lyrics. In this
example, they touch upon a relationship between youthful students and their everyday
experiences. The colloquial language is similarly rooted in expressions characteristic of a
younger postsocialist generation but it is also placed outside of the struggles associated with that
economic and social transition. The nature of the interaction, while suggestive, is still not crude
or pornographic but rather playful and mocking. Yet, poetic and musical markers such as the
ones displayed in “Neka Me Boli” and “Frenskata Gimnazia” are still operationalized,
commodified and, like pop-folk, framed as an opposition of real ‘art.’ The commercial success of
Trifonov’s music relative to the lyrical and musical cues it employs, is therefore considered a
lowbrow form of khaltura, or anticulture, within a commodified music market.
81
See Appendix A, Example 15 for the complete text of the song.
84
All of these aspects of pop-folk are mapped onto Trifonov; he embodies the cultural
polarizations as an individual and as a celebrity. This public and shared understanding is at once
informed by the parallel development of Trifonov’s career and pop-folk and by his association,
since the mid-90s, with mafia conglomerates. In part due to his friendship and business
relationship with companies such as Overgas and Multigroup (discussed in Chapter 2), and his
unapologetic, crude behavior, Trifonov is often labeled as a mutra—the central character of
postsocialist mafia operations, pop-folk’s commodification, and pop-folk’s poetics. This label is
further reinforced by Trifonov’s physical appearance (see Figure 8) and zeal for control within
his own production operations. Collectively, these perceptions have positioned him between the
economics, aesthetics, and cultural meanings of pop-folk as the soundscape of the postsocialist
experience.
Figure 8: Trifonov with his security entourage. 82
Pop-folk and Trifonov are thus intimately and continuously intertwined in a conflicting
dialogue of sociocultural negations rooted in the style’s history and background. First, pop-folk’s
historical roots in the chalga tradition and its bodily and aural manifestations through kuchek
frame it as unclean and backward on the basis of orientalness. That is, pop-folk’s Romani and/or
Turkish musicultural markers are, in fact, considered within a Bulgarian historical continuity of
oppositions: village-urban, people’s music-entertainment music, stylistic homogeneity82
The image is available at http://www.razkritia.com.
85
heterogeneity, eastern-western. The backwardness ascribed to pop-folk is characteristic of the
ways Bulgarians experience their sense of place and self and is always informed by an
understanding of the oriental as uncivilized. On a second level of negation, pop-folk is also
positioned within or between the opposition of high-low culture, wherein it is dubbed as
commercial kitsch, low culture. This discourse is informed both by ideas of neat categorizations
of art forms within communist ideology as well as the similar understanding of postsocialist
capitalism and consumerism as low culture.83 At a third but related, level, pop-folk is also
ambiguously negated outside of its perceived orientalness. That is, it is also a product and an
embodiment of the postsocialist economic distress and political corruption, which gave rise to a
dominant social class of economic criminals. Thus as it is experienced today in Bulgaria, the
tradition of commercial pop-folk is consistently filtered through these complex cultural
sensibilities, which effectively derate it as anti-Bulgarian while simultaneously consuming it. As
part of the modern mythology of postsocialism, pop-folk expresses the experiences of social and
economic transition in Bulgaria and all of its politics, imagery, and paradoxes. This social and
cultural discourse is extended to include Slavi Trifonov and his performance of pop-folk as an
expression and negation of Bulgarianness and nationness. With these ideas in mind, I turn to the
issue of postsocialist national discourse and the role of Trifonov in it as the central topic of
chapter four.
83
Paradoxically, the unclean and heterogeneous stylistic features of pop-folk are also qualities idealized and desired
during the period of socialist restriction as principles of political and individual freedom. Similarly, the idealization
and longing for Western goods and services, including popular culture entertainment, fashion, and music, outside of
the commercial context of pop-folk, are forms of capitalism with which Bulgarian consumers engage without
hesitation.
86
CHAPTER FOUR
NARRATIVES OF THE NATION
I prefer to be called a slave of mass culture and mass taste than to be separated from people. I
want them to accept me as “their boy.”
- Slavi Trifonov
I do not find television to be a determining factor in a national culture. One can feel the spirit of
a nation much stronger in a painting, in the composition of a young composer, in the playing of a
young pianist. TV is not the spirit of a nation.
- Svetlana
Introduction
In The Global Village Revisited (2009), Kathleen Dixon examines the relationships
between political discourse, artistic creativity, and television through case studies of several talk
show formats in different parts of the world. Arguing that historical and cultural contexts play a
central role in the artful production and popularity of these formats, the author establishes a
poignant critique of the connection between political and artistic discourse. “The political,” she
insists, “is often narrowed to a focus on production or ideology, the artistry of text having been
deliberately excluded” (Dixon 2009:2). Similarly, the analytical focus on such television formats
with political commentary is frequently reduced to the pure, and often degrading, entertainment
experiences. Thus, the author sets out to examine the interaction of agency and creativity within
what she terms the ‘political aesthetic,’ which is a means of extending democratic politics but not
necessarily for revolutionary political purposes.
Central to Dixon’s multicultural analysis is her exploration of Slavi Show, which she
discusses as an example of a civic-oriented entertainment show imbued with artful political
aesthetics. Like her, I explore Trifonov’s productions as purposeful and artful interpretations of
specific Bulgarian historical and cultural experiences. Within that, however, I also view them as
complicating facile interpretations of the homogenizing impact of mass media and in terms of
their capacity to highlight the polarizing discourse surrounding Trifonov. As Dixon suggests,
87
Trifonov and his colleagues saw themselves as presenters and interpreters of Bulgarian
history and contemporary politics… they intended the show to represent the Bulgarian
people to remind them of their unique history and achievements, to depict Bulgarians
speaking numerous Bulgarian dialects and from all walks of life, to enable them to speak
back to the nation’s politicians and elites and those of the world, to assist them in their
present difficulties, and mostly, of course, to entertain them (Dixon 2009:65).
Indeed, understanding Trifonov and his show in relation to issues of representation—of the
Bulgarian people and of key civic issues of Bulgarian postsocialist political lifeappears to be a
productive framework for the interpretation of Trifonov’s role and significance in Bulgarian
popular culture and for interpreting the meaning and importance of his music.
With Dixon’s eloquent statement as a departure point, this chapter focuses on the
nationalistic aesthetics underscoring Trifonov’s musical productions, both in the form of
television performance and commercial albums. Specifically, I examine a selection of Trifonov’s
repertoire that consists of arrangements of traditional folkloric songs or appropriations of their
idioms in original formats. The poetic and musical dimensions of his songs, I believe, serve as
reminders of Bulgarian history and cultural experiences and are used by Trifonov to
communicate the nation to Bulgarian audiences in uniquely artful but commodified ways.
The narratives I explore textually and musically are often subtle but profound political
statements about Bulgarian nationhood and ultimately raise questions about the ways the nation
is played, sung, staged, and mediated artfully within popular culture entertainment forms. By
situating these concerns within relevant literature on nationalism and audience experiences and
perceptions, I attempt to discover Trifonov’s strategies for evoking ‘the nation’ with two broader
questions in mind: 1) How is the nation enacted, staged, and broadcast? and 2) How is the nation
flagged continuously and within the everyday? I argue that remembering is a social process that
is central to the narrative purpose and emotional efficiency of the musical and poetic dimensions
of Trifonov’s music. As such, it serves to perpetuate the mythologies and invented traditions of
nationhood and, ultimately, to reproduce ‘the nation.’
88
Nationalism
The nation, nationhood, and nationness have long been rooted in a complex intellectual
discourse, but often as the root causes of dire social and political ramifications.84 These political
and academic propositions are rarely explored as points of multi-ethnic conflict, xenophobia, and
racism outside of their imperialistic, colonialist, and pejorative sense. Until this decade, the
intellectuals, politicians, and philosophers who address nationalism have neglected to situate its
meaning in the everyday discourse and operations of the nation—that is, within the embodied
habits of social life and the people of the nation.85
I consider nationalism to be a “discourse that constantly shapes our consciousness and the
way we constitute the meaning of the world, determining our collective identity and producing
and reproducing us as nationals” (Billing 1995:6).86 Specifically, and building upon this
definition, I interpret the ways Trifonov’s political aesthetics configure Bulgarians as national
selves in specific but subtly artful ways. These strategies, which I call narratives of nationhood,
exploit ideas of nationhood as an emotional space, place, and soundscape through historical
narratives and experiences that ultimately allow Bulgarians to re-imagine their collective identity
as a specific nation amongst a world of nations.
A number of authors have explored the intimate connections between the political and
institutional frameworks of nationalism and the ways they are legitimized, at times through
specific culturally bound, emotionally laden forms.87 These relationships tend to manifest in the
particular links between ‘the people’ of the nation and ‘the state’ as their protector, as well as the
people and their national locale—the geographically bound nation-state. To Gellner, for
example, these connections reveal the invented myths that nationalism perpetuates so as to affirm
itself as a valid and self-evident political principle. Nationalism, then, is a culturally specific
body of myths that stand for a people and their social bond as nation: “Nationalism conquers in
84
I refer specifically to the understanding of nationalism within academia in the early twentieth century when
nationalism became a legitimate subject of academic inquiry.
85
Academic musings concerning the ‘nation’, argues Ozkirimli, evolved through three main stages: primordialism,
modernism, and ethno-symbolism. All of them, however, have neglected to consider the nation as a part of a
discourse of nationalism that is only effective if reproduced on a daily basis. “The fact that nations are invented or
imagined,” within a modernist argument for example, “does not make them any less real to those who believe in
them” (Ozkirimli 2000:222).
86
While variety of ideas may be applicable relative to the understanding of nationalism in postsocialist Bulgaria, my
interest lies outside the scope of a classification- and/or definition-based approach. I only seek to explore the ways
the nation is manifest and the ways such manifestations are constructed through and by Trifonov.
87
See further, Calhoun 1997; Hall 1996; Hobsbawm 1996, 1990; Lutz et.al 1995; Balakrishnan 1993; Smith 1991,
1986, 1971; Bhabha, 1990; Giddens, 1985; Breully, 1982.
89
the name of a putative ‘folk’ culture and its symbolism is drawn from the pristine life of the
Volk, narod, people” (Gellner 1983: 57). As Gellner elaborates, however, nationalist ideologies
invert reality because they perpetuate high culture while pretending to protect folk culture.
Indeed, the power of the social bond of the nation is rooted in the dissemination and simplicity of
its message and in the quantity rather than the quality of its content. The mass communication of
the nationalist message, its simplicity, and the social conditions that give rise to it make it
compelling (Gellner 1983:125).
Like Gellner, Benedict Anderson suggests that nations, as imagined communities, are
based on a “profound emotional legitimacy” (2006:4) because they manufacture associations
with an immemorial past to which they give political expression. The attachment that people feel
for the inventions of their imaginations is perpetuated by the sense of kinship and camaraderie
within this type of imagined community. Anderson insists that, despite the injustice and
inequality that may exist therein, the attachment to the nation is characterized by a simultaneous
expression of love and hatred in nationalist feelings. The cultural products of such feelings
(poetry, music, art, prose) articulate such political love in specific language idioms (motherland
and home) wherein the connection between locale and people is “naturalized” (ibid., 143). As
communities imagine themselves as nations through language, they also fashion their own
continuity, as well as the experience of this continuity through memory and tropes of national
identity.
Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983) similarly echo the continuity of past and present within
national discourse. They insist that (national) traditions are always invented in the sense that they
formalize and ritualize their own legitimacy by exploring and inventing connections with a
suitable historical past. Traditions apply old models to new problems and thus establish a
historical continuity, which is often “factitious.” The authors stress that traditions “are responses
to novel situations which take the form or reference to old situations, or which establish their
own past by quasi-obligatory repetition” (Hobsbowm and Ranger 1983: 2). As a set of social
practices imbued with symbolic meanings, traditions instill values through repetition and through
a continuity with the past implied by way of such repetition (ibid.,1).
Michael Billing (1995) also finds repetition to be a central tenet of nationalism because it
encompasses the habitual aspects of daily discourse wherein the continual flagging of the nation
is inhabited through the familiar: “…it is not a flag which is being consciously waved with
90
fervent passion; it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building” that registers the nation
unconsciously” (Billing 1995:8). By examining the routine, daily forms of nationalism such as
television and print news, political speeches, and sports events, the author insists that
nationalism, its symbols and assumptions, passes unnoticed. Through habitual but subtle
language cues, however, the forgettable notions of nationhood are re-imagined by its citizens as
members of the nation through continuous reminders of the national homeland-as-home. These
banal forms of nationalism, stresses Billing, are particularly powerful because they suggest that
notions of nationhood are both deeply embedded in contemporary ways of thinking and so
ideologically powerful, so familiar, that they “hardly seem noticeable” (ibid.,12). The
understated tone of nationalism is found in the mass media, in the sporting pages, and in the
words of politicians and their clichés about the society and the nation. These habitual aspects of
daily social life talk to a collective “us” as a nation living in a state-bound, national home. It is
through these ordinary reminders, claims Billing, within a constant dialectic of forgetting and
remembering that people are reminded of their national identity and are reproduced as nationals.
Tim Edensor (2002) also explores the recurring and often unreflexive experience of the
nation within the everyday, with a particular focus on state-regulated, ritualized practices and the
manipulation of space as an emotionally charged synonym of the nation. “Repetition,” he writes,
“is essential to a sense of identity, for without recurring experiences and unreflexive habits there
would be no consistency given to experience, no temporal framework within which to make
sense of the world” (Edensor 2002: 96). The mundane elements of shared national experience
are, however, complemented by occasionally highly charged popular rituals, wherein the
communal experience and emotional legitimacy of the nation is cemented in public performance.
While such occasions vary from state-regulated celebrations to music concerts, sport events, and
carnivals, their significance lies in the ways their organization is underscored by key actors
coordinating the sequence of events and entraining the participants and audience (ibid.,73). The
regulators of such social performances both script (that is, stage, improvise, choreograph) the
performance and they allow people to ascribe shared meaning to that script. In other words,
coordinators create a context through which an audience can, together, enact and contribute to a
highly charged expression of national identity.
91
Narrating the Nation
Ideas of place, homeland, and their emotive responses are also central in the poetic and
musical narratives of a large portion of Trifonov’s repertoire. Often, a number of these songs are
arrangements of folkloric songs or original songs reproducing their signature musical and poetic
idioms. Significantly, these selections always make use of specific folkloric repertoires and/or
evoke two specific moments of Bulgarian history: 1) the early period of Ottoman rule (roughly
around the fifteenth century) and the body of khaidushki pesni (khaiduk songs) dating back to
that period; and 2) the so-called Revival Period (in the late nineteenth century) and the body of
revolutionary, patriotic songs composed during that period. Both of these specific historical
moments are instrumental in the narration of the Bulgarian postsocialist nation because they
represent particular struggles relative to its construction.
The former body of folkloric songs captures the experiences of Bulgarian people during
the Ottoman rule, including the development of a resistance movement against the Ottoman
rulers known as khaiduti (sometimes used interchangeably with khŭshove). The latter repertoire
explores their persistence and role in the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire in
1876, which marked the birth of the contemporary Bulgarian nation. Thus, both of these folkloric
and patriotic narratives represent related experiences of (national) struggle that connect distinct
periods of the Bulgarian nationhood. The nature and relationship between these historical
experiences is significant for the nation and Trifonov’s interpretation of it in several ways: 1)
they represent a level of tenacity against cultural erasure; 2) both invoke ideas of community,
comradery, and brotherhood as central to such tenacity; 3) the realization of such social values
and ideals is intimately tied to the landscape (Balkan, as in the region and the Bulgarian
mountain range) as home, i.e. the homeland; and, 4) these values are important because they
have been forgotten in a postsocialist time that has fractured the nation.
What is striking about these repertoires is that, in their re-imagined context as
contemporary popular music performed by Trifonov and his band, they are rarely commercially
popular but are frequently considered as more musically and poetically pristine than his
commercial pop-folk hits. The variety of performance contexts and mediums through which
these national narratives emerge is also important because they encompass both the mundane,
unreflexive dimensions of the everyday discussed by Billing, as well as the spectacle of grand
performance stressed by Edensor. In all cases, repetition, emotion, subtlety of language (musical
92
or poetic), and carefully scripted performance seem to create a particularly affective and
effective narrative of the nation that makes sense only to Bulgarian people. The following
examples explore each of these themes in greater detail through audience reflections in order to
situate the specificity of ‘suitable historical past’ as a cultural experience with particular
emotional potency.
Poeticizing the Nation
My conversation with Tommy, a high school senior, took place in the schoolyard of the
Music School in Plovdiv in the spring of 2009. Unlike most of my other young interviewees,
Tommy seemed to have a particularly outgoing personality and strong opinions regarding
Trifonov’s cultural significance and musicianship. Without much hesitation, Tommy professed
his genuine love and admiration for both Trifonov and his music. “I love him!” he exclaimed. “I
love the ways he lifts up the spirit of Bulgarian people, the national spirit!” The reason, Tommy
explained, was that Trifonov and his band somehow showed that they love Bulgaria, and that
love for the nation, was reciprocated: “people love him,” insisted Tommy, and that made
Trifonov a real patriot. That type of audience love was also a determining factor in Trifonov’s
commercial success, my interviewee insisted, but was also complemented by Trifonov’s
leadership abilities. I suggested that Bulgarian popular culture had developed much hearsay
regarding Trifonov’s dictatorial, abusive behavior as a leader. Tommy, however, found these
negative rumors to be evidence of strong qualities such as determination and manhood. These
were personal characteristics Trifonov needed in order to produce a show, and its accompanying
musical elements, of high quality. “That does not mean that they (the band and scriptwriters) do
not have camaraderie. Slavi has to be this way, like a real khŭsh, you know?!”
Tommy also considered patriotism as a central theme in all of the commercial mediums
of Trifonov’s career: “the tours are very patriotic, the show is always patriotic, and I like that
very much,” he stressed. I asked this young Bulgarian musician what specifically made him
believe that Trifonov loves his country and what was so patriotic about his entertainment? “He
just says things that make you feel good, sometimes” he responded. “It is when he talks about the
Bulgarian Revivalists, in the show, and when he does the tours.” Tommy then hesitated and just
as I was preparing to give him a follow-up question he leaned over as if to confide in me and
said: “You know, I travel abroad a lot and when I get home sick I watch his videos, when he
93
talks about Levski and Botev, and it makes me feel better. It makes me feel more complete again,
you know?!”
Indeed, and much like Tommy, I “knew” because I could relate to the emotions he
seemed to have experienced. While this young man became familiar with Trifonov’s music
considerably later than I did, his comments strangely resonated with a feeling that I often
experienced while actively listening to Trifonov’s arrangements of traditional folkloric songs or
watching his live concerts. Living abroad, like Tommy’s experience while away from Bulgaria,
had created a particular visual and aural connection for me with Bulgaria as a home composed of
variety of sites and sounds. Homesickness, it seemed for both Tommy and me, took on both
emotional and physical dimensions that were enhanced or realized through Trifonov’s music and
his references to historical figures of great integrity. Moreover, Trifonov’s musical and
production work seemed to trigger associations with themes of home, manhood, camaraderie,
and the emotional implications these seemed to entail for the Bulgarian audience through a
musical experience. These themes, I believe, were drawn out specifically from the two related
bodies of folkloric and patriotic songs and the experiences, images, and emotions they convey to
Bulgarians.
The term khaiduk or khŭsh (pl. khaidutsi; also khŭshove) that Tommy used to characterize
Trifonov refers to an “outlaw, bandit, robber, and/or a revolutionary” from the late fourteenth
and nineteenth centuries respectively (Kremenliev 1952:112). When Bulgarians could no longer
endure conditions of life under the Turks, they took to the mountains where joined by citizens
like themselves, they resided as renouncers and a form of organized indigenous resistance. In this
context, the khaidutsi were, in every sense of the word, “real people,” but they were also figures
imbued with mythical power whose heroic deeds were meant to liberate their own kin from their
oppressors. A central dynamic of the khaidutsi was their organization as a brotherhood headed
by a voivoda—the leader and most frequent character of the sung narrations. The khaidutsi
resided in the Balkan mountain (or forest). In the traditional khaiduk songs, nature was thus
assigned its own human subjectivity as source of power, refuge, and home becoming a central
character itself.
While the Ottoman rule ceased with Bulgaria’s liberation in 1876, the spirit of these
warriors for freedom and justice endured in the literary works (poems, short stories, and larger
94
narratives) of a subsequent generation of Revival writers88. Inspired by the way national figures
fostered a particular national consciousness and awakened a communal will to fight, poets of the
late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century employed themes from this oral poetic tradition as a
form of “patriotic education” wherein current forms of struggles (such as postsocialist economic
struggle) were regarded through older aesthetics, cultural values, and experiences (Silverman
1983:55).
These sentiments are re-imagined and appropriated by Trifonov through a variety of
language strategies and cues. In 1996 for example, Trifonov and his band released the album
Khŭshove, which included a number of songs evocative of both of these historical periods. Two
years later, Khŭshove became the first television program run independently by Trifonov, as a
leader and host. The circumstances surrounding the emergence of the show, which I explored in
Chapter 2, are akin to the resistance and underground nature of the mythical khaidutsi. These
historical moments, figures, and their qualities were thus mapped onto Trifonov and his creative
team; collectively they considered themselves to be the modern version of the khaidutsi who
carry out their integrity, manly aggression, and love for the motherland.
Nature and Brotherhood
In his work with South-Slavic guslari, Albert Lord posits that themes are central to the
oral tradition of these poet-singers and their process of learning. For Lord, themes are basic
incidents and descriptions that recur within an oral tradition or “groups of ideas regularly used in
telling a tale” (Lord 2000:68). They by no means represent fixed sets of words to be reproduced
in performance contexts by different narrators. “There’s nothing in the poet’s experience,” writes
Lord, “to give him any idea that a theme can be expressed in only one set of words. The theme,
even though it be verbal, is not any fixed set of words, but a grouping of ideas” (ibid., 69).
The Bulgarian khaidushki pesni (khaiduk songs) repertory includes a rich pool of themes;
two central ones are nature and brotherhood. Such groups of ideas often include but are not
limited to narrative/poetic episodes in which khaidutsi address the forest or the mountain, acquire
refuge, food, and power from it, refer to it through kinship terms, and conceive of it broadly as a
home, a providing domain, and a sheltering mother. Additionally, because khaidutsi were always
part of larger groups of outlaws, brotherhood is also an important theme that plays itself out
within the poetics of this repertoire. Much like khaidutsi can only survive because of the
88
The period following Bulgaria’s liberation from the Ottoman rule in 1876 is known as the “Revival” period.
95
protective and empowering aspects of nature, a khaiduk relies on his brethren to win the battles
against their oppressors, to spread justice, and for companionship.
In the following two examples of khaidushki pesni (khaiduk songs) such ideas of
collective (social) power are intermingled with notions of nature. In “Zaplakala e Planinata
(Crying is the Mountain)” from south-central Bulgaria, for example, Indzhe Voivoda89 and the
mountain engage in an intersubjective dialogue wherein the whole of nature experiences the
absence of the hero. As a character, the mountain and its trees, shades, water, and birds, act as
Indzhe’s protective shelter and a comforting home. Nature and human, in this example, interact
as kin and the mountain is assigned a human subjectivity within a relationship of
interdependence: Indzhe needs the mountain as much as the mountain needs him.
Zaplakala e gorata,
gorata i planinata,
i nа gorata dŭrvoto
zaradi Indzhe voivoda:
“Dе dа e Indzhe, dа diode
s petstotin mladi iunatsi,
gorata da razveseliat?”
Crying is the forest,
the forest and the mountain,
and the forest’s tree
for Indze voivoda:
“Where’s Indze, to come
with five hundred young heroes,
and lighten up the forest?”90
In the songs “Goro le Goro Zelena” (“Forest, Green Forest”) this relationship is expressed in a
similar way but from the perspective of the social collective: the entire brotherhood of khaidutsi.
Together, they seek the forest to feed them, protect them, and let them die as one.
Gоrо zelena, nasha stara maika!
Khranish li za nazi,
bŭlgarski khaiduti,
shareni agŭntsa?
Imash li za nazi
shumka dа ni pazish,
sianka dа ni khladish?
V gora da khodime,
v gora da zhiveime,
tebe da vardime,
khaidushki da mreme.
Green forest, old mother of ours!
Do you feed for us
us Bulgarian khaidutsi
colorful sheep?
Do you have for us
a shelter to protect us,
a shade to keep us cool?
So we can come to you,
to live with you forest,
to protect you,
to die like khaidutsi. 91
Indzhe Voivida is a frequent character of haiduk songs. The term “voivoda” refers to his title of leadership within
the khaidutsi brotherhood.
90
Please see Appendix A, Example 9 for the complete text of the song.
91
Please see Appendix A, Example 10 for the complete text of the song.
89
96
The themes of nature and brotherhood in this example merge as the direct speech in the narrative
comes from the perspective of the collective: feed us, shelter us, so we can die together. While
talking to the forest, which has been assigned (and is grammatically gendered female) motherlike qualities, it is the collective brotherhood of khaidutsi that addresses her as their mother.
Moreover, it is only in their communal power, sheltered and protected by their forest mother that
they can die as real khaidutsi. The power of this sentiment is significant because it illuminates
the ways tropes of struggle are reworked through the socialization of nature with people.
As Bauman has noted, the narrative is often subject to subsequent processes of
transformation within performance. Narrators frequently seek to enhance their legitimacy and
establish a direct line to the audience through “webs of intertextuality” (Bauman, 2004:26).
Much like oral poets’ performative spaces, the defining themes of khaidushki pesni are weaved
again into Trifonov’s repertoire. As such, these related bodies of songs are subject to multiple
webs of intertextual connections wherein Trifonov subjects them to what Bauman calls
‘contextualization’ or “the way the narrator situates his story within a lineage of other tellings or
commentaries” (ibid., 31).
Although Trifonov’s repertoire adopts a different language than the songs of the
khaidutsi, his works are similarly evocative of ideas about nature and brotherhood. In the song
entitled “Zvezditse (Little Star)” Trifonov anthropomorphizes a star and engages in a
conversation with her as his sister. The dialogue is presented as direct speech and invokes both
literal and existential themes of life and death.
Ot visoko, zvezditse, ti
Ot visoko men vizhdash li?
Nosht li e ili den- znaesh li,
Zhiv li sŭm ili ne- ia kazhi!
From above you little star,
From above, do you see me?
Is it day or night— do you know?
Am I alive or not— tell me!92
“Zvezditse”: Verse 1
Similarly, the song “Svatba (Wedding)” exemplifies the fluid boundary between human and
nature central to the khaidushka pesen repertoire. Here the narrator makes all elements of nature
his family and presents them as assets to his future bride. Much like in the khaiduk songs, the
theme here assigns the whole of nature a human subjectivity that is also a source of power:
92
Please, refer to Appendix A, Example 11 for full text and translation of the song.
97
Planinata mi e maika,
A bashta mi, buen viatŭr beshe
Brat mi е moreto tŭmno,
Ludite trevi sa mi sestritthe
Еi takŭv sŭm, sаm ti kazvam,
Ti kazhi samo dali me iskash!
The Mountain is my mother,
my father was the wild wind.
My brother is the dark sea,
crazy grass fields are my sisters.
That’s how I am, I am telling you,
you say if you want me!93
“Svatba”: Verse 1
The themes of brotherhood also persist in Trifonov’s repertoire and further illustrate the
way he aligns, or re-contextualizes, his narrative with past ways of telling the same story. The
opening piece of the album Khŭshove, “Boiat Nastana” (“The Fight Has Come”) conveys ideas
of the social collective power through a general plea and specific key words that make direct
references to the times of Ottoman domination. The terms dushmani (oppressors) and raia
(servants, slaves), always used in reference to the Turkish rulers and Bulgarian slaves
respectively, are particularly evocative metaphors in relation to that period in history.
An additional reference, the phrase “we’ve broken the dirty chains,” positions this song
narrative within an intertextual framework through the visual imagery of struggle. The chains
here not only represent the way Turkish rulers physically chained Bulgarians and moved them to
places of execution if they refused to convert to Islam, but they also symbolize a commitment to
community, who remain linked together even in death. This phrase is not only idiomatic to
Revival literature that is familiar to most native Bulgarians, but it also contains intertextual and
experiential lines between moments of struggle:
Boiat nastana, tupat sŭrtsata ni
Eto gi blizo nashte dushmani
Kurazh druzhina, viarna sgovorna
Nii ne sme veche raia pokorna
Neka pred sveta da se pokazhem
Neka po-gordo bratia da kazhem
Che sme stroshili mrŭsni okovi
Che sme svobodni a ne robove.
The fight has come, our hearts are beating
Here they are, near, our dushmani
Courage loyal and united brothers
We are no longer quiet raia
Let us show ourselves to the world
Let us say, more proudly, brothers
That we’ve broken the dirty chains
That we are free, not slaves. 94
“Boiat Nastana”: Verse 1
In regard to enslavement, the song asserts the semi-violent, mythical powers of khaidutsi and
their courage to stand together in the fight for justice. The essential themes of brotherhood as a
93
94
See Appendix A, Example 12 for complete text of “Svatba.”
See Appendix A, Example 13 for the full text and translation of the song.
98
source of strength and power is curiously similar to the ways traditional khaiduk songs evoke
collectivity and social unification. In both traditional and Trifonov’s repertoire, then, such
themes formulate a body of ideas relating to the community as nation and construct specific
language cues with historical and cultural implications. These types of cues, however, are not
ubiquitous to poetic and lyrical content as they also emerge in the equally intertextual
dimensions of Trifonov’s musical sound.
Sounding the Nation
“I think his music is too manufactured,” said Elena. “It is too much,” she elaborated, “of
a showing off for the foreigners, but I do admit that his band has some amazing musicians.” “He
is always trying to portray the best of what we can do, as Bulgarians in front of a foreign guest:
you know, it is that specific impression he’s going for,” added Elena’s husband Decho. “One
time he had some American guest visiting his show and he asked the clarinet player to play
something that represents who we are as Bulgarians. The guy started this motive, you cannot
imagine child,” he addressed me since I was approximately the same age as his own children.
“My eyes watered,” he continued. “Not that I am a poet, but this melody was this sweet elegy
that felt deep and heavy. It is the kind of heaviness that, as a Bulgarian, I feel deep down in my
gut and then an entire succession of images and history emerges: the lines of enslaved Bulgarians
chained together and dragged around by the Turks, their chopped off heads hanging on sticks, all
that suffering. And this clarinetist, this monster of a musician, played like that for ten minutes?!
Can you believe that?!” I asked both Decho and Elena why it is they thought that Slavi does that?
“It’s simple, child, it is crucial that we ‘appear’ with integrity and that we present our best suit to
the foreign, and especially the transatlantic guests,” said Decho and winked at me entertained by
his own subtle cynicism.
The sentiment that Decho expressed regarding Trifonov’s music, however, is not limited
to presentational moments in his television show. Indeed, the construction of what the Bulgarian
nation sounds like is often characterized by idioms typically found in folkloric repertoires. On a
micro level, these include anything from the employment of complex meters (such as 5/8, 7/8,
8/8, and 9/8) to improvisatory styles and ornamentation gestures associated with different
Bulgarian folkloric regions. Similarly, on a macro level, these melodic and rhythmic elements
define the formal structure of the song arrangements, which frequently begin with a slow, free
improvisation. In these opening sections of the songs, the arrangements characteristically use the
99
voice, the clarinet, or the trumpet as a melodic feature. The rest of the song follows the
instrumental solo wherein the minute rhythmic and melodic elements mentioned above are
employed as musical markers signifying the ‘folk,’ or the people of the nation.
As Decho expressed, the emotional potency of the solo clarinet, within a traditional
Bulgarian idiom, had a particular extramusical association for him. The nature of the imagery
this musical experience triggered for him, however, is significant because the style of
improvisatory solo playing has a long-standing tradition within folkloric repertoires and on
traditional instruments such as kaval (an end-blown aerophone) and gaida (bagpipe). The history
of these repertoires and their musical aesthetics are also engrained in Bulgarian ways of thinking
about the times of Ottoman history of the country. Because multiple bodies of traditional
repertoires poeticize the Bulgarian struggles and suffering during the Ottoman period in vocal
timbres and improvisatory solo instrumentation (such as kaval, gaida, and more recently
clarinet), the intricate connection between the imagery of that past has been realized in the
timbres and stylistics of a solo clarinet such as the one Decho described in the context of the
performance he watched on Slavi Show. As musical techniques, instrumentation, timbre, melodic
forms, and rhythmic gestures can create a culturally specific imagery that somehow alludes to a
significant, and arguably, emotional ‘national’ moment. Such musical details, I believe, are
notable in the construction of the nation because Trifonov’s band employs them frequently
within formal song arrangements and/or re-arrangements.
In Trifonov’s interpretation of the well-known song from the Pirin region “Nazad Nazad
Mome Kalino (Back Away Maiden Kalina)” for example, a lengthy clarinet solo akin to the one
referenced by Decho enhances the overall melancholic character of the song. The song is a
conversation between two lovers. One part is realized by Trifonov, the other by a female singer,
and they alternate verses. The dire emotional content of the song, concerning the impossible love
of a man and a woman during Ottoman times, is captured at once by the drawn out opening
clarinet solo, as well as the overall, modal melodic framework (Phrygian mode with a raised 6th
scale degree).95 The clarinet solo is in free rhythm and has ornaments in the style of folkloric
idiom (see musical example 1 and audio example 5).
95
The modal framework of the piece may be thought of as a relative to a maqam hidjaz, which is used very
frequently in Bulgarian folkloric repertoires.
100
Musical Example 1: Opening clarinet solo, “Nazad, Nazad Mome Kalino.”
Audio Example 5: Opening clarinet solo, “Nazad, Nazad Mome Kalino”
The original text and rhythmic structure (in 7/8) following this opening are retained, but
Trifonov’s voice is significantly heavier in feel, which stresses the melancholic nature of the text.
As Decho suggested in his experience, the solo clarinet here is crucial in establishing the mood
and a sense of the cultural metaphors characteristic of this song’s poetics. The ornamentation
techniques and timbral nuances contribute to the sense of emotional heaviness and a dark view of
the past.
The imagery and extramusical associations of the solo clarinet are also notable in the title
song from Trifonov’s album Novite Varvari (The New Barbarians, 2001). Unlike the previous
example, this is an original composition, but it also utilizes the solo timbres and capabilities of
101
the clarinet in similar musical ways and, arguably, for similar extra musical purposes. Once
again, the clarinet solo is extensive (over fifty seconds), in free meter, and makes use of a variety
of ornamental techniques such as melodic additions and pitch bending (see musical example 2).
Musical Example 2: Partial transcription of opening clarinet solo, "Novite Varvari."
The song explores ideas of indigenous power and strength by addressing the perceptions
of Bulgaria as a barbarian Balkan country vis-à-vis Western European integration.96 In
Trifonov’s vision, the new barbarians are the new postsocialist Bulgarian generation whose life
is shaped by both Western European and Balkan ways of life. In-between perceived ruralness
and urbanization, capitalist consumerism and indigenous values, they are very powerful because
they can negotiate the best from both worlds into a new understanding of Europe.97 This idea is
explored through juxtaposition and layering of musical textures and stylistic idioms and most
notably within the opening and the refrain sections of the piece. Significantly, the timbre of the
clarinet and its melodic elaborations are meant to signify the Balkan aspect of the suggested new
identity. The overall style of this instrumental solo is more dazzling and piercing, making wider
use of the extremes of the instrument’s registers and its dynamic capabilities (audio example 6).
96
97
See Appendix B, Example 2 for a transcription of the album’s liner notes.
Please refer to Appendix A, Example 17 for the complete lyrical content of the song.
102
Audio Example 6: clarinet solo, “Novite Varvari”
The clarinet solo thus conveys a sense of intense urgency that characterizes the power of the
Balkan identity. As a musical strategy then, the clarinet timbre is used as a cultural cue and as a
way to suggest and reformulate experiences of Ottoman times and postsocialist times.
Another notable strategy of sounding the nation finds expression in the specific ways
Trifonov and his band re-imagine traditional folkloric or patriotic songs musically. Once again,
the musical techniques within this process have to do with timbres, instrumentation, and the
formal design of the music. Their rendition of another song from the western region of
Pirin,“Katerino Mome (Katerina Maiden),” is a notable example of these techniques, as is its
perception amongst audience members as particularly powerful and touching. This sentiment
was expressed by both Iveta, a pathologist in her early 60s, and a middle school student who
stated that unlike other portions of Trifonov’s repertoire, this song was performed ot sârtse
(‘from the heart’). This perception, I believe, is informed by the musical re-imagining of the song
as compared to its more traditional renditions. In a performance by the Pirin Folklore Ensemble,
“Katerino Mome” is performed by a female vocalist and an orchestra of traditional instruments
including tambura (a plucked chordophone), kaval (an end-blown flute), and a small drum of the
tŭpan variety. The formal structure of the song alternates between a sung verse and orchestral
interludes (see audio examples 7 and 8), which largely comprise the main melodic and rhythmic
material of the song. Within each verse the melodic instruments double the vocalist’s melodic
material with little variation or improvisation. The rhythmic framework of the piece is
established immediately and the drum sustains the main rhythmic formula throughout with
miniscule change.
Audio Example 7: Katerino Mome, verse, performed by Pirin Folklore Ensemble
103
Audio Example 8: Katerino Mome, orchestral interlude, performed by Pirin Folklore Ensemble
In Trifonov’s arrangement, the main melodic and rhythmic components of the song are,
alternatively, stretched out and redistributed within the musical texture of the entire band. Instead
of a solo singer, the song is performed by two female singers and by the full Ku Ku band, which
includes two rhythm guitars, a solo guitar, an electric bass, a drum set, a full percussion section,
a clarinet, a saxophone, a trumpet, and a keyboard. The general distribution of the parts is broken
up so that two lines of text are interrupted by an instrumental interlude and the last verse of the
song is fully omitted, incidentally where all of the poetic references to the western Bulgarian
region of Pirin exist within the song.98 The texture of the song is fully reimagined musically so as
to build and stress the musical rather than the poetic content of the piece. Trifonov’s rendition
begins with solo keyboard and voice, which are subsequently joined by a steady bass and drums
during the first interlude. With each verse and interlude for the duration of the song, an
additional layer of rhythm and layer of instrumentation is added so that, musically, the songs
become thicker and louder (audio example 9).
Audio Example 9: “Katerino Mome,” verse, performed by Trifonov and Ku Ku Band
The depth of musical activity is enhanced by the pronounced and rock-inspired bass part, as well
as the overall distortion in all of the guitar parts. Similarly, the rhythmic dimension of the piece
has a particular sense of urgency and speed, unlike the more relaxed Pirin ensemble version,
because the original rhythmic pattern is appropriated by the drum set and is subjected to variety
of fills and subdivision with a notable affinity to pop rock music (audio example 10).
Audio Example 10: “Katerino Mome,” instrumental interlude, performed by Trifonov and Ku Ku Band
98
See Appendix A, Example 18 for the complete text and translation of the song.
104
Performing the Nation
The poetic and musical strategies I have mentioned in the previous examples become
particularly powerful in the context of Trifonov’s live concert performances. Within these grand
spectacles, the nation is also choreographed, scripted, lit, amplified, and ultimately performed on
a mass scale. The audience’s experience of the nation in these performance contexts is notably
different. While listening privately to Trifonov’s songs provides to his fans an intimate,
individual experience with imagery and emotions significant in terms of what Bulgaria is, the
live concert allows for these emotions to merge with that of a community.
Such experiences were shared with me in two contrasting perspectives vis-à-vis
Trifonov’s live concerts. Vania, a professor at the Plovdiv Medical Academy in her late 50s,
considered it an uplifting and powerful venue for expressing both the self and the community. “I
felt like I lost all inhibitions!” she insisted. “And even though we did not have the best seats or
anything,” she continued, “once you were amongst all of these young people, yelling, and
screaming, and singing together, you forget who you are. You forget how old you are and simply
become one with everyone else, expressing your emotions almost like at a soccer game,” she
concluded her thought with laughter. Most interestingly, this sensation did not take on the same
form when she experienced Trifonov’s music at home and/or in a television broadcast. “You
cannot compare it to television,” Vania argued. “Yes, you can see the people getting into it, but
when you are there and they start singing about Bulgaria and you see how everyone unites,
becomes one, just like when a Bulgarian team wins something. And it is as if they all lift up
Bulgaria high and above and you feel touched and proud, and happier!”
Trifonov’s 2003 national tour, entitled ”The Great Fatherland Tour,” contextualized
Vania’s experience and general sentiment in particularly powerful way because they extended
the idea of community to that of the community as a nation in a live performance at a soccer
stadium. The concert in Stara Zagora attracted over twelve thousand attendees at the city’s
soccer stadium and it included a lavish spectacle of fireworks, sophisticated lighting and sound,
dance numbers, comic sketches, and the music of Trifonov and his Ku-Ku band. At the
conclusion of the performance, Trifonov lined up all of the performers on stage and announced,
“This is Bulgaria!” On a large screen above the stage, the audience saw a blank Bulgarian map
on which portraits of pivotal historical and revolutionary figures from Bulgarian history were
pasted one after another. “Bulgaria is not just the territories, it is the people. Bulgaria is you!” he
105
exclaimed, and the audience at the stadium applauded enthusiastically as they jumped up from
their seats. “I know that one day,” continued Trifonov, “we will all be speaking a common
language, and that will be the language of the national soul, the language of love for the nation.
Dear friends, the people of the nation always perform in unison.” In perfect timing, the hyped-up
narrative weaved into a pop-rock ballad arrangement of a mid-nineteenth-century Revival poem
by Dobri Chintulov titled “Kŭde si Viarna ti Liubov Narodna (Where Are You, Truthful Love of
the Nation?).” As the band and Trifonov ‘rocked out’ on stage, the edited version of the live
performance switched to a wide camera angle that displayed an audience ranging from children
to adults that waved Bulgarian flags and sang along with Trifonov in full voice and with their
entire bodies. There at the soccer stadium, in the context of the elevated emotion that such a
musical performance brings about, they embraced each other and with teary eyes appeared to
become a collective in unison with an emotive affinity to a Bulgarian nation.
The narrative in this performance is arguably even more potent for nationhood, for in this
case, it is exemplified not simply in ephemeral ideas of collectivity, harmony, and respect.
Rather, these ideas are structured visually and aurally through selective images (of revolutionary
figures from the late nineteenth century such as Vasil Levski and Khristo Botev) and through
reformulated and updated musical sounds of the original Bulgarian nationhood (again dating
back to the late nineteenth-century Revival period). “Let us be the conductors of our own
destiny, relying only on ourselves and the truthful, everlasting love for the nation,” Trifonov
proclaimed against the backdrop of the opening chords of “Kâde si Viarna ti Liubov Narodna.”
The song’s original text is retained but the context of its presentation, a pop music concert at a
soccer stadium embellished by an elaborate video presentation on the stadium’s Jumbotron,
suggests that its central themes of suffering and national integrity are adjusted and reformulated
to connect these two distinct but related social and historical moments with the experience of
Bulgarian people.
Bairiatsi bŭlgarski navred da vdignem,
sŭs krŭst v rŭka kŭm Boga da izviknem:
O, nash sŭzdateliu Khriste,
ia vizh ot iasnoto nebe,
nasheto mŭchenie i dŭlgoto tŭrpenie.
99
Let us raise the Bulgarian flags everywhere
with a cross in hand, let us call to God:
Oh, Christ, creator of ours,
Look upon us from the clear sky,
at our suffering and prolonged patience.
“Kŭde si Viarna ti Liubov Narodna ”: Verse 399
Please refer to Appendix A, Example 19 for the complete text of the song.
106
The musical dimensions of the song retain the original verse-chorus structure of Chintulov’s
poetics as well as its melodic contour. Yet, the arrangement resembles a 1980s power ballad
wherein instrumental interludes and extensive guitar solos embellish the form, and the musical
texture becomes thicker with the progression of the song. The arrangementis thus an effective
recontextualization of a traditional patriotic song, now rendered an additional layer of affect
through musical, visual, and performative expansiveness and magnitude.
In a different conversation I had regarding Trifonov’s live performances, Vera, also in
her late 50s, noted that her experience at one of his concerts was rather unpleasant. She
purposefully detailed the fact that the crowd of young people suffocated her and that she did not
enjoy being around the screaming and yelling. This live event, she shared with me, was
expansive and impressive, but was not uplifting as a communal experience, as it had been for
Vanya. What did impress Vera, however, was the use of choreography and folklore-inspired
dancing throughout the concert. To her, Ethnika, which is the ensemble regularly used in
Trifonov’s concerts, represented a kind of a unique Bulgarian traditional authenticity, which also
projected and preserved the tradition of Bulgaria in ethnic/folkloric arts. “When these guys stand
on stage, they are like a Bulgarian national embroidery,” she shared. “They uplift you as a
Bulgarian! As if the feeling of being Bulgarian is somehow in their black and white robes and in
the way they cross their hands, like human embroidery.”
Boasting a traditional flavor, Ethnika is a part of Trifonov’s artistic contingency that is
always incorporated into the visual performance of his repertoires. The ensemble consists of both
male and female dancers and, as Vera indicated, their dress often includes sleek, fitted, white
costumes with a black sash around the waist. Neither the choreography nor the costume design
can be attributed to any specific Bulgarian folkloric region, but each bears distant relationships to
west-southwest Bulgaria. The lack of such specific characteristics in design and performance
style, however, makes it easier for a general audience to accept it broadly as ‘folkloric’ and/or
‘traditional’ and, accordingly, emote with it. Modern choreography contextualizes it within a
spectacle of a live popular music concert, wherein a similarly re-imagined musical number is
complemented by the dance. These general characteristics are always employed at Trifonov’s
live shows as was in the performance of “Koi Ushi Bairiaka (Who Made the Flag)” during the
same 2003 Great Fatherland Tour. Originally appearing on the fittingly titled 2003 album Vox
107
Populi (The Voice of the People), during the live performance, Ethnika created the visual aura,
confirming Vera’s perceptions. The male dancers dressed in the signature costume of black and
white described previously, danced around the singing Slavi Trifonov, each carrying a tŭpan.
The drums were subsequently used in a variety of acrobatic and standing formations, often
providing the base of a type of human pyramid that the dancers formed (see Figure 9).
Figure 9: Dancers from ensemble Ethnika in a pyramid formation over tŭpan drums.100
Within its unconventional choreography, the dancers frequently froze in position and
from a distance, as my interviewee Vera noted, the visual impression was of a black and white
fabric or embroidery. Despite her genuine admiration for this type of performance art and its
convincing visual aesthetic, Vera strongly objected to the context of performance of this dance
ensemble and the ways in which they were being used by Trifonov to represent Bulgaria. “They
are amazing,” stressed Vera, “but it is not their place to be with Slavi and nor is it his place to
represent them commercially as the face of Bulgaria.”
Broadcasting the Nation
Television provides another medium for impressing ideas of the nation that is similar to
the musical, emotional, and narrative representations in the live concert performance. Trifonov’s
The image was retrieved from the ensemble’s group facebook page in 2011. The page has since been archived
and this image is no longer available.
100
108
talk show, like his concert tours, explores such ideas frequently and within well-placed moments
that carry significance for his audience as Bulgarian nationals. “We do not watch his show that
much anymore but he has nice broadcasts on national celebrations and other significant national
events,” Margarita and Nikolai shared with me. This pair, a couple at retirement age, avidly
expressed their dislike for Trifonov’s music and even his television program. Yet, they found
Trifonov’s show to be an important vehicle for the celebration of Bulgarian nationhood on days
like March 3— Independence Day—which marks the anniversary of Bulgaria’s liberation from
Ottoman rule in 1876. “I think it’s a good thing,” Margarita exclaimed. “When he honors that
day by talking about some unknown war hero or whatever, he shows that he cares,” insisted
Nikolai. “He is reminding us that there is something to be proud of, something of value here in
Bulgaria, in our history, our traditions. I personally think that this is a good thing,” concluded
Margarita.
Since the inception of Trifonov’s Slavi Show in 2001, the discussion and presentation
(musical or otherwise) of moments of Bulgarian history and figures within that history has been
a recurring theme. Such special editions of the daily television show hosted by Trifonov often
focus on storytelling that both magnifies and personalizes the past for the individual viewer
through the medium of television. As the most elevated national celebration day, March 3 figures
prominently in national broadcasts. On that day, Trifonov, his band, and scriptwriters frequently
present stories of well-known historical events related to Bulgaria’s liberation from Ottoman
rule, as well as later military involvements of Bulgaria in conflicts such as the WWI and the
Balkan wars of the early-twentieth century. These take on the form of a direct documentary-style
narratives, which air from special locations outside of the television studio in Sofia, and/or
interviews with guests outside of the show’s usual celebrity visitors.
On March 3 of 2004, for example, Slavi Show featured three guests of high military rank
in the Bulgarian armed forces (army, special forces, and air force, respectively), who humbly
spoke of their achievements despite being highly decorated officers. Similarly in 2008, Trifonov
featured a detailed story about a commander of the Bulgarian army who fought during the
Balkan wars of the early-twentieth century. The emphasis of the story was on this commander’s
status as a hero, previously unknown to many Bulgarians, who exemplified the virtues of the
nation’s military force. Information about the life of the commander was paired with documents
and images related to his story, including several poems he had written. His achievements and
109
death in battle were contextualized as markers of personal sacrifice for the good of the whole.
“The story of a forgotten hero who is an example of what it means to give up all for honor and
dignity,” Trifonov said in his introductory remarks.
These stories are always accompanied by artful renditions of Trifonov’s arrangements of
folkloric songs, which are meant to enrich the stories aurally and which allow the television
viewer to linger on the content through a specific soundscape. Thus, the common themes
emphasized in Trifonov’s special broadcast somehow link the idea of courage, dignity, and
bravery with both a musical narrative and a social narrative about the ‘regular’ person’s capacity
for distinctive difference. Such themes have a definite effect on the audience but they are often
described in emotional and ephemeral terms. “He shows some kind of involvement when he
does these shows,” said Elena, a student of age sixteen. “And, it is true,” she continued,
“sometimes he does say things that make you feel good, that make you celebrate who you are as
a Bulgarian. And, I do not know if he is a patriot, but that is what he projects in his statements, in
his show, and in his music.”
It is notable that Trifonov’s engagement and reproduction of historical events and figures
in his work has not only been interpreted as love for the country-as patriotism, but also as a
political position that represented the ‘people’ as a collectivity and nation. Trifonov teases out
the image of the ‘people’ in a variety of narratives. “I think he really protects our interests in the
sphere of media,” shared Peter, a fourteen-year-old, well-spoken student. “I suppose that also
makes his show political but it is also entertaining,” Peter explained. I asked this articulate
teenager if he could elaborate on the ways Trifonov defended his and mine interests and how this
was helpful. His position was critical as he considered that within the realm of media, the
advancement of the ‘people’s interest’ also meant audience ratings, and arguably the
advancement of one’s own interests as well. Yet, to Peter, the show was useful because it was
not only entertaining but also educational. “I know some people really take him and the show
way too seriously,” he said, “but I think he makes a good show and it can be somewhat
educational, as well.” The recounting of stories of unknown, forgotten heroes that may be part of
the Bulgarian national narrative take on the form of teaching and reminding through television
broadcasting that blurs image, sound, and memory into a simultaneous, personalized experience
for a large audience.
110
Educationabout dignity, camaraderie, and military glory as aspects of the nationwas
also directly accomplished in the narrative on Trifonov’s show for Independence Day in 2011.
The broadcast aired from Trifonov’s hometown, the city of Pleven, a site of significant events
and battles at the conclusion of the war of liberation in the late-1800s. Again, the tenor of the
spoken narrative was shaped by themes of brotherhood, courage, dignity, and sacrifice relative to
the end of Ottoman occupation and to the historic city of Pleven. “On this day,” began Trifonov,
looking at the camera directly, “I decided to come back to Pleven, my hometown and a town that
played a central role in the events during the Russian-Turkish Liberation War. This may be a
cliché,” he continued, “but I grew up in this town surrounded by places where some of the
bloodiest battles of this war took place. I decided to tell you a story today about that, because it
seems to me that if we are all truly Bulgarian, then we should all care about that. This town of
Pleven marked the beginning of the end of the war. During the five- month occupation of the
town by Turkish forces, over 30,000 people died on the side of the Bulgarian liberation forces.
Perhaps this would also sound like a cliché but it is true that here the land is sacred because it is
soaked with the blood of the people who sacrificed themselves for our freedom: my personal
freedom and your personal freedom, dear viewers!”
The tone of Trifonov’s monologue was powerful both because he framed it as a reaction
to the lack of understanding and knowledge about Bulgaria’s history and because of his personal
connection to the story. His direct yet relaxed speech style and gaze, as well as the camera frame,
created an affect of intimacy wherein Trifonov addressed one person, rather than a million
television viewers. This talk-show technique of inclusion, gave an emotive power to his opening
rhetorical question: “Do young people really know what happened on that day?!” It also
activated the viewers’ emotional connection to the events from a distant past, which inform who
they are as Bulgarian nationals.
The political dimension of Trifonov’s opening monologue is also notable because he
expressed a value for education, indoctrination, and remembrance relative to the idea of a nation.
Unlike Bulgarian politicians, however, Trifonov artfully presented a position in an
understandable language that lacks jargon and in front of a background that portrayed the
Ottoman-Bulgarian battles at the cite of Pleven. Accordingly, the show also concluded with a
thought by the mightiest leader of the Bulgarian liberation movement, the national hero Vasil
Levski. Said Trifonov, “Our apostle of freedom had these words once: ‘No one can stand against
111
the storm of our peoplehood to live free, independent, and united.’” This purposeful reminder,
silently and without any introduction, transitioned to an acoustic performance of “Kâde si Viarna
ti Liubov Narodna” by Dobri Chintulov. As the central topic of the broadcast, the nation was not
just narrated, quoted, and visualized, but it was also sounded within a context of remembrance.
Remembering the Nation
When thinking about the ways Trifonov’s productions configure the nation in musical,
poetic, and performative ways, it is striking that these media complement each other in terms of
the experience and memory of the nation. Within poetics and musical language, such experience
constitutes two discursive processes. On one hand, they are distinctly private and intimate
experiences wherein the individual listener can be subjected to a type of linguistic and musical
rhetoric with emotive implications—emotive because they trigger associations that are at once
ephemeral and culturally specific. On the other, the rhetoric is also simultaneously
microscopic—embedded in minute usage of familiar poetic and musical utterances—as well as
representational. Familiar, prosaic habits of language such as ‘us,’ ‘we,’ ‘the people,’ ‘our,’ and
‘here’ are embedded in the fabric of the everyday, but they act as reminders of nationhood
because they equate ‘the people’ with the ‘nation’ and ‘the homeland’ (Billing 1995: 94). These
subtle but recurring reminders, or flags, can be found in the specific poetics used by Trifonov to
suggest collectivity and brotherhood, as represented in phrases such as “we’ve broken the dirty
chains,” “let us raise our flags,” and “let us be the conductors of our own destiny.”
Ornamentation, the clarinet timbre, and the irregular and complex meters are culturally
specific musical elements that reinforce the meaning of who Bulgarians may be as a nation. They
are representational in the sense that they stand for the people, speaking, acting, and sometimes
waving flags on its behalf (Billing 1995:98). This process of depiction of the nation through
poetic and musical language, however, is not always straightforward. That is, because the
context of this experience is private, its interpretation is highly individualized as, for example, I
noted in my conversation with Decho and the historically specific imagery he associated with the
clarinet solo. An intimate and emotional listening experience is significant because it occurs
within the everyday; it does not necessarily register as a significant national musical moment,
like a performance of the national anthem might be. Rather, they linger in the recurring daily
soundscape of television and postsocialist life.
112
The sense of repetition ingrained in these national media allows for minute linguistic and
musical formulas to enter the soundscape of the listener in subtle but persistent ways and become
part of the rhythm of daily life. This was a normal process for many of my interviewees, who
shared that they would tune in to Trifonov’s show but would not actively watch it. That is, his
television show and its musical or rhetorical content were purposefully made into the soundscape
of their everyday existence. This arguably continuous encounter with Trifonov’s music as part
of everyday life renders the poetic and musical narratives of the nation to be as habitual and
unconscious as turning on the television in the first place.
Billing insists that these practices fall within the realm of banal nationalism, for they rely
on small words, rather than grand memorable phrases, that offer constant reminders of how, and
where “we” are (ibid., 109). This is my perspective, which informs my exploration of Trifonov’s
repertoire in this chapter, because it is simultaneously embedded in the daily experience of his
television show and in the collective conscious to the point of going essentially unnoticed. For
example, most interviewees had trouble remembering titles of songs they actually enjoyed,
simply categorizing them as Trifonov’s “traditional/folkloric songs” without diminishing the
emotional impact they had on them as Bulgarians. Such views suggest that in the case of
Trifonov’s narration of the nation, the experience is located “near the surface of contemporary
life” (ibid., 93) as well as within a constant dialectic of forgetting and remembering.
Remembering
“Out of estrangement,” writes Benedict Anderson, “comes a conception of personhood,
or identity which, because it cannot be remembered must be narrated. As with persons, so it is
with nations” (Anderson 2006: 205). Billing also attends to this element of social and national
reproduction. He insists that national identity is remembered because it is routinely practiced in
daily life—in routine phrases, actions, and, in the case of Trifonov, in sounds and images. The
national past is thus simultaneously forgotten as it is remembered, without conscious awareness
but preserving the collective memory of individuals as nationals through remembering. Such
remembering, he stresses, that is not experienced as remembering is, in effect, forgotten (Billing
1995:38).
The key aspect of this position is the understanding of memory as a social sentiment that
focuses the understanding of the nation as such. Within remembrance, then, certain aspects of the
social act as symbols that enable the polar ends of the dialectic, forgetting-remembering. As I
113
have stressed in the case of Trifonov, these include narrations through various media that invoke
a specific vocabulary of kinship and home. These images, as Anderson insists, remind us that
nations can inspire love through cultural products and that the nature of this political love
denotes “something to which one is naturally tied” (Anderson 2006:143). What Trifonov narrates
or fashions, however, is not history but rather the emotional experiences of that history relative
to the nation. Characteristically, his nationalistic narratives thus explore images, sounds, and
experiences that can be positioned within the dialectic of forgetting and remembering that is
operationalized through metaphors of place and space.
Place and Space
The way the national community asserts its solidarity, as exemplified by Trifonov’s live
performance at the Great Fatherland Tour, is through the geopolitical boundaries of the country.
Like communities, the national space at that concert had to be imagined beyond the immediate
experience of place but still conjure up a bond between land and people. In other words, without
residing in this place, the nation could not have been imagined and the audience would not have
understood Trifonov’s version of the Bulgarian map. Moreover, the audience had to experience it
together because the place and space of the nation, as a personal homemine, yours, and
ourscan only be imagined as a unity (Billing 1995: 75).
Trifonov’s songs draw upon such symbolic resources in variety of ways to explore and
re-imagine the national space as a ‘sense of place.’ Through the poetics and sounds that relate to
the collective affiliation of khaidutsi with the land, audience members such as Tommy feel an
emotional connection with the land as home. For example, the home is disembodied or forgotten
when traveling and living away from Bulgaria, but it is remembered and re-imagined as an
emotional bond when listening to Trifonov’s music. The clarinet solo in the opening of the song
“Nazad Nazad Mome Kalino,” conjure associations to places like Trifonov’s hometown of
Pleven and reference national unity; they articulate experiences and battles for independence
during the late-nineteenth century by mapping them symbolically onto the landscape of
contemporary Bulgarian nationhood.
In narratives, these places are metaphors for social and communal power, but these cites
symbolize struggle. Narrating the nation as a place of unity and shelter becomes a viable way of
fostering its remembrance because of the cultural similarity of struggles in the experience of
postsocialism. Trifonov’s performances become lines that connect past experiences to cultural
114
categories that inform current lived experiences of the Bulgarian people. The significance of
narrating the nation through poetics, song, live concert, and broadcast, however, still lies in its
mediation through Trifonov. As a storyteller, Trifonov plays a central role in motivating and
articulating the experience and memory of the nation. He embodies conflicting understandings
and positions because his music and creative products are qualitatively intertextual and
intersubjective; these artifacts fuse past and present experiences, connect national narratives, and
enable forgetting and remembering. His ability to creatively negotiate these realms through
narrative allows the nation to be remembered because it “enables people to renegotiate
retrospectively their relation with others, recovering a sense of self” and to effectively reimagine
their identity (Jackson 1998:23).
Remembering as Social Reproduction
In recounting the phenomenological significance of place,101 Edward Casey insists that
we can feel out of place even when we are at home. Because of the transitory nature of life, we
experience series of separations that enforce our lack of place in the world. These include
separations from parent, siblings, native region, and all of the memories we come to forge within
these categories of experience and being. The experience of being unplaced implies the loss of
memories, sensations, forms, and thoughts, a no place to remain. The motion of postmodern life
further exacerbated this state because “we rarely linger enough in one particular place to savor its
unique qualities and its local history” (Casey 1993: xiii). The recovery from being without a
place requires remembering and imagining because place is the phenomenological
particularization of being-in-the-world—it tells us how we are and who we are by virtue of
where we are (ibid., xv).
Such sense of place is also of central concern to scholars like Tim Ingold because places
have everything to do with what and who we are and even that we are at all. In his conception,
places are domains of both ongoing experiences of the world and knowledge about it and they
are intimately tied to sensual memories of experiences that happen there. Yet, places are also
fluid domains where interwoven paths of movement meet and lead to other paths elsewhere. To
101
See further, Ingold 2000, 2011; Heidegger 2008; Thornton 2007; Low and Lawrence-Zuñiga 2003; Casey 1998;
Feld and Basso 1997 for anthropological and philosophical considerations of place.
115
Ingold, such lines102 connect the history and human experience, past and present. However, they
are not the linear essentials that have come to define the way people in modern Western society
comprehend the passage of history, generations, and time. Rather, they are comprised of
countless threads spun by beings of all sorts, both human and non-human as they find their ways
through the tangle of relationships in which they are enmeshed, continually forging the
conditions for their own and each other’s lives (Ingold 2007:89-90).103
Thrown into a world of disembodied mass communication, decentered economy, and
fragmented culture, the sense of place (as a domain of knowing and being in this world) for
contemporary Bulgarians becomes fractured and reduced to space—a fixed location, a life
enclosed in and confined to a spot with no history or cultural associations. By drawing on
connections to times imbued with senses of place, Trifonov arguably contributes to the creation
of a renewed sense of place by creating lines that weave past and present to encourage the social
unity of the nation through self-remembrance. As per Ingold, such threads relate terrains of
cultural experiences of struggle and transform them into a symbolic resource imbued with power.
This relation built through intertextual references, between themes of brotherhood, integrity, and
bravery, reminds a current generation of Bulgarians that they live in place, where one can rely on
communal solidarity from other people and from the land. Place here configures ideas of
landscape (the mountain as a nurturing mother) through sounds and imagery (drawn out clarinet
solos and the map of Bulgaria), it engages the power of memory, and it promotes Bulgaria as a
place of value—a nation.
Thus, Trifonov’s songs and performances create a narrative, which suggests that to be in
a place means to remember that which was valuable in the past. Along this path, between past
and present struggles and between socialism and postsocialism, people have grown to more
deeply know the world around them and to remember their collectivity as a nation as a result of
Trifonov’s music. These Bulgarian stories of heroes, struggles, nurturing forests, and of places
are places where people live. The process of listening, learning, and remembering through song
allows the past to press into the future as interwoven moments of the ongoing activity of
102
To Ingold, lines are both metaphorical and concrete; they comprise the narrative interweaving of past and present
lives, histories, identities, and memories. He insists that threads are an interwoven mesh of lines, or paths, along
which “people grow into a knowledge of the world around them” (Ingold 2007:2).
103
Echoing Casey (1993), Ingold conceptualizes place as a flexible aspect of experience and along lines rather than
a fixed special location, a spot. Significantly, he extends the idea of place-as-threads to the realm of storytelling as a
domain of similar phenomenological relations, or lines, between past and present (Ingold 2007:90).
116
knowledge and experience. Once the nation has been narrated, thorough sound, image, dance,
and poetry, it becomes an emotional object tied to a culturally specific place that is uniquely
‘our’ home. Thus, the narrations of Trifonov serve as reminders to his audience about that which
they have forgotten and, much like identity, these stories unfold within the embodied habits of
social life. Through sound, image, and language, Trifonov explores and discusses the nation. He
uses these elements to situate the nation physically, emotionally, and socially within a homeland
and to encourage his audience to remember the nation by exploiting notions of place. On the
surface of memory, then, is its social potential for reproduction, wherein identities become
national only by virtue of such emplacement and remembrance. Through Trifonov’s
performances, Bulgarian people recontextualize their past as a forgotten memory and rearticulate
their bond with the land as a home and with each other as a united social whole. This process of
recollecting the nation, however, is still an integral aspect of a capitalist context of exchange,
production, and consumption that carries a very different set of implications vis-à-vis social
praxis, the latter being the main subject of the next chapter.
117
CHAPTER FIVE
NARRATIVES OF COMMODIFICATION
I know perfectly well that I am at once a product and a producer!
Bulgaria should do as we do in terms of our business: invest in people!
- Slavi Trifonov
Local people articulate with the dominant cultural order even as they take their distance
from it, jiving to the world beat while making their own music.
- Marshall Sahlins
Prelude
It was a warm evening in the summer of 2009 in my hometown, Plovdiv. I took the
opportunity to visit with friends and family and decided to spent my time with Vera and Dika—
two sisters who work as clothing and interior designers, respectively. Vera and Dika share a
modest, two-story house in the broader downtown area of Plovdiv and their backyard is known
as a welcoming place for distant and close friends to gather and enjoy a chat, a coffee, a drink,
and a bite of food. Despite their small incomes and financial struggles, Vera and Dika always
offered good company and conversation to anyone who entered their house. That July evening
was the occasion of a typical impromptu gathering at their home. Proverbial Bulgarian
hospitality unfolded in front of me as random visitors, who had arrived with the intention of only
saying ‘hello,’ ended up staying at Vera and Dika’s until the late hours of the night over an
assortment of appetizers and chilled rakia. Between various friends coming and going, my hosts
introduced me to two ladies in their mid-fifties and told them about my academic interest in Slavi
Trifonov. As in other social situations in Bulgaria, topics of conversation shifted very suddenly
and with the help of the highly potent Bulgarian liqueur these women had already consumed, the
stories of children, grandchildren, and family quickly transformed into a genuine debate
regarding Trifonov’s music and its meaning within Bulgarian society and culture.
“He created and popularized chalga in Bulgaria,” said Dika regarding Trifonov, “and that
influenced a whole generation.”
118
“How is that?” I asked her.
“He created the taste for that music and catered it to the masses,” she answered between
deep inhalations of her cigarette. “These masses are a particular part of the population, and I say
population deliberately because it is the part that always goes with the flow. Whether it’s some
kind of pseudo-fashion in clothing or in music, they don’t think for themselves! They just go
with what is fed to them.”
“Does this make Slavi’s music a negative thing?” I directed the question towards all of
the guests as they were nodding their heads in approval of the previous statement.
“Of course it’s a bad thing,” answered Vera.
“It’s kitsch!” inserted her sister Dika. “The kitsch of music!”
“I cannot think of anything worse than chalga in terms of music,” interrupted Dika’s
guest Neli. “Look at the Brothers Serbs?! I mean, they have it but it’s not chalga! It’s their
folklore music.”
“It’s their traditional music,” Dika affirmed, shaking her head in approval.
“Our own Bulgarian,” continued Neli with the determination to clarify the difference,
“mixed Turkish with Bulgarian and Serbian and who knows what else and came up with this
disgusting haltura.”
“Is kuchek disgusting because it is Turkish?” I asked Neli.
“Not when it is real, not when it is in Turkey. It is disgusting with these chalga stuff we
hear in Bulgaria,” she explained.
“What makes chalga disgusting?” I addressed all four ladies sitting at the patio table.
Vera answered first. “The text and the music.”
“Yeah,” Rada finally joined the conversation, “but the most vulgar texts are the most
interesting,” and her stoic facial expression broke into a smile.
“Wait now,” objected the sisters Vera and Dika, but Rada ignored them and continued
talking while slowly sipping on her drink.
“The chalga was an object of ridicule and critique; they said everything bad that is to say
and what? Nothing! We are talking about mass culture! We are not talking about the thirty or
forty percent that would not listen to it. We are talking about a moment in time when this music
and Slavi formed people. It shaped them! Even when I go to a restaurant and hear it, sometimes I
feel like…”
119
“Overwhelmed,” Vera filled in Rada’s last word.
“Is there a difference between chalga and folklore?” I asked them hoping they would not
all speak at the same time.
“Chalga is a mutated folklore, shoved in together from here and there,” Rada quickly
responded.
Vera followed her: “The difference is that chalga is Slavi. It is commercial, haltura!”
“Do you remember,” asked her Rada, “how back in the day we used to call the gypsy
songs chalga? ‘The chalga is coming!’”
“Yeah, I do,” Vera told her, “but now the meaning has changed. Now it means haltura!
Quick money! You do khaltura, you make money for a given period of time: actors do haltura
for New Years and musicians do chalga. They think it is art but it is not! It is only done to satisfy
the mass, lowbrow, taste and it lacks any aesthetic meaning or value!”
Introduction
The conversation of which I was a part that evening was illuminating in two ways. First,
my hosts, Vera and Dika, situated Trifonov and his music within a polarizing discourse of high
and low culture, real and fake culture, or khaltura. Second, it positioned the meaning of
commercial music making both within specific textual and musical elements and broader cultural
notions of value. Both of these aspects suggested that within commodified musical products,
value has particular connotations in the context of postsocialist Bulgaria and the experiences of
Bulgarians living in that socioeconomic and cultural context. Trifonov’s commercial music
articulated such notions of value in specific ways that are expressed through the parlance of
khaltura.
Since the early 1990s, the term khaltura (pl. khalturi) has come to denote a wide range of
commercial performances or artistic and creative endeavors designed specifically to reap profit.
In effect, khalturi were a new commercial context for performing artists who, in a new
postsocialist context, were able to sell their artistic and/or musical abilities as a commodity and
for a fixed price by competing as per the rules of the free market with other performers. This
concept is indicative of two related postsocialist processes: the commodification of elevated art
forms such as music and theatre, and their local conceptualization as cheap versions of a ‘real’ or
‘high’ culture.
120
This ubiquitously Bulgarian postsocialist attitude is captured by the very label khaltura,
which is a play on the word kultura or culture. The cultural underpinnings of this label are
important for, unlike within a North American parlance, khaltura not only reflects overt
commercialism, but it also indicates the compromise of aesthetic and moral values and the
exploitation of art forms that are, by definition, not suitable for mass entertainment and profit.
The assumption behind this cultural definition is that the quantity of reproduction, or magnitude
of production, of these items would compromise the artistic product and its inherent meaning and
value as such. Within this conceptualization, Trifonov and his music are regarded not only as an
example of khaltura, but also as an endemic social condition wherein fake culture is treated,
embodied, and normalized as real art. Such an understanding is contrasted by both the popularity
of Trifonov’s music as commercial khaltura and by its consumption and reception as quality
entertainment.
This chapter explores a selected portion of Trifonov’s pop-folk repertoire that is
considered khaltura. I address the local understanding of khaltura within broader ideas of
commodification and the cultural value embedded therein. Through an analysis of textual and
musical elements and audience perceptions, I suggest that as a commodity, Trifonov’s music
presents a culturally specific conflict of value. This conflict of value articulates how competing
notions of the Bulgarian nation are embedded in the musical commodity and how these meanings
implicate its value as such. With this conflict in mind, I consider Trifonov’s commercial music
through the following questions: 1) What makes Trifonov’s musical sound and poetics khaltura?
2) What are the values Bulgarian audiences attach to these sounds and poetics based on such
interpretations? 3) What are the implications of such culturally specific positions for the broader
understanding of commodification in terms of value and as a social process?
Commodification and the Question of Value
The issue of commodification has been examined from multiple perspectives and vantage
points (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009; Inda and Rosaldo 2008; Godelier 2004, 1999, 1977, 1972;
Graeber 2001; Sahlins 2001, 1972; Mauss 1990; Appadurai 1986; Firth 1967; Bohanon 1955).
Economic anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and social and cultural analysts alike have
contributed to the literature with various understandings and analyses of the material, social, and
121
symbolic ways in which such processes unfold in culture.104 The perspectives I outline here
briefly resonate with my interpretation of Trifonov’s music in terms of three mutually
reinforcing positions: 1) the understanding of commodification as a cultural process, through
which people and things become entangled in social ways; 2) the understanding of
commodification as a series of interdependent relationships with specific social implications; and
3) the consideration of value as a culturally specific expression of such interdependent
relationships within social praxis.
From the perspective of Marx, the value of a commodity is determined by the labor
required to produce it; only in the exchange of commodities do these products of labor acquire
socially uniform objectivity as values. Social interactions are reduced to the exchange of labor
between people. One of the central characteristics of this process, however, is expressed in the
interconnectedness of commodity circulation (use-exchange value, production-consumption)
relative to value. Commodities acquire value only within circulation and within the internal
constitution of the exchange. This process is also one of transformation; value is altered from a
relationship between people to a relationship between things. As Marx has shown in his analysis
of the capitalist system, this has social repercussions as it expresses the idea of alienation—the
process through which labor becomes equated with value and wherein value comes to convey
relations between the products of human labor.
Economic anthropologists have nuanced the understanding of value as a culturally
specific characteristic by building upon Marx’s labor theory of value and his approach to
commodification as both a social phenomenon and a system of social praxis. Marshall Sahlins
(2000, 1976, 1972) has considered capitalist commodity logic along with alternative systems of
economic relations and has argued that commodification is a cultural intention wherein the
material aspects of physical existence are organized as a meaningful process of social being.
Rather than casting the relationship between things and people as fetish and natural desire, he
insists that the perceived objective qualities of the commodity are always socially determined
because we assign a particular function and meaning to seemingly natural qualities and
biological needs. Commodification is thus a continuous process in which people reciprocally
define commodities in terms of themselves and themselves in terms of commodities.
104
See further, Pink 2009; Edelman and Haugerud 2005; Kelly 2004; Werner and Bell 2004; Myers 2001; Frith
1998; Smith 1998; Taylor 1997; Miller 1994; Meillassoux 1972; Weber 1958; .
122
Understanding value from this vantage point therefore entails placing things and people into a
larger culturally specific code of meaning wherein value emerges within processes of meaningful
distinction.
In understanding social organization and economic relations within non-capitalist, nonWestern societies, Chris Gregory (1997, 1982) has similarly argued that wealth and its
circulation are culturally specific. He addresses commodification and value from the perspective
of the gift, which differs from the commodity in terms of personification—a social process
through which alienated objects are appropriated as people and commodity fetish is transformed
into an objectified relationship between people. Most significantly, Gregory’s understanding of
value within reciprocity and personification does not entail a complete negation of commodities
or their material aspects. Rather he shows that, as conceptual categories and dimensions
indicative of social relations, commodities and gifts can freely interact and complement each
other within a culturally specific social praxis. The value of the commodity can be transformed
because it can be exchanged as a gift, which in turn reproduces culturally specific social
categories.
By extending the abovementioned ideas to music, Aaron Fox (1992) addresses the ways
country music encodes, enacts, and reproduces the contradictory conditions of its own
production as an aesthetic commodity in capitalist society. The process of commodification, as
conceptualized by Fox, is multidirectional; the language and performance of country both affirm
commodity values and transform them into private feelings conveyed within the public sphere of
popular media. Objectified commodities like the jukebox appear as human subjects ripe with
feelings and intimate historical knowledge because they invert the linguistic and ideological
categories of capitalism through narrative performance. In that sense, country music defies
commodification while simultaneously and partially reaffirming it by virtue of existing within
the market environment—it resists the market by engaging with it completely, only to sell out its
own resistance as tradition.
Like Fox, Adam Krims (2002) has argued that, within the North American rap industry,
the fetish of commodities is reversed as social relations are disguised as objects. Hip-hop artists
and the industry at large develop poetics that invoke the ‘ghetto,’ a place defined by specific sets
of social relations, and as such it is a source of surplus value. This commodification of the lack
of value reiterates Marx’s ideas of commodity fetish because this image becomes an object of
123
pleasurable aural desire for consumers. Yet, in this case it is the object subsuming a set of social
relations rather than the masking of those as objects that proves illuminating. In production and
consumption then, Krims finds that the ghetto becomes a portable image of pleasurable
consumption wherein its underlying contextpovertyand the social dimensions therein are
mystified in the authentic rap music commodity.
I build on these ideas and insist that, as a commodity, Trifonov’s music becomes
entangled in a nexus of conflicting cultural categories concerned with art and value. Because the
music commodity is implicated by considerations of art, it transcends simple utility and it is
situated as a category distinct from money and discrete from other sociocultural value. Like the
gift, music-as-art reveals a particular relationship between things and people; it is invested with
dense sociocultural meanings but still operates within the domain of commodity circulation.
These dimensions, however, are interdependent and, as Gregory has suggested in terms of
personification, do not negate the material aspects of the commoditythe musical sound.
Rather, their relations inform the creation and metamorphosis of competing notions of value
within the commodity. I suggest, in that regard and in reference to commodification, that
Trifonov’s music should be thought of as a medium of objectification whose materiality and
meaning have made it a productive arena for constructing human difference. In turn, the value(s)
emerging from its exchange or circulation as a commodity can be construed in terms of two
interrelated aspects: as conceptions of what is good and proper and as products of meaningful
(economic and social) distinction. Because social life can be seen as a space in which certain
types of value are produced and realized, the very act of framing music as a commodity or as art
renders competing social results. These distinctions are also at the heart of the conflict of value
that I find in Trifonov’s commodified pop-folk and the social context in which these distinctions
are put into practice—postsocialism.
Narratives of Commodification
When thinking about the ways Trifonov’s music circulates within a postsocialist praxis of
commodification, it is notable that audience members often consume it in passing; that is through
radio, on television, or in public soundscapes. The social space of this music is predominantly
the everyday, where consumption and production often aid the circulation of commodities in
more subtle ways. The social life of Trifonov’s music thus occupies a context in which other
meaningful distinctions can be placed relative to value. Because of a large volume of Trifonov’s
124
musical commodities encompass the everyday and are readily available for consumption by
audiences, the musical and poetic contents are simultaneously familiar and detested. That is, the
value transformation resulting from the cycle of production and consumption of the musical
commodity is not necessarily part of a conscious economic exchange or consumption. Both its
textual and musical aspects are, in turn, interpreted through specific ideas regarding the qualities
of Bulgarian folk and pop music (or art and antiart) and the ways Trifonov’s music measures up
within such parameters. That is, as khaltura, Trifonov’s songs are linked to the availability of his
music within the everyday and their formulation as a set of cultural values through textual and
musical cues.
The Poetics of Commodification
Vignette 1 Rada, a middle-aged woman to whom we were introduced in the last chapter,
was very animated on the subject of the inevitable popularity of Slavi Trifonov’s music as a form
of commercialism while holding court at Vera and Dika’s informal July party in Plovdiv. While
others at the party expressed their contempt for Trifonov’s music and lyrics alike, Rada
insistently contended that musical and textual quality as such were not the point. She noted that
Trifonov’s music was intended as mass culture and was therefore consumed unconsciously by a
majority of Bulgarians in ways that were valuable without qualification. That process, she
believed, was accommodated by a desire on the part of most Bulgarians to be entertained rather
than to think, which she assigned as a default characteristic for lower social classes. More
importantly, Trifonov’s pop-folk had taken such a hold in the everyday and amongst the general
public, including a younger postsocialist generation of Bulgarians, that it was essentially flying
under the radar in creating a taste for the lowbrow and the easily digestible.
At points, the friendly conversation around the dinner table appeared to be turning into a
tense argument, but I attributed that to the amount of rakia being consumed more than anything
else. “Of course Slavi’s music is popular,” Rada insisted over and over. In its musical and poetic
dimensions, it was not meant to elevate one intellectually but to entertain one mindlessly, she
added. Its intent was to appeal to everyone at the most basic level by engaging one’s daily,
postsocialist existence through vulgarity and lowbrow humor. “When you get into a cab,”
stressed Rada as she pointed her cigarette at me, “what do you think the cab driver is going to
listen to?! Love, stars, and moon?! No! He wants to hear about money, cars, and women and that
is what Slavi’s chalga talks about.” She paused, looked around the room and, convinced that her
125
point did not quite get across, continued. “Here is an example for you: a disco, the year is 1996.
My friend Ilko was the DJ. Apparently, to keep music interesting for the gig, he had made some
kind of mix of rock and soul. He’s thinking, one can’t go wrong with that music! He plays the
mix and nothing! Everyone in the club is just sitting down quietly and slowly sipping on a beer.
There is no moving around. As soon as he plays ‘Edno Ferari (One Ferrari)’ or whatever,” says
Rada as she pauses to make sure that everyone was paying close attention, “everyone jumps to
the dancing and everyone has a good time.”
Vignette 2 The examples and opinions expressed during the evening in which I met Rada
were interestingly juxtaposed to the positions of members of a younger generation of Bulgarians
who, according to Rada’s stereotypical account, represented the demographic of Bulgarians who
had been subjected to Trifonov’s pop-folk and molded by its textual qualities and values. These
were people like Krasimira, Borislava, Elena, and Giulfer, who are teenagers and students at the
National School for Performing and Musical Arts in Plovdiv. But contrary to the totalizing
characterizations of Rada and other older Bulgarians, these teens were anything but passive
dupes. They were, rather, strong-willed, thinking individuals who expressed a sense of choice
and agency regarding their musical choices and environments. All of them stated an explicit
neglect for pop-folk but admitted that when they went to parties this repertoire was a frequent
selected and enjoyed by everyone. In these cases, the girls insisted, the party atmosphere and the
alcohol enhanced the desire for silly, lowbrow music such as pop-folk. That is, when they were
at home or even while we were conversing, their iPods did not include any of Trifonov’s popular
hits. This type of music, insisted the young girls, instilled a taste for the cheap and the lowbrow
that a lot of their peers, they believed, simply copied and imitated.
“I do not really buy Slavi’s music, but I would recognize it if I heard it,” Krasimira told
me. “It’s just that it leans strongly towards chalga and I don’t find anything particularly crafty in
it because of that,” she clarified. “How would you describe it?” I asked all of them. “It’s like
stolen music,” answered Elena. “It highlights some Bulgarian elements, but it’s like a mutated
freak,” she laughed out loud. Borislava also smiled but interrupted the collective laughter. “I am
not an expert on what is actually lowbrow, but for me there is just nothing of value in Slavi’s
song texts, you know?! They just do not touch my heart!”
Giulfer, a quiet girl who studied piano and who was frequently the subject of teasing by
the other girls on account of her small town origins in Khaskovo, was selectively listening to
126
some pop-folk songs as she smiled and inhaled in anticipation of verbalizing a thought. “I listen
to a lot of different music but some of Slavi’s songs are just a little disturbing.” “What makes
them disturbing?” I urged her to share more. “They are just kind of vulgar and they are about
silly things, nonsensical, you know?!” she elaborated, looking down and appearing too
embarrassed to specify what exactly ‘silly things’ might entail. “What would a good song be
about?” I asked Giulfer again. “I think it should be about love and happiness, for your soul,” she
responded decisively and without hesitation.
The impressions of these audience members are significant for two reasons. One, they
specifically identify the poetics of Trifonov’s music to be lacking value or to be creating
undesirable values on an individual and group social level. In both conversations, the textual
formulas of Trifonov’s commercial music are operationalized as vulgar or disturbing because
they are easily digestible, commercial, mass culture that lacks value as real art (as in ‘real’ poetry
and music). Indeed, Trifonov’s albums often present selections that, as my interactions
suggested, lean towards or are interpreted as chalga because of their poetics. In all cases, central
characteristics of the texts include colloquial quality and word play in a suggestive, sexual,
and/or humorous style. The format of such songs rarely unfolds beyond three verses and makes
use of catchy refrains, which, along with specific musical gestures, make his ubiquitous pop-folk
hits singable and memorable. These two aspects of writing contribute to the rationalization of
everyday language as lowbrow and, simultaneously, its popularity and consideration as
commercial.
On the album Khŭshove (1996), for example, two specific songs stand out as examples of
the commercial-as-lowbrow quality described by my interviewees. Both were chart-topping
numbers that received significant radio and television play and are still recognizable as the
characteristic sound of Slavi. The poetics of commodification in this case entail specific jargon
as well as references to the postsocialist everyday. This type of colloquialism is paired with the
position of Trifonov as the narrative protagonist in pursuit of a woman. In both songs, the
Bulgarian male character displays aggressiveness and disdain when the female object of desire
ignores his attention. Significantly, the anonymous female is notably absent from the poetic
interplay and the nature of male desire directed towards her is of an explicitly sexual nature. The
poetic realization of these ideas is laden with metaphors and characteristically colloquial. In the
song entitled “Kombainero Inteligentska (The Intelligent Harvester Song)” for example, the male
127
protagonist spends his time in a harvester in the fields and, when an attractive lady ignores his
honk, he chases her down the field. Because his attempts to catch her attention go unnoticed,
“she turned her back” ignoring his “honk” as he continues to “reap with full force.”
Beshe tia lhubava zhena,
She was a pretty woman
Beshe tia tsialata kraka,
She was all legs
А pŭk az, krotko zhŭnekh si
And I was quietly reaping
tuka s kombaina.
here with my harvester
Samo grŭb mi оbŭrna tia,
She turned her back to me
ni me chu, nito me
Did not hear me
vidia, ne razbra,
nor did she understand
chе zа neia bе moita bibitka.
That my honk was for her.
Tuka v zhitata,
Here in the fields
Udobna, zadna sedalka imam az
I have a comfortable back seat
Moga i legnal da prodŭlzhavam
I can keep going laying back
da zhŭna s pŭlna gaz!
reaping with full force. 105
“The Intelligent Harvester Song”: Verse 1
As a metaphor, the harvester playfully operetanionalizes two clusters of symbolisms,
which are dense with cultural value: 1) male machismo and the predatory behavior of Bulgarian
males regarding attractive women and 2) rural life and work generally associated with the statecontrolled, communist agricultural unions. Just like the harvester reaps the fields, the male
protagnist may ‘reap’ the attractive woman literally and metaphorically because it is a much
more entertaining endeavor than completing his work quota for the day. The somewhat crude
joke and symbolism in the text is further developed towards the end of the first verse when
Trifonov, now directly addressing the lady, insists that he can continue working the fields even if
he is laying down and his back seat is quite comfortable. This not so subtle reference to sex is
then cemented as the central theme of the song in the recurring refrain:
Niama da tе pitam, nа nа nаi-nа,
I’m not gonna ask you, la la la-la.
Iskash li da pravim, nа nа nаi-nа,
If you want to do, la la la-la.
Tuka v kombaina, nа nа nаi-nа,
Here in the harvester, la la la-la
Dvama shte izpŭlnim, plana nаi-nа. The two of us will reap, la la la-la.
“The Intelligent Harvester Song”: Refrain
105
See Appendix A, Example 17 for complete text and translation of the song.
128
Although the term or physical description of sex is never explicitly stated, the essence of the
encounter is suggested in the second part of each poetic line through the nonsensical syllables
“la-la-la-la,” whose use in Bulgarian essentially conveys the English language phrase “if you
know what I mean.” Once again, with the absent female voice, the male protagonist poeticizes
the ways he will not ask her to do ‘you know what’ in the back seat of his ‘harvester.’
The broader use of colloquial phrasing in reference to or as a suggestion of flirting and
even the physical act of sex is also a central feature of the poetics of “Taisŭn Kiuchek (Tyson
Kuchek)”. In this song, the idea is once again contextualized humorously and through two
distinct clusters of symbolisms. The name “Tyson” in the song title and within the context of the
songs’ poetics refers to boxing champion Mike Tyson, whose persona is evoked in the opening
lyrics of the first verse:
Negŭr ne sŭm, nito biach
is kalifornia dazhe ne sŭm ia vizhdal
samo che znai taisŭn sŭm аz
devet sekundi broi si i pitai zashto.
I’m not black nor a fighter
I haven’t even seen Miss California
But you should know that I am a ‘Tyson’
Count out nine seconds and then ask why.
“Taisŭn Kiuchek”: Verse 1
The image of the boxing champion in this context caputures the prevailing influence of
American popular culture on the postsocialist Bugarian everyday, as well as its irrelevance in
that same context. Thus, the male protagonist states that he does not know “Miss California” nor
is he a boxer, but the power of his charm is equally strong when it comes to women. This form of
arguably sexual prowess is specifically poeticized in the refrain of the songs and through
expressions intended to refer to a ‘knock out.’
Sedem-оsem, i shte si padnala
sedem-оsem, i shte si legnala
sedem-оsem, liagai i broi si sama.
Seven-eight, and you will be knocked out
Seven-eight, and you will be going down
Seven-eight, go down and count on your own
“Taisŭn Kiuchek”: Refrain
The colloquial, suggestive humor exemplified here is operationalized through the
Bulgarian jargon term (lit. to ‘go down,’ ‘knock down,’ ‘knock out’), which refers to flirting
and/or ‘hitting on’ someone. The protagonist professes that when he hits on the girl he will
knock her out with such force that she might as well lay down herself and simply count to ten. In
129
the other words, the female object of desire does not stand a chance against the powerful charm
of the protagonist portrayed literally and metaphorically through the figure of and reference to
boxer Mike Tyson. The American symbols of strength and physical and sexual power are also
contextualized through local, Bulgarian metaphors to echo similar sentiments for the killing
charm of the male. In the second verse, the protagonist is not simply a ‘Tyson’ but also a khala
and a lamia —both characters and mythical creatures from Slavic mythologies and Bulgarian
folkloric repertoires including songs and tales.
Pitai zashto taisŭn sŭm аz
аma khvani se za neshto i
zdravi sе drŭzh
khala sŭm аz,
tsiala lamia
au, ed shte mi nosish
kogato svalia106 te vednâzh.
Ask then why am I a Tyson,
But hold on to something
and grab it strongly,
Cause’ I am a khala,
a real lamia
Ouhh, you will be bringing me honey
once I’ve taken you down.107
“Taisân Kiuchek”: Verse 2
As local, folkloric metaphors of power these creatures often cause disaster, kidnap beautiful
maidens, and can be appeased with gifts such as honey. All of these elements are poetically
engaged to suggest, once again, the prowess of the male protagonist in the song. Their competing
meanings, between Tyson and Bulgarian mythical creatures, create a humorous effect encoding
Trifonov’s pop-folk as a “freak” and commercial haltura. In this example, the cultural
eclecticism of pop-folk is literally mapped out in two different poetic verses by bridging together
disparate symbols within the colloquial, suggestive language of the everyday. The crudeness of
the overall context, however, appears to shape audience understandings in such a way that the
overall content is interpreted as vulgar, silly, and ultimately lacking value.
Such sentiments, with specific references to value within postsocialist life, can also be
found in the album Edno Ferari s Tsviat Cherven (One Ferrari Colored Red, 1997) and its title
song. The piece begins with an attempted phone call and the automated message responding that
“the number is not available at the moment.” The song unfolds as a metaphoric attempt of a
conversation between the protagonist and an unavailable God who does not answer his cell
106
Svaliam (lit. to take off, knock off, knock down) is a colloquial expression that refers to flirting. In this context, it
is used as play on words and meanings to refer to “hitting on” rather then the literal knock out as in a boxing mach.
The reference, however, is humorously operationalized as, literally and physically, a knock out through the figure of
and reference to boxing champion Mike Tyson.
107
See Appendix A, Example 18 for the full text and translation of the song.
130
phone. “We would come to an agreement,” sings Trifonov, “that whatever I do for him, he will
also do for me.” The significance of the request of the protagonist, however, lies in the items and
images he describes as desires. These are reflected in the title of the song and include “one
Ferrari colored red,” “a chick with bronze skin,” “one million of green,” and “a new girlfriend
every day.” The items, insists the protagonist, constitute his dreams and if God granted him an
answer, he would share them. “That’s all a person needs,” insists the protagonist with each
recurring refrain, but he ultimately receives another prerecorded message stating that the number
does not exist.108
The colloquial nature of this human-divine dialogue is once again significant because of
the nature of the symbols it portrays are metaphors of value. Items such as sports cars, mobile
phones, and “green,” standing for the American dollar, are collective commodities not only
significant for their economic value, but also as symbols of capitalist market, democracy, and
social status. Within the postsocialist economic and social environment, they are hardly
attainable to the average Bulgarian yet circulate his or her everyday in real or mediated ways.
These images may appear in a Hollywood blockbuster on television as representative of
American symbols of wealth or in the immediate Bulgarian surroundings of daily life where a
new class of nouveau riche displays them as a sign of newly acquired economic and social
status.
On one level, the desire for such commodities immediately links the protagonist to the
postsocialist economic everyday wherein these very items represent a social status quo.
Alternatively, the very conception of such materialistic desires captured by the insistent
repetition of the phrase “that’s all a person needs”, also operationalizes these items as
commodities that create only one specific type of value—the desire for material goods as a life
philosophy. These two competing ideas are ultimately played out humorously because the divine
force, God, does not pick up the phone and therefore, they continue to be unrealized requests.
The interplay between commodified desires of the postsocialist everyday and local/global
cultural cues are also typified in Trifonov’s musical explorations. Like its poetics, then, sound
also acquires culturally specific values as a commodity based on particular musical qualities that
are interpreted by Bulgarians as to have value.
108
Please, see Appendix A, Example 19 for a complete transcription of the song’s text.
131
The Sound of Commodification
Vignette 1 Veni is a thirty-year-old professional musician and a friend I grew up with,
both socially and musically. She is intimately familiar with the state and workings of the
postsocialist pop music circuit in Bulgaria because as a violinist, she has been attempting to get a
break into it with her group Strings. Her all-female band is a classically trained string quartet but
their instruments are electric and their music consists of original compositions that incorporate a
variety of progressive rock and metal elements with Bulgarian folkloric influences. Arguably
because of her musical experience, education, and struggles with the ways the recording industry
and business function in Sofia, our conversation inevitably took on a more serious direction once
the topic of Trifonov’s music surfaced.
“All of my colleagues are of the opinion that Ku-Ku Band, on their own, are very good!
However, I find that they’ve entered some sort of awful routine and they don’t practice,” she
insisted over her cup of coffee. “Honestly,” continued Veni, “I don’t know how people can
make such music. For me, this is bad music! I can’t really understand it because I know that
people who arrange it and create it are very capable. Slavi himself is trying to define himself as a
rock singer and even a rock musician?! Not to mention that after so many years he still hasn’t
mastered vocal technique, which he didn’t have anyways. Honestly, this kind of quality of
musical expression is a characteristic of lack of taste, haltura. This kind of wailing and
ornamentations may be attractive to an audience but they are not Bulgarian or folklore but people
think they are. At the same time, it is overwhelming to think about his discography. It’s huge and
almost all of it is chalga. That, I find disgusting because people go for it and these musicians
should not be playing that kind of music. I don’t really understand why they do it?!”
“Maybe they just treat it as a job?” I attempted to interrupt her monologue.
“Maybe,” she paused to consider the suggestion. “But, you know, for a musician, playing
is a self-expression. At least, that’s how I see it. So, if you don’t like something, why do it all
together! It is as if someone forces you to wear certain type of clothes and you do it everyday
even though you hate them.”
“Perhaps they like it,” I interjected once more.
“Well, I don’t get it,” Veni answered with a sort of annoyed facial grunt. “To me, this is
just musical brutality!”
132
Vignette 2 Like Veni, Veselin is also a classically trained musician but he is a pianist
who was, at the time of our interview, only few days short of finishing up his education at a
performance art high school. I met this young musician at the convenient hang out spot for
students at his school, which is the coffee shop across the street where both faculty and students
eat, converse over coffee, and take smoke breaks. A visibly energetic person, Veselin easily
accepted my offer to buy him a beer in the late afternoon and, perhaps because his peers
surrounded us, he frequently attempted to shift the topic of conversation towards me.
“You want to know what I think of Slavi, ha?!” Veselin asked me and winked at a girl
sitting at a nearby table in the coffee shop.
“Well, I think Ku Ku Band and Slavi are the best band in Bulgaria. They are world class
musicians! That’s why they are so succesful. If I had the chance, I would work for Slavi.
At the same time Slavi is more of a person that elicits respect, a showman, rather than the
same class of a musician. That is why I like him!”
I attempted to keep the focus on Veselin, but he was insistent on finding out about my life
in America, how old I was, and whether or not I had a boyfriend. With great effort, I
answered some questions and evaded others, ultimately bringing the conversation back to
his thoughts on Slavi Trifonov’s music.
“There are a lot of people who dislike Slavi’s music becaise they consider it to be chalga .
What do you think?” I finally menaged to drift my intervewee away from his overly
personal, flirtatious questions.
“Well, first of all, who are these people? I know a lot of people and they all love Slavi’s
music. Secondly, I don’t think they do chalga,” Veselin responded.
“If anything, they are thir own label but I would not call it chalga. Their style is more like
fusion Balkan style” he clarified with a concentrated look.
“What makes it Balkan?” I asked again.
“It is difficult to describe but I can dance it for you if you like,” Veselin smiled at me
entertained by his own joke.
“I’m joking,” he assured me, “but I like their music because it has a Balkan feel. The
arrangements are very good and they are done in such a way that a good rhythm is
combined with a beautiful melody. When the brass plays this kind of ornamented, off
beat patterns and complex meters, it’s the ultimate Balkan sound, you know?!”
133
I nodded, indicating that I follow and noticing that he has my full attention, Veselin
continued.
“Now, some songs are a little more like hop-trop style.”
“What is hop-trop?” I asked wondering if it is a new jargon term for chalga.
“Hop-trop is pop-folk. A little somethin’, you know?!” Veselin answered and raised his
arms slightly. His finger tips snapped lightly and he shifted his body weight on each side
of the chair mimicking the basic hip movement of kuchek.
“And I love that, actually,” he conlcuded laughing.
“Do you have a favorite song?” I responded.
“‘Kombainero-Inteligentskata’ and ‘Kamikadze.’ They just kill! I like them a lot!”
“Why do you like them so much?” I asked Veselin again.
“Because they are Balkan and when I hear them, I feel home. I feel like drinking rakia
and hitting the table with my fists,” he attempted to demonstrate and I was reminded of
the crudity of the image of a drunk Bulgarian male whose only way of expressing
enjoyment was to slap the dinner table. I laughed out loud as I was reminded of many a
jokes from my teenage years that explored this rural sterotype. Vesselin interrupted me:
“Seriously though, I like these songs because they fill my soul and make me feel good!”
Like the poetic metaphors and textual elements of Trifonov’s songs, the musical content
is also linked to specific ideas concerned with commodification and national identity. The two
vignettes above point to the specificity of these ideas within characteristic musical gestures and
instrumentation, as well as melodic and rhythmic content. Significantly, the two conversations I
experienced with Veni and Vesselin positioned the same musical charactersitics on opposite ends
of a spectrum. On one hand, the specific ornamentation employed by Trifonov’s band were
described in terms of what is not Bulgarian. On the other, they comprise an aural soundscape that
created a sense of ‘home’ and ‘filled the soul.’ To Veni, the commodification of such Bulgarian
musical elements is an expression of haltura, poor taste, and lacking value. To Veselin, however,
the realization of such musical ideas as commercial and something that everyone loved, is a sign
of professional admiration, personal fulfillment, and ultimately culturally valuable.
The mapping out the specific type of rhythmic and melodic elements my interviewees
mentioned is a common practice in many of Trifonov’s original compositions. In the song
134
“Kombainero Inteligentska (Intelligent Harvester Song),” for example, the humorous and
somewhat crude poetics that I addressed in the previous section are paired with an overall
rhythmic framework that is a variation of the ubiquitous pop-folk kuchek pattern notable in the
opening of the piece (see musical example 3 and audio example 11).
Musical Example 3: Opening kuchek variation presented by the percussion section.
Audio Example 11: “Kombainero-Inteligentska,” opening kuchek rhythm variant
Similalry, the melodic material presented in the refrain of the song is intricately ornamented in
the woodwind and brass parts of the band (musical examples 4 and 5 and audio example 12).
Musical Example 4: Melodic material of the voice part.
Musical Example 5: Melodic elaboration of the same material by the brass/wind section.
135
Audio Example 12: “Kombainero-Inteligentska,” refrain
These melodic additions resemble elaborations that may be found in more traditional Bulgarian
instrumental idioms but also related Balkan fusion styles. Their exploration and presentation
through the timbres of the clarinet or trumpet, also fetaured in earlier wedding music styles, have
a particular aural association with the sound of the Balkans and the Roma/Turkish minorities in
the region. Such associations are also contextualized in this song through a lenghty, highly
melismatic clarinet solo that interjects the standard verse-chorus form of the song (audio
example 13).
Audio Example 13: “Kombainero-Inteligentska,” clarinet solo
Yet, all of these elements still exist within an overall popular music context, in terms of
both instrumentation and musical structure. As such, the kuchek rhythmic framework presented
in the opening of the piece and retained throughout, appears as a less of folkloric and/or Roma
idiom once it is emphasized by the rhythm and lead guitar parts of the band (musical example 6).
Musical Example 6: Bass/Rhythm/Lead Guitar variation of the kuchek rhythm presented by the percussion section.
In a similar vein, the extended clarinet solo towards the conclusion of the song divorced form its
percussion-guitar accompaniment, can easily be interpreted as a ubiquitious pop-folk stylization
infused with orientalmelodic stylizations. This juxtiposition of a Euro-American and folkloric,
Balkan idioms is not only a central element of Trifonov’s musical style but is also notably
seemless within the overall execution and conception of the musical piece. To audience members
136
such as Veni and Veselin, however, each of these elements carries conflicting connotations
reagrding music as art or commodity or as the Bulgarian nation.
Such conflict of value relative to musical gestures is often employed by Trifonov as a form of
musical humour and/or irony. In the second example cited by Veselin, entitled “Kamikadze
(Kamikaze),” the opening of the song features a wind section-ornamented melodic phrase
layered on top of a fast-paced kuchek groove (audio example 14). After twenty seconds,
however, the Balkan rhythms and ornaments transform into a Latin-influenced groove with a
montuno piano vamp (audio example 15). The purposeful opposition of these musicultural
elements is seemingly unproblemtaic in the overall flow of the song but, as Veni noted in our
conversation, it is an example of poor taste and low culture.
Audio Example 14: “Kamikadze,” opening fast-paced kuchek groove
Audio Example 15: “Kamikadze,” Latin-influenced montuno groove.
In the instrumental piece “Rakia Sŭnraiz (Rakia Sunrise),” this practice is even more
evident as Trifonov and Ku Ku band take on a particularly intricate reinterpretation of the 1958
one-hit wonder by the American group The Champs. In Trifonov’s version, the famous
exclamation ‘tequila’ that occurs at the end of the opening four phrases is replaced by ‘rakia,’
the equally potent Bulgarian alchoholic drink. After the main melodic material is presented by
the alto saxophone, and followed by the rest of the wind section with the concluding exclamation
‘rakia,’ the song rapidly shifts to a fast kuchek rhythm and, once again, intricately ornamented
wind parts playing in thirds (musical examples 7 and 8 and audio examples 16 and 17).
137
Musical Example 7: Main theme “Rakia Sŭnraiz” with the exclamation "Rakia!" inserted right after beat four of the
last measure of the saxophone solo.
Audio Example 16: “Rakia Sŭnraiz,” opening saxophone solo.
138
Musical Example 8: Brass/wind melodic variation of the main melodic material in pop-folk style.
Audio Example 17: “Rakia Sŭnraiz,” brass/wind variation of the main melodic material in pop-folk
style.
The Balkan expression is developed even further by the similar pop-folk idiom employed in the
subsequent but brief trumpet solo. This improvisation is, in turn, supported by the rest of the
brass/wind section, which plays an ostinato rhythm similar to the kuchek rhythm and
emphasizing the off beats of the double time (musical example 9, refer to audio example 17).
139
Musical Example 9: The ostinato pattern emphasizes beat one and four (accented) and therefore implies the
rhythmic sense of kuchek.
In both “Kamikadze” and “Rakia Sŭnraiz” then already commodified musical cues with
inherent cultural values, are re-commodified through local Bulgarian conceptions of the
commercial such as kuchek to suggest the humorous interplay between Bulgarian and Western,
or local and global. Because audience members such as Vesselin and Veni filter these gestures
through contrasting conceptualizations of both the nation and the commercial, they also conceive
of the pieces through contrasting social categories such as antiart or entertainment of quality and
cultural fulfillment. This conflict of value, however, still operates within the same overall
musical and cultural context in a seemingly complimentary and interdependant manner.
The interplay between such musical gestures and social meanings suggests that sound can
acquire a radically different value relative to its status as a commodity and raises questions about
the cultural specificity of commodified sound from the perspective of value. That is, as a part of
a process of meaningful distinction, the material content of the commodity is subject to slippage
between categorical differences imbued with social meaning. Similar to Trifonov’s poetics, the
musical expression of seemingly conflicting elements such as kuchek rhythm, pop-folk
ornamentation, Latin American rhythms, Euro-American popular and jazz stylistics, and song
structure transform the commodity to an arena of practices linked to a global circuit of exchange
and production. Because of the multidirectional nature of these influences, the material content
of the commodity can elicit different social responses in different social contexts and by
extension shift between different conceptions of value. The simultaneous layering of such
musical gestures, however, also implies their interdependency and purposefulnessa series of
140
commodified musical forms that are appropriated within a local circuit of production and
consumption of music to formulate a locally meaningful commodity.
Value Conflict and Social Reproduction
In thinking about the ways the musical art of Trifonov has come to convey and condense
social meanings within commodity logic here, I return to the issue of value as a capacity to
express and produce people and identities within social praxis. To Marx the processes that define
constant circulation aid the metamorphosis of value: production, consumption, distribution, and
exchange. These are not only internally related but they also belong to the larger whole of
reproduction. As Marx shows, production and consumption stand on opposite ends of the same
continuum wherein production is consumption and vice versa. “It is clear,” he states, “that in
taking in food, for example, which is a form of consumption, the human being produces his own
body. But this is also true of every kind of consumption which in one way or another produces
human beings in some particular aspect” (Marx 1857:7). The act of production, in all its
moments, is an act of consumption and consumption is also immediately production. Ultimately,
such processes of economic circulation are processes that define the social reproduction of
people and human relations disguised as things―the fetishization of commodities.
The interconnectedness of processes of production and consumption is reiterated in the
context of economic systems wherein productive consumption and consumptive production
illustrate the interaction between social relations driven by gift or commodity categories.
Consumptive production here exemplifies a process of exchange where value is transformed and
things become people. While eating illustrates such dynamic on a literal level, ritual contexts
serve to establish social relationships between people or reformulate them through the
consumption of raw products or things. This process serves to create and reproduce people,
articulates a transformative relationship between commodities and gifts, and results in a
metamorphosis of value (Uzendoski 2005:3). The interaction between gifts and commodities,
however, is not a deterministic process nor does the gift involve a negation of materiality.
Rather, and as Sahlins also insists, indigenous cultures appropriate such historically specific
categories and dominant economic orders in particular ways rather than being “passive
recipients” of their own historical process (Sahlins 2000: 416).
141
At a macro level, Bulgarian commercial musicians like Trifonov operate within a type of
capitalist system that is “anarchic.”109 That is, they are part of a system whose logic is defined by
autocratic rule and a tendency toward monopolistic control of the means of production and
distribution. To that end, this type of capitalism not only closely resembles the monopolizing
political control of communism, but it has also allowed Trifonov to assert himself as part of the
global music superstructure. Such positioning has allowed him to become the master of his own
economic domain, it has enabled him to emerge as a type of cultural manager, and it has afforded
him the opportunity to control the cultural messages (images and sounds) distributed within the
public space of the popular music market. Moreover, as the owner and president of a record
company and a self-made producer, Trifonov has successfully learned how to “play” the market
in several different spheres of production vis-à-vis the Bulgarian record industry and media
space.
At the micro level, his songs-as-commodities still operate within the labor-theory of
value. Musical labor is invested in the commodities; they are exchanged for the ultimate
commodity (money), and accumulated capital feeds back from the structural base to the musical
superstructure resulting in Trifonov’s profit. Outside of that traditional glance, however, two
central aspects emerge in relation to the postsocialist Bulgarian economic context and Trifonov’s
role in it as a promoter of a specific type of commodification. First, as Marx has shown, the
pathway of commodification rests on the interrelatedness of consumption and production, the socalled circulation of commodities, wherein one often finds the central social implication of the
processfetishization. The understanding of commodities as producing people and social
relationships akin to fetish, however, must be nuanced in terms of what is being commodified
and what are the implications of this question for the value of the commodities as such.
Second, as value arises from the moment of exchange it is notable that the nature of that
process within postsocialist popular culture and Trifonov’s music is culturally specific. That is,
exchange is frequently a type of contact that solidifies circulation of sound, image, and meaning
but does not directly involve a clear cut economic exchange because the music freely circulates
in the everyday soundscape. Because as Marx has shown, consumption sets the aims of
109
This term is used in reference to the cultural specificity of capitalism in postcommunist Russia. In contextualizing
the countercultural rock scene, Thomas Cushman insists that, while the profound transformation of musical practice
in Russia has not extinguished the spirit of rock, the freeing of mass media control and means of production and
distribution has also replaced the socialist control with the monopolizing rules of the market dictum wherein new
kinds of managers control the cultural production within the public sphere (Cushman 1995:109).
142
production and therefore it creates expectations about the forms things should take. The
relationship between a thing and its expected form and function, between producing and
consuming or object and image, is however one of a constant dialogue and interdependency. The
implication of this connection for social life and cultural forms arises from the understanding of
production and consumption as transformative not only for the product, or commodity, but also
the producer.110 “As individuals express their life,” share Marx and Engels, “so they are. What
they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and how they
produce” (Marx and Engels 1977:42).
Considered from the perspective of value, then, Trifonov’s music offers an interesting
twist on the culturally specific forms commodities acquire relative to value. First, the songs and
productions exist within a circuit of culturally determined, preexisting notions of value and lack
of value. Set against the ideas put forward by Marx and explored by economic anthropologists,
Trifonov’s music simultaneously sets expectations about its own value, as a khaltura or low
value, and plays with these ideas in constructing its own image within the process of production.
Second, the images, poetics, and sounds determining the form of the commodity explore
culturally specific commodity fetish as well as postsocialist social relationships. As
interdependent and dialogical dimensions like production and consumption, these also intimately
link Euro-American ideas of commodity logic as social process with postsocialist Bulgarian
value systems and socialities.
Collectively, these aspects of production and consumption, set by Trifonov and his
audiences’ perceptions, present a variety of value conflicts, which simultaneously drive the
circulation of the musical commodities and determine both their content and conflicting
perceptions. Most significantly, these conflicts represent contrasting cultural understandings of
social life and the artistic process through labels, such as khaltura and kultura, and their meaning
and value as Bulgarian categories of meaningful distinction. Thus, as some of Trifonov’s poetic
colloquial phrases and musical gestures appear to be ubiquitously Bulgarian and homely for
some, for others they represent a complete antithesis to the Bulgarian nation. Similarly, while
some audience members interpret the content of the commodities as a symbolic representation of
110
This view has been most recently reiterated by Tim Ingold (2011), who explores the philosophical underpinnings
of production through a variety of existential positions and anthropological viewpoints.
143
their everyday life, others consider it an endemic social condition that pollutes the value system
of a young postsocialist generation of Bulgarians.
By building on such symbolic associations and meanings influenced by Chris Gregory,
here I wish to invoke a categorically different system of social relations with different
implications for social cohesion. While Trifonov’s music does not unfold within a designated gift
economy, some of the gift properties may aptly characterize its value and social meaning. To
restate, exchange-value is always acquired in the reciprocal relationship between use-value and
exchange-value, or production and consumption. Yet, Trifonov’s songs create a categorically
different value that animates a personal social relationship between the listener and the musical
commodity as a movable repository of culturally specific social dynamics and values. Such
social relationship, however, is not one that necessarily objectifies the commodity or the listener.
Rather, it is a personified relation between a person and a set of symbolic resources encased
through a commodity as the expectations set by the consumer and reflected in the form of the
thing produced. Significantly, the alienating properties of the commodity as such are also
contrasted by its own potential for a personified relationship that creates emotional social
potentials relative to the nation. In this sense, Trifonov’s songs function within the dynamics of
capitalism addressed by all of the aforementioned authors. I follow a similar trajectory as Fox,
Gregory, and Sahlins in my engagement with Marx’s philosophy and I find that Trifonov’s
music embodies the central aspects of commodity logic and fetish while it simultaneously
transforms that very logic in terms of value. In doing so within its production and consumption,
it is both commodified and personified, which creates a certain level of objectification and
alienation while at the same time imparting value to one’s experience of personhood as an
individual in Bulgarian society.
144
CHAPTER SIX
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Relations between self and other—and by extension between those whom one regards as
self and those whom one designates or dismisses as other—are always shot through with
ambiguity and paradox.
I expect the anthropological project to be an exploration of the human condition, and not
simply of the cultural conditioning of our humanity.
- Michael Jackson
This dissertation explored the cultural meaning of the Bulgarian pop-folk performer and
television personality Slavi Trifonov. My inquiry considered Trifonov as a polarizing figure
whose actions and musical products are interpreted as an embodiment of the conflicting
sociocultural conditions of Bulgarian postsocialism. Trifonov’s involvement with the developing
culture of television and music industry during the 1990s also rendered him a particular
socioeconomic power in an emerging, capitalist driven free market. Based on audience
reflections and dialogues, I framed these two positions as commodification and nationalism.
These categories, I argued, become entangled in Trifonov’s productions, which commodify the
nation purposefully and as an inconspicuous aspect of popular culture.
Within that view, I explored Trifonov’s music as a composite of musical and
sociocultural performance strategies that allows Bulgarian people to remember what the nation is
or is not through commodity consumption. Nuancing this position through issues of European
Union integration, former communist authoritarianism, and an Ottoman historical legacy, I
focused my analysis and ethnography on Trifonov’s audience, and their experiences and
considerations of nationness and commodification relative to Trifonov and his music. I suggested
that from the standpoint of popular music, broadly, and Trifonov’s case, specifically, nationalism
and commodification have similar social and ideological implications. They are both
operationalized within the everyday, appear as natural, and are aspects of a process of
meaningful social distinction.
145
Chapter two framed the role and position of Trifonov as a musical individual of a
particular sociocultural standing. I highlighted a selection of Trifonov’s biographical details to
suggest that his relationship to political and economic process during the 1990s and early 2000s
is one of mediation. This discourse, I insisted, is characterized by the intersection of the
individual Trifonov with significant sociopolitical events and cultural meanings that have come
to define the experience of the Bulgarian postsocialist transition. Building on relevant literature
on musical individuals and celebrities, I suggested that Trifonov embodies such meanings as a
Bulgarian national, as a celebrity, and as an individual only by virtue of the power the Bulgarian
audiences invest in him. Rather than casting his position unilaterally as a subversive performer or
politically outspoken musician, he should be thought of as a metaphor that transcends selfreference and stands for the value and experience of what it means to be Bulgarian within
postsocialism and capitalism.
The intimate connection between Trifonov and his audience is also characterized by his
musical and commercial relationship to the style of Bulgarian pop-folk. Chapter three focused on
the history and cultural meanings of the style to reveal the ways Bulgarian audiences filter ideas
of the nation and commercialism through pop-folk’s poetics and musical stylistics. The style’s
conflicting perceptions also articulated specific conflicts of value, between culture-anticulture
and Oriental-European, which Bulgarians mapped onto the celebrity Trifonov. These categories
of distinction created a particular relationship between the economic and sociocultural
experiences of postsocialism, the development of pop-folk during that period, and the cultural
and musical role of Trifonov embedded therein. Despite some notable differences in musical and
poetic style, audiences considered Trifonov’s music as lowbrow pop-folk that stands in an
opposition to the postsocialist nation. In turn, Trifonov is considered as pop-folk’s major
perpetrator and an instigator of a process of cultural degradation. I specified the historical roots
of the style in order to illustrate how its cultural history penetrates the ways Bulgarians think of
themselves as nationals as well as consumers within postsocialism. This complex discourse
revealed 1) how Bulgarians filter the postsocialist economic fracturing and distress through
commercial music; and 2) how these experiences are mapped onto Trifonov and his musical
products.
The social meanings of Trifonov’s music are also articulated in specific aspects of his
repertoire wherein the nation and commodification operate simultaneously. I explored such
146
notions separately and through ethnographic dialogues with Trifonov’s audiences. These
snapshots and vignettes revealed that both the nation and commodification take on the form of
musical and poetic narrations. In chapter four I focused on the ways the nation is poeticized,
sung, performed, and broadcasted. The examples I used to specify these narrative strategies fell
within a broader discourse of nationalism but outside the ubiquitous formulas of pop-folk. These
narrations established connections between culturally specific and historically grounded
experiences that Bulgarians could identify as national. In turn, they were foregrounded through
complimentary performative strategies such as television broadcast, private listening, poetic
meaning, musical gestures, and live concert. I suggested that these are interdependent
dimensions that flag the Bulgarian nation continuously within the recurring experience of the
everyday. In that, they serve as unconscious reminders of how and where the nation is through
sound, image, and spectacle that emphasize the phenomenological significance of place. Within
Trifonov’s nationalistic repertoires, place is a symbolic resource that configures ideas of
landscape and engages the power of remembrance to promote Bulgaria as a place of value.
Building upon such consideration of value, I also explored the ways Trifonov’s music
simultaneously narrates and is filtered through narratives of commodification. Like the nation,
the examples I used in chapter five presented musical and narrative dimensions imbued with
culturally specific notions of value. Yet, these were conflicting ideas that Bulgarian audiences
framed as culture and anticulture, or kultura and khaltura. I considered these conceptions within
commodity logic and value to insist that Trifonov’s commercial music is simultaneously
alienating and personifying. As such, however, it also represents an integral aspect of the social
praxis of capitalism, a conflict of value that renders competing social results. Here, I offer a final
consideration of the ways Trifonov’s music reveals the interconnectedness between nationness
and commodification relative to social experience.
Commodifying Nationalism
As part of the audience’s social life as well as processes of commodified production and
consumption, Trifonov’s music appears to convey two contrasting types of value- culture/nation
and anticulture/antination. Significantly, both positions specify these values in terms of the
material content of the commodity (musical and lyrical content), which allows for these
sociocultural distinctions to exist simultaneously. That is, as with gift-commodity
transformation, the materiality of the music is not negated and its consumption produces both of
147
these meaningful differences. Because value is never simply defined but is always involved in
global-local circuits of exchange, the material content, or sound, of the commodity conveys both
of these as interdependent dimensions of the same totality.
In consumption, the audience’s capacity to exchange or withhold from exchange becomes
a marker of identity since some consider Trifonov’s music as a lowbrow commodity or,
alternately, as an entertainment art form that touches the soul. Such powerful cultural meanings
then reveal a complex relationship between persons-the Bulgarian audience, and things-musical
objects, within the domain of art as a conceptual social distinction ripe with value. The role of
Trifonov’s music can be construed within two types of cultural difference relative to
commodification and value: 1) as art, or a domain of cultural claims about mass culture,
commodification and use-value wherein high art, or kultura, has come to signify the value of the
human spirit; and 2) as fake art or khaltura, an embodiment of lower forms of taste and the
degradation of both high and material culture that drives overconsumption and the devaluation of
the human spirit.
Such distinctions not only articulate conflicting positions about mass culture but they also
suggest that consumption signifies and produces distinction of a different ideological functionthat of classifying persons. That is, the consumption of Trifonov’s music articulates difference
through distinctive categorizations of its material content. By extension, the conflicting
understanding of music as an art and as a commodity also implicates the meaning and value of
the music with regard to national identity. Because Bulgarian audiences consider kultura
(culture) as an embodiment of higher forms of taste, the elevated potential of material culture to
represent, its counterpart khaltura (anticulture) automatically produces competing versions of the
national self.
In the context of Trifonov’s musical content and audience subjectivities, these categories
appear to function simultaneously and interdependently. Parts of his repertoire, which I discussed
in chapter four, are interpreted to embody the spirit of the nation by virtue of its links to
traditional folkloric materials and the musical and poetic evocations of the value of the Bulgarian
nation. Alternatively and as I mentioned in chapter five, others are considered as negations of the
nation by virtue of their employment of overtly commercial musical content, pop-folk, and its
roots in the music making practices of national minority groups such as the Roma and the
Turkish.
148
These different conceptions of value implicate the understanding of the nation relative to
both music and commodification. The struggle within Trifonov’s repertoire and its social
position then is not what values it elucidates but rather how they fit together. Similarly, the issues
of value akin to alienation and personification, or art and anti-art, emerging within the social life
of his music suggest that the ultimate stake is not related to appropriation of value. Instead, it is
the conflict that arises from individual and group conceptions of what is worthy and valuable. All
of these competing meanings relative to Trifonov’s music still unfold within the everyday, as do
various ideas about what is Bulgarian and what is not.
In following Marx’s classic thesis of commodity fetish, here I wish to invoke an aspect of
that process of alienation—that of mystification. Echoing his proposal that relationships between
people are disguised as relationships between things, I insist that values arising from the
relationship between Trifonov’s music and its audiences become mystified in the musical content
itself. The disguise of value as an intrinsic property of the commodity masks the
interconnectedness of consumption and production relative to value and social process and, in
turn, cements that value as natural—as an inherent property.
Once Trifonov’s music is considered within its social context, the everyday, the natural
value of the commodity is complimented by another form of production, that of the nation. As I
insisted in chapter four and after Billing, the nation is not restricted to extreme or passionate
fervor. Rather, it is a concept that is consistently forgotten and remembered within the routine
practices and operations of the everyday. As such, the nation’s symbols (sounds, images, objects)
unconsciously reminds us that we are in a nation amongst a world of other nations and provide
us with ways of talking about it through a vocabulary of homelands and national identifications.
In that regard, the nation is equally mystified or disguised within the operations of the everyday
wherein consumption of commodities produces people through things.
The elusive qualities of such mystifications can be construed as a commodity fetish, but I
believe that both the nation and commodification act simultaneously to produce people in
conflicting ways. In evoking the nation as place and space of value, Trifonov’s music acts as a
constant reminder of what it means to be Bulgarian. Yet, it does so subtly and within the
unconscious routines and practices of daily postsocialist life. As such, it situates, emplaces, and
positions people in a relationship with one another through music performance, poetics, and
television broadcasts to think of themselves as Bulgarians. Simultaneously, Trifonov’s music
149
also evokes ideas of what the nation is not through musical content that is multidirectional and
heterogeneous. These material properties are interpreted as commodities that stand in opposition
to the meaning and form of nationness. Because both of these perceptions act within an overall
commodified music market and postsocialist everyday, they become entangled and mystified as
an elusive, inherent property of the musical commodity. Yet, both express and normalize
relationships between Bulgarian people as nationals and as commodities in a habitual, and
arguably unconscious, way.
The connection between nation and commodification within Trifonov’s music can thus
be thought of as one of interdependence and elusive mystification within the daily practices of
the everyday. Like commodity fetish and the banal aspects of nationalism, this connection does
not register consciously in consumption and therefore produces people in both ways
simultaneously. Such social reproduction, however, does not imply that Bulgarian audiences are
passive recipients of a higher cultural order or capitalist logic. Rather, it situates
commodification and nationalism as interdependent processes of social life and in turn the ways
people articulate how they are and who they are through meaningful distinction.
In-Betweenness
The conflicting interconnectedness of nationalism and commodification in the context of
Trifonov’s music can also be thought of as an overarching characteristic of Trifonov within
Bulgarian culture, within postsocialism, and within the regional identity discourse of the
Balkans. In Imagining the Balkans (1995), for example, Todorova addresses some of these
sentiments thorough a type of an ontological in-betweennessbetween West and Orient,
civilized and barbaric—defined by incompatibility. The Balkans, she insists, have always evoked
the image of a bridge or a crossroad and labels that suggest its in-betweenness as
“semideveloped, semicolonial, semicivilized, semioriental” (Todorova 1997:15-16). The
fracturing social processes that came to define the Bulgarian postsocialist transition also
exacerbated these perceptions and identity contradictions. As part of the discourse of
balkanization, this positioning became internalized as a marker of identity wherein competing
forces, histories, and values clash. The transitory status of such competing aspects of identity can
thus be ascribed to a complex system of historical and cultural experiences that will always be in
tension and therefore a subject of negotiation.
150
While I find Todorova’s metaphor most productive and evocative, I also wish to nuance
it relative to the case of Trifonov and his music. First, the process of negotiating in-betweenness
implies a certain level of ambiguity and elusiveness—aspects that define much of the competing
perceptions and values arising form the social interactions of Bulgarians with Trifonov’s music.
Second, I find that in-betweenness is a dimension of interconnected, interdependent dynamics
that are always in tension. It is also in that way, that in-betweenness is productive for analysis—
it is always ripe with contradictions. In thinking through such contradictions relative to Trifonov,
the category of in-betweenness captures much of the competing positions and ideas that I
encountered in both fieldwork and analytical research.
At a micro level, Trifonov’s music is constantly positioned in-between ideas of kultura
and khaltura, pop and folk, pure and unclean, high art and lowbrow kitsch. This in-betweenness
is rooted in the heterogeneity of his musical stylistics and their seemingly natural integration,
even within single musical pieces. These perceptions inform the social dynamics of his music as
both commodified and nationalistic. Because different aspects of Trifonov’s media productions
and repertoire explore both to different extend, audiences filter them, through their contrasting
sociocultural meanings, simultaneously to produce social distinction.
At a macro level, Trifonov also functions as a mediator between political and economic
processes and social life. That is, as a popular culture celebrity and a politically outspoken
television personality, he effectively stands in-between state and nation, higher and lower
cultural order, capitalist process and social life, simultaneously specifying and transcending both.
Because the notion of in-betweenness is also an internalized identity discourse, Trifonov and his
music have come to embody and reflect how Bulgarians negotiate their in-betweenness through
his music. For some, the internalized self-perception of Bulgarians as Balkan, reinforces their
rejection of the Oriental as a stereotype for their crudeness, barbarity and lack of sophistication.
For others, the eclecticism of the music stands as a symbol of regional pride and national
belonging. Both, however, exist within the same social totality and therefore stand as conflicting
but interdependent aspects of its underlying principles.
As a meaningful distinction imbued with value, in-betweenness is a qualitative cultural
position and a sense of selfhood for the Bulgarian people that is historically grounded, dynamic,
and articulated through Trifonov and his music. While this categorization triggers both internal
and external historic, economic, and sociocultural stereotypes about the place of Bulgaria and
151
Bulgarian people in the world, I believe that it also characterizes human cultural experience more
broadly. As in-betweenness may invoke metaphors of connection and tension, it also conveys
ideas of balance and place. That is, it may very well specify the general to the particular as a
relationship with no final outcome. Like Michael Jackson, I consider in-betweenness as a
struggle to strive for balance and “a central human preoccupation” (Jackson 1998: 21). As he
explains, this struggle consists of an unending dialogue, negotiation, and exchange wherein
ontological insecurity drives people to constantly recover their sense of self. Any sense of loss
within the struggle of being in-between is then about relationships—relationships between
people and things that have value for them. Many of those relationships involve senses of place,
belonging, and identifications such as language and national identity. In the event that the
balance between the conflicting sides of in-betweenness is severed, the loss of these senses is
readily experienced as an assault of one’s own person (ibid.,18).
Within the struggle to balance their place in the world as Bulgarian nationals, Balkan
people, and postsocialist citizens, Bulgarian people readily map out their sense of in-betweenness
onto Trifonov. Their social relationships and positioning become articulated through Trifonov’s
musical productions and performances. In turn, these hierarchical differences become
aestheticized and narrated commercially. Since social positions always exist within a larger code
of meaning, they also reflect Bulgaria’s internal and external perception of itself. In-betweenness
may thus appear paradoxical but it is a historically grounded and dynamic position that
articulates both the experience of change and the way Bulgarian people construct their own
subjectivities in a commodity world.
152
APPENDIX A
SONG TEXTS
Example 1
Nema Takava Dŭrzhava
There Ain’t a Country Like That
Dobŭr vecher uvazhaemi zriteli.
Good Evening Dear viewers,
Spite li?
Are you asleep?
Pozdraviavam maikite
I wish to congratulate the mothers
na nashite rŭkovoditeli.
of our leaders.
Do vcherashni muhliovtsi,
Yesterday’s losers,
a dneska dupeta.
today’s assholes.
Igraiat si na strashni,
Pretending to be like some intimidating,
bezkompromisni chengeta.
uncompromising cops.
I praviat operatsii
Performing operations
s pozorni imena.
with degrading names.
Oktopodi, skaridi
Octopuses, shrimps
i druga morska khrana.
and other seafood.
A pred kabinetite
And in front of their offices
gi chakat zhurnalistite,
await the journalists,
takiva zhurnalistki
journalists, as such,
samo da iskate.
you can only wish for.
Oshte ne sa ia kachili v dzhipa,
Barely in his jeep,
a tia veche posiaga i svalia mu tsipa.
she’s already reaching down to unzip.
Takŭv e zhivota.
Such is life.
Pozdravliavam vsichki vestnitsi
I congratulate all the major newspapers
153
i glavnite redaktori.
and their chief editors.
Vseki pishe za vsichko,
Everyone writes about everything,
a nishto ne razbira.
but doesn’t really get anything.
Tolkova e gnusno,
It is so disgusting,
che ne mi se komentira.
I don’t even want to comment.
Ne mi govorete
Don’t talk to me
za zakon i konstitutsia,
about law and constitution,
v taia dârzhava
in this country
vsichko e prostitutsia.
it’s all prostitution.
Pak li shte zhiveesh v lŭzha?
Are you going to live in a lie again?
Nema takava dŭrzhava.
There ain’t a country like that.
Pak li shte tŭrpish i do koga?
How long are you gonna stand this?
Nema takava dŭrzhava.
There ain’t a country like that.
Niama smisŭl ot tova,
There is no point to anything,
i poslednata iluzia umria,
the last illusion has died,
v taia strana na vlast e gluposta.
the ruling party in this country is stupidity.
Dobŭr vecher uvazhaemi zriteli.
Good Evening Dear Viewers.
Spite li?
Are you asleep?
Kolko danâk shte vzemay
How much would the tax be
na narodnite buditeli?
on the national Revivalists?
Dvama- trima studenti
Two- three student
umoreno protestirat,
protest exausted,
niama shans tuk za tiakh,
they don’t stand a chance here,
nai-dobre da emigrirat.
it is better if they immigrate.
Silikonov zhivot, silikonovi tsitsi,
Fake life, fake breasts,111
silikonovi mechti i falshivi polititsi.
fake dreams and fake politicians.
Vsichkite zhiveiat v edna tŭpa reklama,
Everyone lives in a stupid commercial,
The original expression in Bulgarian can be literally translated as ‘silicon life” referring to the substance used in
breast enhancement surgeries. In this context, the material silicon is used as a euphemism for ‘artificial,’ ‘fake’
qualities in general.
111
154
v koiato svobodata e sravnena sŭs salama.
where freedom costs as much as salami.
Novinite zapochvat s debat za biudzheta.
The news begin with a budget debate.
K’vi debati, ebati,
What debate, the hell with them,
depotati i menteta.
Mp’s and fakes.
Na tribunata kachva se nekŭv pederast.
At the podium speaks some kind of homo,
pederast, pederast, no oblechen vŭv vlast.
homo, but dressed in power.
Ustata mu gluposti,
His mouth full of nonsense,
v ochite mu zloba.
hatred in his eyes.
Toi taia vlast shte ia stiska do groba,
This power, he will squeeze till the grave,
a shtom svŭrshi porednia smeshen debat,
and after the next comical debate,
shte otide da chuka v Studenskia grad.
he will go fuck in the Student city.
Dobŭr vecher uvazhaemi zriteli.
Good Evening Dear Viewers.
Spite li ili chakate da doidat
Are you sleeping or are you waiting
porednite spasiteli?
for yet another savior?
Kolko pŭti
How many times
se povtaria starata istoria?
are you going to relive the same old story?
Izkhvŭrliame edinia,
We throw out one,
pregrŭshtame vtoria.
and then hug the next.
Niakoi znae li
Does anyone know
kak edin militsioner
how does a police officer
vnezapno sŭbuzhda se milioner?
becomes a millionaire?
Te nali uzh sa novi,
Seemingly they are new,
a pak sa si sŭshtite,
but it’s all the same,
praviat se na shefove,
pretending to be lead,
gledat mrachno, mrŭshtiat se.
with dark eyes, and a frowning.
I izvednŭzh stava iasno,
And all of a sudden it turns out,
che sa pŭlni s imoti.
they are full of estates.
I izvednŭzh stava iasno,
And all of a sudden it becomes clear,
155
che sa pŭlni idioti.
that they are idiots.
I kakvo da gi pravim
So what should we do with
sega tia kevali
these losers
‘shtot taka ili inache
as it seems that
veche sme gi izbrali?
we’ve already elected them?
Ne vi li omrŭzna
Aren’t you tired
da vi lŭzhat na drebno?
of being lied to?
Ne vi li omrŭzna
Aren’t you tired of living in poverty
da zhiveete bedno?
of living in poverty?
Do koga shte si traem,
How long will we stand them,
veche stava banalno?
it is becoming banal?
Tolkova li e trudno
Is it that difficult
da zhiveem normalno?
to just live normal?
Example 2
Summertime
Summertime
Zima e,
It is winter time
vŭnka vie vyk,
outside cry wolfs,
tate maa prŭzhki s luk.
dady’s stuffing himself wih onion and meat.
Startsi i pseta viat v poletо
Elders and dogs howl in the fields
pak zakolikhme praseto
we killed the pig
i shte piinem ot vintseto.
and will drink from the wine.
Zima e,
It is winter time,
pŭlniat se sudzhutsi.
time to stuff the suaseges.
Zima e,
It is winter time,
babi, diadovtsi i vnutsi,
grandmas, grandpas and grandchildren
se subrali vsichki po terlitsi.
gathered together wearing terlitzi.
156
Za da ychat, Little Baby,
So they can teach, Little Baby,
zapadni ezitsi.
western languages.
Zima e,
It is winter time,
no shte doide summertime.
but summertime will come.
Zima e,
It is wintertime,
Baby don`t you cry!
Baby don’t you cry!
О, iziadokhme po Koleda praseto,
Oh,we ate the pig at Christmas
spi, detentse, zimen sŭn,
sleep, my baby, winter sleep,
summertime te chaka navŭn.
summertime will wait for you ouside.
Example 3
Malka Antipoliticheska
Little Anti-Political Song
Malko momichentse nameri granata,
Little girl found a granate,
i ponatrŭshka dva-tri deputata.
and killed a few MPs.
Bаbа i diado mu dali nagan,
Grandma and grandpa gave him nagan,112
vkŭshti naprazno оchakvat Dogan.
they are waiting at home for Dogan.
Fil Dimitrov na stroezh si igral,
Phil Dimitrov was playing at a construction,
tikho otzad priblizhil samosval.
quietly approached the steamroller.
Niamalo pisŭtsi, niamalo ston,
There were no crys, no screams,
samo botushki stŭrchat ot beton.
only boots stuck out from the concrete.
Refrain
Obiadva dŭlgo deputata.
The MP is taking a long lunch.
Obiadva dŭlgo ia go vizh.
Long lunck, just look at him.
Zasednala mu kost v ustata,
A bone got stuck in his troat,
112
Nagan is a type of a revolver.
157
uzh deputat a veche bivsh.
and the MP is now a former.
Sashka Parilov se kŭpal v Nil,
Sashko Parilov bathed in the Nile,
krotko dopluval edin krokodil.
quietly approached a crocodile.
Znael i toi che si vzema belia,
He knew he was taking in trouble,
cherno raztroistvo go mŭchi sega.
and now black diarrhea is torturing him.
Bosa bilashe Ife Mustafa,
Barefood walked Ife Mystafa,
bosa nastŭpila druga zmia.
barefoot she stepped on another snake.
V kratkata svarka ednata umriala,
In the quiet fight one of the died,
drugata zhiva, koia lie e tia?
the other one is alive, which one is it?
Edi Sogarev pŭtuval s merak,
Eddie Sogarev travelled with gusto,
Edi pŭtuval ot sutrin do mrak.
Eddie travelled from dusk till dawn.
Tŭkmo mu minala taz shturotia,
Just as this craziness passed,
tup na glavata mu padna iutia.
an iron fell on his head.
Malkata Klara beriala maslini,
Little Klara picked olives,
malkata Кlara nastŭpila mina.
little Klara stepped on a mine.
Pak shte gi pomnia dori i nasŭn,
I will rememebr this even in derams,
sivi ochi vŭrkhu staria pŭn.
grey eyes on a tree trunk.
Example 4
Shat! Na Patkata Glavata
Cut Off the Duck’s Head
Zhiveem volni i svobodni
We live happy and free
sred klanitsite mili rodni,
amogst the butchers dear and homely,
pred nas sa blesnali zhitata
infront of us the field shine
i shat, i shat, i shat na patkata glavata!
and cut, cut, cut the duck’s head off!
Ei go! Еi gо! Еi gо, nashii vozhd!
Here he is, our leader!
Еi gо! Еi gо! Еi gо, nashii vozhd!
Here he is, our leader!
158
Pred nas са blesnali zhitata
infront of us the field shine
i shat, i shat, i shat na patkata glavata!
and cut, cut, cut the duck’s head off!
Evtini sа ni tsenite,
Our prices are low,
evtini sа ni zhenite.
our women are cheap.
Pitat li me de e zorata,
Where is the morning dusk, I’m asked,
shat na patkata glavata!
cut that duck’s head off!
Edno napred, dve nazad.
One step forward, two backwards.
Vŭrvi, narode vŭzroden,
Walk on you nation revived,
ot koi li ne оsemenen,
inseminated by who knows who,
da blesne mŭnichko zemiata i
let the land shine a little and
shat na patkata glavata.
cut the duck’s head off!
Nedei gо chaka i
Don’t even wait for him
dori vŭrvi оri, оri, оri.
and even go harvest.
Кŭt’ choveshka dlan zemiata i
The land like a human palm
shat na patkata glavata!
cut that duck’s head off!
Da rabotim- mrŭsna duma,
To work- a dirty word,
neka da ia trŭshne chuma.
let it die in pain.
Nii bortsi sme nа blagata
We are fighters of well-being
i shаt, i shat, i shat-shat-shat-shat
and cut, cut, cut-cut-cut-cut
na patkata glavata!
the duck’s head off!
Viatŭr echi, Balkan stene,
The wind blows, mountain is moans
pushka do kolene.
the rifle by your knees.
De e, sestro, Karadzhata
Where is sister the Karadza
shat na patkata glavata!
cut the duck’s head off!
159
Аz sŭm bŭlgarche, оbicham
I am a Bulgarian and I love
gol pо piasŭka dа ticham!
to run nakeda on the beach!
Gorda Stara planinata,
Proud Old mountain,
shat na patkata glavata!
cut the duck’s head off!
Example 5
Sweet Chalga in Time
Sweet Chalga in Time
Star kradets si tаtе,
You are an old tief dady,
kral si 'vо li nе,
you steal everything,
nauchi me tati
teach me daddy,
da krada kone.
how to setal horses.
Che edna kobilka
For a female horse
vse mi e v sŭnia,
I dream about at night,
tsiala nosht prepuska
all nights she runs away form me
kak da ia lovia?
how can I catch her?
Refrain:
Zа kradets nе stavash sine
You are not good for a thief, son,
ti si budala,
you’re stupid,
shtom sŭrtseto ti e vzela
if you’ve let you heart to be taken by
niakakva zhena.
some woman.
Star kradets si tate,
You’re an old thief, daddy,
kral si stо neshta,
you’ve stolen hundreds of things,
nauchi me tati,
teach me daddy,
zhitsa da krada.
How to steal wires
Primka shte napravia
I will make a laso
za kobilkata,
for the horse,
аko nе ia khvana
and if I don’t catch her
shte se besia sam.
I will hang myself.
160
Example 6
Roma Rap
Roma Rap
Sharenata riza,
The colorful shirt,
bliaskavia nozh,
the shining knife,
kŭrpata chervena,
the red cloth,
pletenia kosh.
the weaved basket.
Vinoto, zhenite,
The wine, the women
na konia potta,
the sweat of the horse,
pŭtia me pregrŭshta,
the road embreaces me,
liubi me noshta.
the night makes love to me.
Zmiata vŭrkhu kamŭk,
the snake on the stone,
staria bashta,
the wold father,
brata vŭv zatvora,
the brotehr in prison.
khliabŭt vŭv peshta.
the bread in the oven.
Refrain:
Rоmа, rоmааа, rоmааа, rаp.
Roma, roma, roma rap.
Rоmа, rоmааа-rоmа rаp.
Roma, roma, roma rap.
Rаp!-Оtpreed. Rаp!-Оtzaad.
Rap!- In front. Rap! -In the back.
Pitai pŭtia,
Ask the road,
pitai proletta,
ask the spring,
ptitsite popitai,
ask the birds,
starata zhena.
the old woman.
Malkoto momiche,
The little girl,
s shapkata chervena,
with the red cap,
s lacheni obuvki,
with the shiny shoes,
i roklia na tsvetia.
and spring flower dress.
Khvŭrleniat kamŭk,
The thrown stone,
udar vŭv gŭrba,
a hit in the back,
zasŭhnalite rani
the drying wonds
161
po dlanite krŭvta.
the blood on your hands.
Pitai, popitai
Ask, ask
malkata zhena,
the little lady,
liubovta e da otkradnesh,
love is like stealing,
zhivota оt smŭrtta.
the life from death.
Example 7
Zhŭlta Knizhka
Yellow Booklet
Tia, malkata zhŭlta strana,
She, the little yellow country,
pod zhŭltata zhalna luna,
under the sad yellow moon,
tam az sŭm roden,
there I was born,
tam zhŭltia, dŭlgia den
there, the yellow long day
biaga krai men.
runs by me.
Po zhŭltite paveta
On the yellow cobble stones
zhŭlti koli minavat,
yellow cars pass by,
a v chernite moreta
and in the black seas
shvedki se daviat.
swedish girls drown.
Sred zhŭltite tsvetia i
Amidst the yellow flowers
zhlŭtnali detsa,
yellowish children,
pârvo zhŭlto mliako zasukakh
drink their first yellow milk
v Zhorzhia!
in Yellowbulgaria!
Tam zhŭtvata e zhŭlta sega,
There the harvest is yellow now,
tam, zhŭlta me liulka liulia,
there in a yellow swing I swang,
tam zhŭlti usta
there yellow mouths
tam zhŭltata presa kreshtia:
there yellow press screamed:
“Zhŭlta Lamia!”
“Yellow Dragon!”
Zhŭltite dzhudzheta
Yellow dwarfs
druzhno ni upravliavat,
collectively rule us,
po zhŭltite snezhanki
and chase after
162
tŭzhno pristavat,
yellow Snow Whites,
v zhŭltia zhivot
in the yellow life
na zhŭltia narod.
of the yellow nation.
Vechen pasport е
The everlasting passposrt is
zhŭltata knizhka v Zhorzhia!
the yellow booklet of Yellowbulgaria!
Example 8
Studio Khŭ
Studio X
Nie sme loshite v strashnia film,
We are the bad guys in the scary movie,
tŭi pozhela si sŭdbata.
that’s how fait set it up.
Mŭzhki momcheta sme, znaem sami-
Manly man we are, and we know it-
loshi shte bŭdem dokrai!
we are going to be bad till the end!
Chernite ni drekhi krait ot vas,
Our black clothes hide it from you,
kolko sa beli dushite ni.
how bright out souls are.
Refrain:
Izpratete ni bez plach,
Send us away without crying,
momicheta, bez sŭlzi,
girls, without the tears,
zabravete dazhe nashte imena!
forget our names!
Kopeleta gadni buakhme vsichkite, do edin, We are nasty bastards, all of us,
ala takа ni obichahte.
but that is why you loved us.
Niakoga vsichko shte svŭrshi taka.
At some point, all of it will end.
Niakoi pred nas shte zastane
Someone will stand
s dva pistoleta vŭv vsiaka rŭka,
with two guns in each hand,
tŭrseshti nashtе sŭrtsa.
seeking to strike our hearts.
I shte vidiat vsichki prez ranite ni
And everyone will see through the wound
kolko sа beli dushite ni.
how bright our souls are.
Example 9
Zaplakala е Gorata
Crying is the Forest
Zaplakala e gorata,
Crying is the forest,
163
gorata i planinata.
the forest and the mountain.
I nа gorata dŭrvoto,
And the forest’s tree,
zaradi Indzhe voivoda:
for Indze voivoda:
“Dе dа e Indzhe dа doide
“Where’s Indze, to come
s petstotin mladi iunatsi,
with five hundred young heroes,
Gorata da razveseliat
to lighten up the forest
i na gorata dŭrvoto,
and the forest’s tree,
i nа dârvoto listata.”
and the tree’s leaves.”
I Indzhe na gorata kaza:
And Indze spoke to the forest:
“Goro le goro zelena,
“Forest mine, green forest,
imash li voda studena,
do you have cold water,
imash li sianka debela?”
do you have deep shade?”
Ti doidi, Indzhe voivoda!
You, just come, Indze voivodo!
Az shte ti sianka napravia,
I will make you shade,
az shte ti voda iztocha.
I will poor you water.
Kato za teb Voivoda,
Worth for a heiduk leader,
za tvoia otbor iunatsi.
for your group of heroes.
Example 10
Gоrо lе Goro Zelena
Forest, Green Forest
Kukuvitsa kuka,
Bird is singing,
nа zelena buka
on a green tree
zа gоrа zelena,
about a green forest,
zа Stara planina.
about the old mountain.
Gоrо lе gоrо zelena,
Green forest,
nasha stara maiko!
mother of ours!
Voinitsi sа pishat
The soldiers write
164
po voinishki sela,
about soldiers villages,
pŭk nii sha si pishem
but we write
nа bukova lista.
about forest leaves.
Goro le goro zelena,
Green forest,
vodo studena!
cold water of ours!
Iz gora sliazvashe
From the forest stepped out
Stoian mlad voivoda,
Stoian, a young Voivoda,
nasreshta mu ide
and there opposite of him walked
prokleto seimenche.
a damn Turk.
Gоrо zelena,
Green forest,
nasha stara maiko!
Old mother of ours!
- Ia sа vŭrni, vŭrni,
- Go back, back
prokleto seimenche,
you damn Turk,
da si nе izvazhdam
so I don’t have to pull out
pushka аrnautska.
my rifle, heavy rifle.
Pushka аrnautska
Rifle heavy
s teleni urshumi,
with big bullets,
dа tа nе udarvam
so that I don’t strike you
vâv kletoto sŭrtse.
in your damn heart.
Gorо zelena, nasha stara maika!
Green forest, old mother of ours!
Imash li za nazi
Do you have for us
shumka dа ni pazish,
a shelter to protect us,
sianka dа ni khladish?
a shade to keep us cool?
Gоrо zelena, vodo studena!
Green forest, cold water of ours!
Khranish li za nazi,
Do you feed for us,
bŭlgarski khaiduti,
us Bulgarian haiduti,
shareni agântsa?
colorful sheep?
165
Gоrо zelena, vodo studena!
Green forest, cold water of ours!
V gora da khodime,
To the forest we will go,
v gora da zhiveime,
to live there,
tebe da vardime,
to protect you,
khaidushki da mreme.
to die like haiduti.
Gоrо zelena,
Green forest,
nаshа stara maika!
old mother of ours!
Example 11
Zvezditse
Little Star
Zhalno zhali umoren iunak na svoia
Tired hero complains to his
sestra zvezditsa:
sister little star:
Ot visoko, zvezditse ti,
From above, you little star,
ot visoko men vizhdash li?
From above, do you see me?
Nosht li e ili den- znaesh li,
Is it day or night- do you know,
Zhiv li sâm ili ne- ia kazhi!
Am I alive or not- tell me!
Az pristupvam pak
I am stepping again on
v greshnata zemia.
the sinful ground.
Khlopnaha pred men portite-
The doors were closed before me-
Angel bial ne stanah az.
white angel I did not become.
Tam na onia sviat,
There, in the other world
Lud iunak zashto im e-
why would they need a crazy hero-
s konia tser pop beli oblatsi,
with a black horse on the white clouds,
buri zli da goni vse.
evil storms to chase.
Ia greini, sestro,
Shine, sister,
zvezditse, ogrei mi pŭt-
little star, light a path for me-
greshnik sŭm i zhiv pri zhivite
sinful, I am, and alive with the living
Vrŭshtam se zavinagi!
I am coming back forever!
166
Example 12
Svаtbа
Wedding
Planinata mi e maika,
The Mountain is my mother,
a bashta mi, buen viatŭr beshe.
my father was the wild wind.
Brat mi е moreto tâmno,
My brother is the dark sea,
ludite trevi sa mi sestrite.
The crazy grass fields are my sisters.
Еi takŭv sŭm, sаm ti kazvam,
that’s how I am, I’m telling you,
ti kazhi samo dali me iskash!
you say if you want me!
Svatove shte ti provodia,
I’ll send you in-laws,
Snegove i buini khali,
snow and wild snow storms,
da te vdignat i da te dokarat,
to lift you and bring you to me.
Beli oblatsi shte vzema,
White clouds I will take,
vmesto bulo s tiah shte tе pokria.
I will cover you with them instead of a veil.
Aаa, moia shte si vechе.
Ahhh, then you will be mine.
Aaа, shte e strashno ako kazhesh ne!
ahhh, it will be dark if you say no!
Tezhka svatba shte ti vdigna,
Big wedding I will make,
i svirachi 300 shte dokaram.
and 300 musicians I will bring.
Sluntseto shte ni venchae,
The sun will marry us,
dа ne zhalish stara maika.
so you don’t miss your mother.
I bashta ti gnevno da ne pita:
And so your father does not ask:
Kоi оt kŭshtata u vdiga
Who is taking from his house,
nаi-goliamoto imane?
his biggest treasure?
Koi te lŭzhe i s kakvo te mami?
Who is tricking you and how?
Nа khoroto s men sе khvashtai,
Join the circle dance with me,
i rŭkata i nedei dа puskash.
and don’t let go of my hand.
Example 13
Bоiat Nаstаnа
The Fight Has Come
Boiat nastana, tupat sŭrtsata ni
The fight has come, our hearts are beating
167
Eto gi blizo nashte dushmani
Here they are, near, our oppressors
Kurazh druzhina, viarna sgovorna
Courage, loyal and united brothers
Nii ne sme veche raia pokorna
We are no longer quiet slaves
Neka pred sveta da se pokazhem
Let us show ourselves to the world
Neka po-gordo bratia da kazhem
Let us say, more proudly, brothers
Che sme stroshili mrŭsni okovi
That we’ve broken the dirty chains
Che sme svobodni a ne robove.
That we are free, not slaves.
Druzhno bratia Bŭlgari-
Together brothers, Bulgarians-
V boia da vŭrvim
to the fight, let’s go
Druzhno bratia Bŭlgari-
Together brothers, Bulgarians-
Vrag da pobedim.
an enemy to defeat.
O, maiko moia, rodino mila
O, mother, dear home-country
Nii ne sme veche raia pokorna.
We are no longer quiet slaves.
S gniav i dŭrzost dnes da izdignem glas
With anger and power, let us raise our voice
Vremeto niama vse da chaka nas
The Time will not always wait for us.
Neka v bitka slavna vlezem nii
Let us enter into a glorious battle
Nashta desnitsa Bog shte podkrepi.
God will support our right hand.
Example 14
Neka Me Boli
Let Me Hurt
Udavi me v tvoite ochi,
Drown me in your eyes
udushi me s tvoite kosi.
Suffocate me with your hair
S ystni sega me ubii!
Kill me with your lips
Neka me boli,
Let me hurt,
neka me boli!
let me hurt!
Slushai pesenta mi i se smei!
Listen to my song and laugh,
Losha s men bŭdi,
Be nasty to me,
168
do krai me razpilei,
finish me off,
I neka, i neka me boli!
and let me, let me hurt!
Samo tazi bolka oshte mi podskazva,
Only this pain still tells me that
che sŭm oshte zhiv i sŭm do teb!
I am alive and I am next to you!
Refrain:
Aide nakazhi me,
Common’ punish me,
Aide narani me,
Common hurt me,
Aide izgori me.
Common burn me.
Neka me boli!
Let me hurt!
Khladna i bezmilostna bŭdi,
Be cold and unmerciful,
Malka veshtitse ne viarvai na sŭlzi,
You little witch, do not be moved by tears
Dori i do smŭrt da boli,
Even if it hurts like death,
Samo tazi bolka oshte mi podskazva,
Only this pain still tells me that,
che sŭm oshte zhiv i sŭm do teb!
I am alive and I am next to you!
Example 15
Frenskata Gimnazia
The French High School
Ti si mnogo pechena,
You are very cool,
znaesh gi ezitsite.
you know languages.
Frenskata gimnazia
The French high school
pishe ti shestitsite!
gives you all the A’s!
Khaide nauchi i men,
Common, teach me too,
shtoto frantsuzoikite
cause’ the french girls
chakat vseki den-
wait up every day-
chakat da go broikame!
they’re waiting to be picked up!
Refrain:
Frenskata gimnazia,
The French High School,
Gospod neia pazi ia!
God has really blessed it!
S neia nezhna e noshta-
With it, the night is sweet169
Shte sgresha!
I will sin!
Zarvori tetradkite,
Close the notebooks,
zatvori bukvarite!
close the textbooks!
Neka dvamata sŭs teb,
Let the two of us,
drugo da otvariame.
open something else.
Shto mi triabva Francia,
I don’t need to go to France,
tuk sa frantsuzoikite!
the french girls are all here.
Vsichko e s garantsia -
It’s all guaranteed-
chakat da go broikame!
they are always waiting to be picked up!
Example 16
Nazad, Nazad Mome Kalino
Back Away Kalino Maiden
Nazad, nazad, mome Kalino,
Back away, Kalino maiden,
ne odi podir mene,
do not chase after me,
che u nazi ima gora golema,
because we have a big forest,
nе mozhesh ia premina.
you cannot cross it.
Kе sе prestoram nа gorsko pile,
I will turn into a forest bird,
gоrа е premina i pri teb е doida,
fly over the mountain and come to you,
vechno tvoia е bida.
I will be your forever.
Nazad, nazad, mome Каlinо,
Back away, Kalino maiden,
nе оdi podir mene,
do not chase after me,
che u nazi ima treva visoka,
because we have tick fields,
nе mozhesh ia premina.
you cannot cross them.
Ке sе prestoram nа liuta zmia,
I will turn into a poisonous snake,
treva е premina i pri teb е doida,
I will cross the field and come to you,
vechno tvoia е bida.
I will be yours forever.
Nazad, nazad, mome Kalino,
Back away, Kalino maiden,
170
nе оdi podir mene,
do not chase after me,
che u nazi ima voda dliboka,
because we have deep waters,
nе mozhesh ia preplivа.
you cannot swim through it.
Kе sе prestoram nа ribа mrena,
I will turn into a big fish,
vоdа е preplivam i pri teb е doida,
I will swim thorugh and come to you,
vechno tvoia е bida.
I will be yours forever.
Nazad, nazad, mome Kalino,
Back away, Kalino maiden,
nе оdi podir mene,
do no chase after me,
che u nazi imam iubava zhena,
I have a beautiful wife,
sо dve drebni dechinia.
with two small children.
Kе sе prestoram nа tsârna chuma,
I will turn into black plague,
zhena е umaram, dechinia ke gledam,
I will kill your wife, watch your children,
vechno tvoia е bida.
I will be yours forever.
Example 17
Novite Varvari
The New Barbarians
Dni shemetni tekat,
Days pass by,
v tozi grad na krŭstopŭt.
in this town of crossroads.
Tuk vseki e prorok,
Here, everyone's a prophet,
na niakoi svoi izmislen bog
to their own, unreal God.
No tuk pak shte kipi zhivot
But here new life will emerge again
sŭs novite varvari.
with the new barbarians.
Ne stiga pŭt do tuk,
There are no roads to this place,
i nuzhen ni e niakoi drug
and we need someone
dа ni otkrie pak,
to 'discover' us again,
sred burnia otroven mrak.
in the midst of this poisonous darkness.
Dnes trŭpnem v ochakvane
Today we tremble and await the coming
171
nа novite varvari.
of the new barbarians.
Refrain:
Vŭv umirashtia bavno sviat,
In this slowly dying world,
te shte vleiat novata si krŭv,
they will infuse their blood,
i otnovo shte go sŭzhiviat,
and will revive it again,
novite varvari!
these new barbarians!
Sred prakh iztinala,
In the cold dust of past times,
na vremena otminali,
of past times,
te krachat kŭm grad,
they walk towards the city,
prevzemat go da go spasiat!
conquer it to save it!
I tuk, pak shte kipi zhivot
And there, life will be revived again
sŭs novite varvari!
with the new barbarians!
Example 18
Katerino Mome
Katerina Maiden
Katerino mome,
Katerino maiden,
zashto si tolkloz, mome, ubava,
why are you maiden, so pretty,
kakva te maika, mome, razhdala,
what mother gave you birth,
kakva si voda, mome, ti pila.
What water have you drunk.
Ia sŭm si, milo libe, ubava,
I am, dear love, that pretty
ia sŭm si, milo libe, gizdava,
I am, dear love, that beautiful
оti sŭm rasla, libe, v planinata,
because I grew up in the mountain,
oti sŭm rasla, libe, v Pirina.
because I grew up in the Pirin.
Pirinska voda, libe, sŭm pila,
I drunk water from the Pirin, love,
pirinska treva, libe, gazila,
I walked on Pirin grass, love,
bŭlgarska maika mene razhdala,
a Bulgarian mother gave birth to me,
172
Maika pirinka, libe, gledala,
A Pirin mother, love, brought me up,
bŭlgarska maika, libe, gledala.
A Bulgarian mother, love, brought me up.
Example 19
Кâdе Si Viarna, Ti Liubov Narodna
Where Are You Truthful Love of the Nation
Kŭde si viarna, ti
Where are you, you truthful
liubov narodna?
love of the nation?
Kŭde blestish ti
Where do you spark, you
iskra blagorodna?
spark of dignity?
Ia v silen plamŭk ti plamni,
Oh, light yourself like a strong flame,
ta buen ogŭn razpali,
and turn into a fire,
na mladite v sŭrtsata,
a fire in the young people’s hearts,
da trŭgnat po gorata.
so that they take to the forest.
Plamni, plamni ti,
Light up, light up,
v nas liubov goreshta.
inside us a burning love.
Vodi v sŭdbata
Lead us to our fait
da stoim nasreshta.
to stand against.
Da viknem vsintsa s glas goliam,
To scream against with loud voices,
po vsichkia Kordzha Balkan,
all over the Kodza Mountain,
Goliamo, mlado stavai,
Old and young ones, get up,
oruzhie zapasvai!
put your weapons on!
Bairiatsi bŭlgarski navred da vdignem,
Let us raise the Bulgarian flags everywhere,
sŭs krŭst v rŭka kŭm Boga da izviknem:
with a cross in hand, let us call to God:
O, nash sŭzdateliu Khriste,
Oh, Christ, creator of ours,
ia vizh ot iasnoto nebe,
look upon us from the clear sky,
nasheto mŭchenie i dŭlgoto tŭrpenie.
at our suffering and prolonged patience.
V boi shtom padne edin ot nas,
When one of us falls in battle,
shte viknem v radostnia chas,
we will say loud in this glorioud hour,
173
"Zhiveite Vie, Bâlgari,
“Live you, Bulgarians,
оt Boga nadareni!"
blessed by God!”
Example 20
Kombaneiro Inteligentska
The Intelligent-Harvester Song
Beshe tia lhubava zhena,
She was a pretty woman,
Beshe tia tsialata kraka,
She was all legs,
А pŭk az, krotko zhŭnekh si
And I was quietly reaping
tuka s kombaina.
here with my harvester.
Samo grŭb mi оbŭrna tia,
She turned her back to me,
ni me chu, nito me
Did not hear me,
vidia, ne razbra,
nor did she understand,
chе zа neia bе moita bibitka.
that my honk was for her.
Tuka v zhitata,
Here, in the fields
udobna, zadna sedalka imam az.
I have a comfortable back seat.
Moga i legnal da prodŭlzhavam
I can keep going laying back
da zhŭna s pŭlna gaz!
reaping with full force.
Refrain:
Niama da tе pitam, nа nа nаi-nа,
I’m not gonna ask you, la la la-la.
Iskash li da pravim, nа nа nаi-nа,
If you want to do, la la la-la.
Tuka v kombaina, nа nа nаi-nа,
Here in the harvester, la la la-la
Dvama shte izpŭlnim, plana nаi-nа.
The two of us will reap, la la la-la.
Nо vednŭzh vzekh na zaem az Belarus,
But once, I borrowed a Belarus,
i s pŭlna gaz
and I stepped on it
kato zviar prez zhitata.
like a beast through the fields.
Аz ludo te gonikh,
I chased you like crazy,
vozih 100 khubavi zheni.
I gave rides to 100 pretty women.
Strashen biakh v tekhnite ochi
I was fearce in their eyes
i bez strakh
and without fear,
174
podminavakh sela i palatki.
I passed through villages and camps.
Tuka v zhitata,
Here in the field,
Udobna, zadna sedalka imam аz
I have a comfortable back seat,
Moga i legnal dа prodŭlzhavam
I can keep going even laying back
dа zhŭna s pŭlna gaz!
I can go on reaping with full force!
Example 21
Taisŭn Kuchek
Tayson Kuchek
Negŭr ne sŭm, nito biach,
I’m not black nor a fighter,
mis kalifornia dazhe ne sŭm ia vizhdal.
I haven’t even seen Miss California.
Samo che znai taisŭn sŭm аz,
But you should know that I am a ‘Tyson,’
devet sekundi broi si i pitai zashto.
Count out nine seconds and then ask why.
Sedem-оsem, i shte si padnala,
Seven-eight, and you will be knocked out,
sedem-оsem, i shte si legnala,
Seven-eight, and you will be going down,
sedem-оsem, liagai i broi si sama.
Seven-eight, go down and count on your own
Pitai zashto taisŭn sŭm аz,
Ask then why am I a Tyson,
аma khvani se za neshto i
but hold on to something
zdravi sе drŭzh.
and grab it strongly.
Khala sŭm аz,
Cause’ I am a dragon,
tsiala lamia.
a real natural disaster.
Au, ed shte mi nosish,
Ouhh, you will be bringing me honey,
kogato svalia113 te vednŭzh.
once I’ve taken you down.
Example 22
Еdno Ferari s Tzviat Cherven
One Ferrari Colered Red
Nomerŭt nе mozhe
This number cannot
Сва я (lit. to take off, knock off, knock down) is a colloquial expression that refers to flirting. In this context, it
is used as play on words and meanings to refer to “hitting on” rather then the literal knock out as in a boxing mach.
The reference, however, is humorously operationalized as, literally and physically, a knock out through the figure of
and reference to boxing champion Mike Tyson.
113
175
da bŭdе izbran v momenta,
be reached at the moment.
Molia оbadete sе po-kŭsno.
Please try again later.
Аko znаekh sаmо nomera nа Gospod Bоg, If I knew God Almighty’s number,
shtiakh da mu zvŭnna.
I would call him.
Shtiakhme da se razberem:
We would come to an agreement:
аz zа nego,
I would do for him,
toi zа men neshto dа svŭrshim.
as he would for me.
I kogato toi pita me:
And when he asks me:
"Neshto iskash li, ti kazhi?"
‘Would you like something?’
Az shte mu kazha еi taka:
This is what would say:
Edno Ferari s tsviat cherven,
One Ferrari colored Red,
edno zа teb, еdno zа men -
one for me and for you-
tova mu triabva na choveka.
that’s what a person needs.
A vŭtre gadzhe s bronzov ten,
And inside, a chick with bronze skin,
edno za teb, edno za men -
one for me and one for you-
tova mu triabva na chovek.
That’s all a person needs.
Niamash li si mobifon,
Don’t you have a cell phone, God,
niamash li si, Bozhe moi, da tе potŭrsia?!
so I can call you?!
Da me pitash, Gospodi,
So you can ask me, God,
za kakvo mechtaia аz, kakvo zhelaia.
what I dream of and what I desire.
I kakvoto, Bozhe, dadesh,
And whatever you give me, Dear God,
vsichko ravno shte podelim:
we will split evenly:
edno za teb, edno za men.
one for you, one for me.
Edno Ferari s tsviat cherven,
One Ferrari collared red,
edin milion s tsviat zelen,
one million with the color green,
tova mu triabva na choveka.
that’s what a person needs.
I novo gadzhe vseki den-
And a new chick every day176
ne znam zа teb, no spored men,
I don’t know about you, but I think,
tоvа mu triabva na chovek.
that’s all a person needs.
Niama takŭv nomer.
This number is not in use.
Molia proverete i
Please check the number
opitaite оtnovo.
and try again.
177
APPENDIX B
MISCELLANEOUS
Example 1
“Nema Takava Durzhava,” YouTube Commentaries:
Alexander62: (a poem) There is, Slavi, countries like this, since they had you stick
around for so long. Within the country you describe, your art completely fits. So, don’t
you threaten me with the things that are nasty and wrong, cause with the cops and the
fake silicon (boobs), you make your own million.
Uther251: Good for you Slavi! Someone had to say this long ago. The song is amazing
and tells the absolute truth about the situation in our ‘lovely’ motherland Bulgaria!!!
Also, this is not chalga and has nothing to do with the Pop-Folk ladies. If you don’t like
the song, dude, don’t listen to it.
Chichince: Look kid, wasn’t it exactly Slavi that brought about this vulgar era of popular
music, with the silicon boobs and the cult of Gypsiness?! What are you philosophizing
bout here?! If you look back in time, you would know that the first chalga people were
Slavi and his, at the time, jobless and poverty stricken Ku-Ku Band. I’ve been to so many
places abroad, but only in Bulgaria you can see such ignorance!
Nedelinatzankova: Agreed. This is awful! Slavi has not changed in the slightest in the
past 15 years. It’s always the same hogwash. At least before there was some kind of
meaningful text, some sense of composition. Now, we get a plagiarized melody, the text
is complete nonsense taken from the opening page of 24 Hours….Seriously, who listens
to this guy anymore?!
178
ninoside: I just don’t think it says anything new. On the contrary, it stresses evident
problems that everyone is aware of. Slavi, actually, should not be singing this song
because he is like the people he sings about. But, I suppose everyone has a right to an
opinion and we do have freedom of speech so….
Dumbsyy: Let’s just admit that this is a poignant song and he is addressing all of us. “Are
you sleeping?” So, how long are we all going to sleep? It’s time to change this slave-like,
obedient mentality, right?!
izmamnikaaa: Yeah, but I prefer to read a book or to sleep rather than to listen the
pseudo-intellectual Slavi Trifonov trying to philosophize me every night. It’s true that all
politicians are demagogues, but Slavi is undeniably part of their guild. I think this guy
really wants to become a president and some kind of a Revivalist.
RAMSEY189: Slavi is a true patriot and applaud him for this. I don’t think he will even
earn any money from this song, at least certainly not as much as the Turkish things on
Planeta channel, which pretend to be Bulgarian. This song is against our government,
which is why I doubt that any television would air it. If I wasn’t surfing the net, I
probably wouldn’t even know that it existed and I think it’s very truthful.
MONSEJ1: I think this is yet another relevant song by him. I don’t really like him, but I
applaud his professionalism. He is always on top of things and has a clear and accurate
position. Whether he is a patriot or a demagogue, everyone can have an opinion on that,
but I think that we can all admit that he has an adequate position.
BlueHope09: Slavi is a prostitute. When Kostov was trying to do something for this
country, Slavi was defending his sponsor who was getting money from the gas deal with
Russia, and hated Kostov because he wanted to stop him. Now, he’s criticizing Borisov
but Kostov is also in the video. Slavi is like the burglar who yells, get the burglar!
179
Euphoriuss: I just have one thing to say. In this song, Slavi is singing about things that he
himself is responsible for. The end.
ta6aka10: I still think that everyone should use what they have on top of their shoulders
to think for themselves. Slavi is not a saint. Slavi is, indeed, a proponent of chalga and its
associative values, which have led to this glorification of silicon. Yet, that does not
diminish the fact that the song is reflective of reality. Unfortunately, that is how the
system works.
vsx16v: I personally, want to congratulate Slavi. This is the whole truth! This piece is the
evidence of how oriental of a country Bulgaria has become. There’s nothing European
left in it.
omglulz1234: Dear very much dislicable people, who think that Slavi has discovered hot
water or something, has it occurred to you that this song is also musically trashy. Aside
from the issue wether or not Slavi is a bitch, or some politician’s bitch, he cannot rap, the
beats suck, and the text is sloppy. There’s music for revolution and music for making
money. Please, consider the difference.
thedoctorss1: the problem is that when Slavi tells you something, that is pretty much selfevident, you all look at him, like some sheep, and say, “Oh, isn’t he great?!” When in
fact, he has been the bitch of every subsequent government. If he could have, he would
have sold himself to Boiko Borisov as well but that did not happen and clearly he’s
angered by it. If you like him so much, why don’t you make Slavi your prime minister
then!
kiko11999977: And, on what grounds do you describe Slavi in this way? I mean, do you
know him personally? Have you personally seen him to do illegal things? No, you blindly
consume the spicy stories that the media feeds you and creates for simple peoples like
you. I think you should think again and listen to the song more carefully. According to
180
your logic, you are also one of those guilty of charge people as clearly you have also
taken yourself way too seriously.
1nsp1r4t10n4l: Oh, c’mon?! Excuse me, but who is the person that invites all of the
dumb, full of silicon pop-folk star alongside the corrupted politicians in his show?!
PuK3Kru: Well, I don’t think the song is anything special musically, but it is truthful. As
far as chalga is concerned, I don’t think Slavi ever advertized this life style and these
values.
Smarfiette: I was around when Slavi was starting out with Kanaleto. At the time, no
young person would listen to chalga because the term brought associations with, say, a
sweaty truck driver that smells like garlic. Then, though, Slavi started his show on BTV
and essentially legitimized chalga, not just as music but as a way of thinking. So, yeah, I
think he is equally responsible for building in such values into a new generation of young
people.
piker78: I think this is the least he’s guilty of. I think he is even guiltier of using his talk
show to manipulate and brainwash politically and that really influenced the political
scene especially about ten years ago.
PuK3Kru: People, somehow I’m not getting how is it an achievement that the major
proponent of chalga is singing against it here? How is that heroic?! I despise people like
him.
ppeettaarr31: I agree, and I also think that you can’t fight ignorance and vulgarity with
more vulgarity. I don’t think it is acceptable to be saying things like that on national air. I
mean, in principal, he is right but where is the heroism in that?! So, how is this song
helping us improve the situation? It’s not. What it’s doing is helping a clever
businessman get some cash out of the situation.
181
Wolfgamer94: your ‘clever showman’ was the only one who had the guts to play
corrective to every government, Videnov, then Kostov came and took him off the air. But
he continued. So, when you have done as much as he has, then you should feel free to
talk because he’s the only one that really knows what it takes.
MrAndreiBG: For me, Trifonov is a predictable example of the unmerciful opportunist.
The only thing I cannot make sense of is why everyone is a “fag” and what does
homosexuality has anything to do with all the other problems he mentions?! I mean he
says he’s about freedom and sings about it and yet he’s cussing everyone that is
“different.”
Lekotar: Ha, and since when is Slavi the defender of the weak and socially deprived?
Perhaps he forgot how he gained all of his money through connections in and outside the
National Assembly and has been doing that for over 20 years. He is one of the people
responsible for the invasion of chalga and subsequently for the invasion of chalga in
politics, history, culture, etc. He made vulgarity a life style for an entire generation of
Bulgarians.
FichoNeli: It is great that Slavi finally found his conscience! Corruption and fear can last
a long time but it is never forever! Fight for_ it, you've got nothing to loose but your
chains!
Doctorspieler: Yo, people, look around you. Everyone is only interested in material
things and believes there’s something wrong with them. We are never going to get better
because of our own subservient mentality and the fact is, we always look toward
someone else to find what’s wrong. The biggest problem is the egoism and hatred in
people.
parsata1: Right on! I mean, we all know that “there ain’t a bad country like this” but why
can’t we get a song “This is how you fix a country”? With all this pessimism, all
Bulgarian’s should commit a mass suicide so they don’t torture themselves or something.
I mean, of course everyone is “sleeping!” Everyday, scandal with pornographic photos,
182
fake diplomas, illegal possession of property, etc. And, who is electing these idiots in the
parliament?! Whatever the people, then such the government!
VeNdEt7aBG: I appreciate the irony dude. My mom sent me this link, so I can see what
kind of a “patriot” Slavi is, the defender of truth. I don’t know what we would do if Bate
Slavi was not around?! I mean, this is like if you are in the pigsty, and one pig is writing a
song to tell you how much of a pigsty it is?! The difference is, that pig is not going to be
butchered comes Christmas time.
zayo255: Forget Slavi! I was on his show and it’s all an act. I think people who buy into
it are quite stupid. He is saying what every average Bulgarian shares over a rakia every
night. So, what is it with Bulgaria now?! As if it hasn’t been worst before? Everyone has
a car, goes out clubbing every night, so what are you complaining about all the time?!
And Slavi, what is his business singing about chalga and making fun of their fake boobs
when they are on his show all the time. Fraud!
anfernie100: Why would we get better?! If everyone thinks that, then we will not. But, if
the people wake up, we can clean up this political trash. So, what are you talking about?!
If anything, it’s this pessimism that will not help.
Tangibleapparition: Look around dude! It’s not pessimism. It’s the mindset of over 90%
of the population. Whoever comes to office, they’re first priority is to favour themselves
and their immediate family. The people with some sense of moral code are a dying breed.
kiko11999977: So, I ask: Hey Slavi, what do you have to offer?
sa6eto1997: Slavi for President!!!
183
Example 2
Novite Varvari (The New Barbarians, 2001), Album Liner Notes
Bulgarian Transliteration:
Balkanite, 2001 godina. Edin sviat ot parcheta. Dori geografskata karta prilicha na neshto, koeto
niakoga e bilo tsialo. Dnes sa ostanali kŭsove. Chesto gi risuvat cherveni. Zaradi bivshia
komunizŭm ili zaradi tova che otkŭsnati ot tsialoto te prilichat na kŭrvavi kŭsove plat. Sred
parchetata, sred boklutsite na Zapada, izprashtani kato pomosht, sred tenekiite na avtomobilite
vtora rŭka i ruinite na hiliadoletni tsivilizatsii se izpraviat Te. Novite Varvari. Idvat, za da vleiat
mladata si krŭv v edin ostarial sviat. Ne sa simpatichni. Ne sa dobre prieti. Ne sa dobre
vŭzpitani. Napravili sa sobstvenia si sviat na parcheta, mrazeiki se edin dryg i obichaiki se edin
drug, po bezpodoben nachin. Sŭbiraiki kŭs po kŭs schupenia si zhivot, te idvat s razlichni imena.
No imaedno neshto koeto vŭrvi pred tiakh i predizvikva v sinite veni na prestarialata Evropa
trepetnia spomen na otminali vremena. Vremena, kogato Evropa e bila devitsa, a bogovete na
sŭshtite tezi varvari sa ia obladavali predresheni na bik. Tova, koeto vŭrvi pred tiakh e muzikata.
Pesen, chiito kupleti sa izpiati na razlichni ezitsi, no pripevŭt e obsht, dreven ezik. Pesen, sŭshita
ot parchetata na staria sviat. Harmonia ot parchetata na neopazenia mir. Paix partes, oskolki
mira.
English Translation:
The Balkans, 2001. A world composed of disconnected pieces. Even the geographical map
proves that the times when this region was a united whole are only a distant memory. Today,
there are only bits and pieces and they are often colored red because of the former communist
regime. Once cut off from the 'whole,' they resemble pieces of bloody flesh. In the midst of
Western junk sent as humanitarian aid, the second hand cars, and the ruins of a millennium-old
civilization, they arise: The New Barbarians. They come to infuse the old world with their new
blood. They are not attractive and are not accepted well. They are not well mannered, either.
They have created their own world of fragmented bits and pieces, hating and loving each other in
184
indescribable and unpredictable ways. Collecting the pieces of their broken world and life, they
approach bearing different names. But, there is something that walks before them and reminds
old Europe of its past times. Times when Europe was a virgin and the gods of these same
barbarians penetrated her. What walks before them is the music. A song whose verses are sung in
different languages, but its chorus is of one, common ancient word. A song composed of the
pieces of this old world. A harmonious composition of the pieces of a broken whole. Paix partes.
185
REFERENCES
Abercrombie, Nick and Brian Longhurst. 1998. Audiences: A Sociological Theory of
Performance and Imagination. London: Sage Publications, Ltd.
Adams, Paul. 1997. "Cyberspace and Virtual Places." Geographical Review 87(2): 155-171.
Aden, Roger C. 2007. Popular Stories and Promised Lands: Fan Cultures and Symbolic
Pilgrimages. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
Adorno, Theodor W. 1991.The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. New York:
Routledge.
Ajana, Btihaj. 2004. "Disembodiment and Cyberspace: A Phenomenological Approach."
Electronic Journal of Sociology.
http://www.sociology.org/content/2004/test/ajana.html.
Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. New York: Verso.
Anderson, Richard D. et al. 2001. Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy. New Jersey:
Princeton University Press.
Appadurai, Arjun, ed. 1986. The Social Life of Things.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Arnaudov, Mihail. 1996. Studies on Bulgarian Folklore. 3rd ed. Sofia: Marin Drinov
Academic Publishing Company.
Asad, Talal, et al. 1997. “Provocations of European Ethnology.” American Anthropologist 99(4):
713-730.
Askew, Kelly M. 2002. Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in
Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bakan, Michael B. 2011. World Music: Traditions and Transformations. 2nd ed. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
______________. 1999. Music of Death and New Creation: Experiences in the World of
Balinese Gamelan Beleganjur. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Balakrishnan, Gopal, ed. 1996. Mapping the Nation. New York: Verso.
186
Barker, Martin and Kate Brooks. 2005. Knowing Audiences: Judge Dredd, its Friends, Fans, and
Foes. London: John Libbey Publishing.
Bauman, Richard. 2004. A World of Other’s Words: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on
Intertextuality. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.
Berger, Harris M. 2008. “Phenomenology and the Ethnography of Popular Music.” In
Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology.
Gregory F. Barz and Timothy J. Cooley, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bhabha, Homi, ed. 1990. Nation and Narration. New York: Routledge.
Bideleux, Robert and Ian Jeffries, ed. 2007. A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and
Change. New York: Routledge.
Billing, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage Publications, Ltd.
Bjelic, Duan I and Obrad Savic, eds. 2005. Balkan as a Metaphor:Between Globalization and
Fragmentation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bohannon, Paul. 1955. “Some Principles of Exchange and Investment among the Tiv.”
American Anthropologist 57: 60-70.
Breuilly, John. 1994. Nationalism and the State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Brooker, Will. 2002. Using the Force: Creativity, Vommunity, and Star Wars Fans. New York:
Continuum.
Buchanan, Donna A. ed. 2007. Balkan Popular Culture and the Ottoman Ecumene: Music,
Image, and Regional Political Discourse. Toronto: Scarecrow Press.
_______. 2006. Performing Democracy: Bulgarian Music and Musicians in Transition.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
_________. 2002. “Soccer, Popular Music and National Consciousness in Post-StateSocialist Bulgaria, 1994-96.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 11 (2): 1-27
Casey, Edward S. 1998. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. California: University of
California Press.
_____________. 1993. Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the PlaceWorld. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Chari, Sharad and Katherine Verdery. 2009. “Thinking between the Posts: Postcolonialism,
Postsocialism, and Ethnography after the Cold War.” Comparative Studies in Society and
History 51(1): 6–34.
187
Clifford, James and George E. Marcus, eds. 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and
Politics of Ethnography. California: University of California Press.
Cooley, Timothy J., Katherine Meizel, and Nasir Syed. 2008. "Virtual Fieldwork." In S
Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, ed.
Gregory F. Barz and Timothy J. Cooley. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff. 2009. Ethnicity, Inc.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Crampton, Richard. 2006. A Concise History of Bulgaria. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press
Crichton, Susan and Shelley Kinash. 2003. "Virtual Ethnography: Interactive Interviewing
Online as Method." Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology 29(2).
http://www.cjlt.ca/ content/vol29.2/cjlt29-2_art-5.html.
Crook, Larry. 2005. Brazilian Music: Northeastern Traditions and the Heartbeat of a
Modern Nation. California: ABC Clio.
Cushman, Thomas. 1995. Notes from Underground: Rock Music Counterculture in Russia.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Danielson, Virginia. 1998. The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kuthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian
Society in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dilov, Luben, Jr. 2002. Slavi Trifonov za Stŭrchaneto. (Slavi Trifonov on Sticking Out) Sofia:
Ciela Publishing.
Dimov, Ventzislav. 1999. “Vŭrhu Niakoi Idelogemni Aspecti na Bŭlgarskata Etnopop
Muzika.” (“On Some Ideological Aspects of Bulgarian Ethnopop Music.”)
Bulgarian Musicology 1: 45-57.
________. 1998. “’Boretsŭt’-Geroi v Sŭvremennata Mediina Kultura na Bŭlgaria: Kŭm
Otnoshenieto Identichnost-Sŭvremenna Etnopop Muzika.” (The ‘Guerilla’-hero in
Contemporary Bulgarian Media Culture: Towards the Relationship IdentityContemporary Ethnopop Music.”) Bulgarian Foklore (1-2): 142-149.
_______. 1996. “Folkbumŭt i Popkharakteristikite Mu: Kŭm Sotsiokulturniat Portret na
Sŭvremennata Etnopop Muzika v Bŭlgaria.” (“The Folk-Boom and its Pop
Characteristics: Towards the Sociocultural Portrait of Contemporary Bulgarian
Ethnopop Music.”) Bulgarian Foklore 6: 4-17.
Drane, John. 2005. Celebrity Culture. Edinburgh, UK: Rutherford House.
188
Dixon, Kathleen. 2009. The Global Village Revisited: Art, Politics, and Television Talk Shows.
Maryland: Lexington Books.
Edelman, Marc and Angeloque Haugerud, eds. 2005. The Anthroppology of Development
and Globalization: From Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism.
Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Edensor, Tim. 2002. National Identity, Popular Culture, and Everyday Life. Oxford: Berg.
Ekiert, Grzegos and Stephen E. Hanson, eds. 2003. Capitalism and Democracy in Central and
Eastern Europe: Assessing the Legacy of Communism. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Eley, Geoff and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds. 1996. Becoming National: A Reader. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Erlmann, Veit. 1999. Music, Modernity, and the Global Imagination: South Africa and the West.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Feld, Steven. 1994. “Communication, Music, and Speech about Music,” in Music Grooves:
Essays and Dialogues. Steven Feld and Charles Keil, eds. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
________ and Keith H. Basso, eds. 1997. Senses of Place. New Mexico: School of American
Research Press.
Firth, Raymond.1967. Themes in Economic Anthropology. London: Tavistock.
Fiske, John. 2010a. The John Fiske Reader: Television Culture. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
________. 2010b. Understanding Popular Culture. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
_______. 1992. “The Cultural Economy of Fandom.” In The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and
Popular Media. Lisa Lewis, ed. New York: Routledge.
Frith, Simon. 1998. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Massatchusetts: Harvard
University Press.
Fox, Aaron. 2004. Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
_________. 1992. “The Jukebox of History: Narratives of Loss and Desire in the Discourse of
Country Music” Popular Music 11(1): 53-72.
Gauntlett, David. 2000. Internet Communication and Qualitative Research: A Handbook for
Researching Online. New York: Oxford University Press.
189
Gellner, Ernst.1997. Nationalism. New York: New York University Press.
___________.1983. Nations and Nationalism. New York: Cornell University Press.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Ghodsee, Kristen. 2011. Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life after Communism.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Giatzdis, Emil. 2002. An Introduction to Post-Communist Bulgaria: Political, Economic and
Social Transformation. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Giddens, Anthony. 1987. The Nation-State and Violence. California: University of California
Press.
Godelier, Maurice. 1999. The Enigma of the Gift. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
_____________, ed. 1977. Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Graeber, David. 2001. Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: Tha False Coin of Our Own
Dreams. New York: Palgrave.
Gray, Jonathan et al. 2007. Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. New
York: New York University Press.
Gregory, Chris. 1997. Savage Money: The Anthropology and Politics of Commodity
Exchange. New Jersey: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Gregory, Chris. 1982. Gifts and Commodities. London: Academic Press, Inc.
Hann, Chris. 2002. “Farewell to the Socialist “Other.” In Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies, and
Practices in Eurasia. Chris Hann, ed.1-12. New York: Routledge.
Harris, Cheryl and Alison Alexander, eds. 1998. Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture, and
Identity. New York: Hampton Press.
Heidegger, Martin. 1962 2008. Being and Time. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc.
Hemment, Julie. 2003. “Introduction to Special Issue: Ethnographies of Postsocialism.”
Anthropology of East Europe Review 21(2): 1-4.
Hills, Matthew. 2002. Fan Cultures. New York: Routledge.
Hobsbawm, Eric. 1999. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
190
__________ and Terence Ranger, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Hume, David. 1980. 1776 Dialogies Concerning Natural Religion. Cambridge: Hackett
Publishing Company.
Hymes, Dell. 2003. I Only Know So Far: Essays in Ethnopoetics. Nebraska: University of
Nebraska Press.
Inda, Jonathan Xavier and Renato Rosaldo. 2008. The Anthropology of Globalization: A
Reader. Second Edition. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.
Ingold, Tim. 2011. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge, and Description. New York:
Routledge.
__________.2007. Lines: A Brief History. New York: Routledge.
_________. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling, and
Skill. New York: Routledge.
Jackson, Michael. 1998. Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the Anthropological
Project. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
_____________. 1989. Paths Toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic
Inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Jancovich, Mark. 2002. “Cult Fictions: Cult Movies, Subcultural Capital, and the Production of
Cultural Distinction.” Cultural Studies 16(2): 306-322.
Jenkins, Henry. 1992. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York:
Routledge.
Jones, Steve.1998. Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting Computer-Mediated Communication and
Community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Juluri, Vamsee. 2003. Becoming a Global Audience: Longing and Belonging in Indian Music
Television. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Kelly, William W. 2004. Fanning the Flames: Fans and Consumer Culture in Contemporary
Japan. New York: State University of New York Press.
Khandelwal, Meena. 2003. Women in Ochre Robes: Gendering Hindu Renunciation. New York:
State University of New York Press.
191
Khristova, Maria. “Khŭshove: Bomba sŭs Zakŭsnitel?” (“Khŭshove: A Time Bomb?”) 168
Hours, February 13-19, 1998.
Kristovska, Lilia. “Ovŭrgas ne e sponsor a reklamodatel na Khŭshove” (“Overgas is not a
sponsor but a commercial client of Khŭshove”) Trud, February 11, 1998.
Kierkegaard, Soren. 1992. 1843 Either/Or: A Fragment of Life. New York: Penguin Books
Kraide, Marwan and Patrick D. Murphy, eds. 2003. Global Media Studies: Ethnographic
Perspectives. New York: Routledge.
Kremenliev, Boris A. 1952. Bulgarian-Macedonian Folk Music. California: University of
California Press.
Kurkela, Vesa. 1995. “Sŭzdavaneto na natsionalna muzika v postkomunisticheskite straini:
obvrazvaneto i s mediite i neinoto deregulirane.” (“The Creation of Nationalistic Music
in Post-Communist Countries: Its Connection and Deregulation to Media.”) Bulgarian
Folklore 6: 20-28.
Kurti, Laszlo. 2000. “Uncertain Anthropology: Ethnography of Postsocialist Eastern Europe.”
Ethnos 65(3): 405-420.
Lampland, Martha. 2000. “Afterword.” In Altering States: Ethnographies of Transition in
Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. D. Berdahl, M. Bunzl, and M. Lampland,
eds. 209-218. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Levin, Theodore. 1999. The Hundred Thousand Fools of God: Musical Travels in
Central Asia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Levy, Clair. 2000. “Prodytsirane na Poslania v Sŭvremennata “Etnicheska” Muzika.”
(“Contemporary ‘Ethnic’ Music: Producing Meanings.”) Bulgarian Musicology 3: 69-89.
_______. 1999. “Replika po povod proiavite na popfolka.” (“A Viewpoint of Popfolk
Demonstrations.”) Bulgarian Musicology 1: 66-71.
Lord, Albert. 2000. The Singer of Tales. 2nd ed. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Low, Setha M. and Denise Lawrence-Zuñiga, eds. 2003. The Anthropology of Space and Place:
Locating Culture. Massatchusetts: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd.
Mason, Bruce Lionel. 1996. "Moving Toward Virtual Ethnography." American Folklore Society
News 25(2): 4-6.
192
Marx, Karl. 1976. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. London: Penguin Books.
_______. Grunderisse. www.marxists.org, (accessed 6 April 2008).
_______ and Friedrich Engels. 1977. The German Ideology. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Manuel, Peter. 1993. Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India.
Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Mattern, Mark. 1998. Acting in Concert: Music, Community, and Political Action. New Jersey:
Rutgers University Press.
Marshall, David P. 1997. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Mauss, Marcel. 1990. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies.
London: Routledge.
Meillassoux, Claude. 1972. “From Reproduction to Production: A Marxist Approach to
Economic Anthropology.” Economy and Society 1(1): 93-105.
Middleton, Richard. 2000. Reading Pop: Approaches to Textual Analysis in Popular Music.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Miller, Daniel. 1995. “Consumption and Commodities.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24:
141-161.
Moore, Robin. 2006. Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba. California:
University of California Press.
________. 1997. Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in
Havana, 1920-1940. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Myers, Fred, ed. 2001. The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material Culture. Santa Fe:
School of American Research Press.
Negus, Keith. 1999. Music Genres and Corporate Culture. New York: Routledge.
Ollman, Bertell. 1971. Alienation: Marx’s Conception of Man in Capitalist Society.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Orlove, Benjamin. 2002. Lines in the Water: Nature and Culture at Lake Titicaca. Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Ozkirimli, Umut. 2000. Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction. New York:
St.Martin’s Press.
193
Panchev, Gavrail. 2008. Aleko Konstantinov: Biografia, Tom II. (Aleko Konstantinov: A
Biography, Volume II.) Plovdiv: Makros Publishing.
Paolucci, Paul. 2001. “Assumptions of the Dialectical Method.” Critical Sociology 27(3):
116-146.
Peycheva, Lozanka. 1999. “Sŭblaznenata Muzika: Chalgata spored romskite muzikanti.” (“The
Tempted Music: Chalga according to Roma Musicians.”) Bulgarian Musicology 1: 5965.
Peycheva, Lozanka. 1998. “Tsiganiata i Bŭlgarskata Identichnost: Aksiologichni Aspekti.”
(“’Gypsy-ness’ and Bulgarian Identity: Axiological Aspects.”) Bulgarian Folklore (12): 132-141.
Pink, Johanna, ed. 2009. Muslim Societies in the Age of Mass Consumption: Politics,
Culture, and Identity between the Local and the Global. Cambridge: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing.
Piot, Charles. 1992. “Wealth Production, Ritual Consumption, and Center/Periphery
Relations in a West African Regional System.” American Ethnologist 19 (1): 34-52.
Piot, Charles. 1991. “Of Persons and Things: Some Reflections on African Spheres of
Exchange.” Man 26: 405-24.
Plato. 1992. Republic. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Pridham, Geoffrey. 2000. Experimenting with Democracy: Regime Change in the Balkans.
New York: Routledge.
Qureshi, Regula Burckhard. 2007. Master Musicians of India: Hereditary Sarangi
Players Speak. New York: Routledge.
_____________________, ed. 2002. Music and Marx: Ideas, Practice, Politics. New York:
Routledge.
Rasmussen, Ljerka. 2002. Newly Composed Folk Music of Yugoslavia. New York:
Routledge.
________. 1995. “From Source to Commodity: Newly-Composed Folk Music of Yugoslavia.”
Popular Music 14 (2): 241-56.
Rice, Timothy. 2002. “Bulgaria or Chalgaria: The Attenuation of Bulgarian Nationalism in a
Mass-Mediated Popular Music.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 34: 25-46.
_______. 1994. May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
194
Ries, Nancy. 2000. “Ethnography and Postsocialism.” In Fieldwork Dilemmas: Anthropologists
in Postsocialist States. Hermine G. De Soto and Nora Dudwick, eds. ix-xi. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press.
Saco, Diana. 2002. Cybering Democracy: Public Space and the Internet. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Sahlins, Marshall. 2000. “Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of the ‘World
System'.” In Culture in Practice: Selected Essays, 415-471. New York: Zone Books.
_______. 2000. “The Return of the Event, Again,” In Culture In Practice: Selected Essays, 293353. New York: Zone Books.
_______. 1976. Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
_______. 1972. Stone Age Economics. Chicago: Aldine.
Sandvoss, Cornell. 2003. A Game of Two Halves: Football Fandom, Television, and
Globalization. New York: Routledge.
Scodari, Cristine. 2004. Serial Monogamy: Soap Opera, Lifespan, and the Gendered Politics of
Fantasy. New York: Hampton Press.
Shoesmith, Brian and Allen Chun and Ned Rossiter, eds. Refashioning Popular Music in Asia:
Cosmopolitan Flows, Political Tempos, and Aesthetic Industries. New York: Routledge.
Silverman, Carol. 1983. “The Politics of Folklore in Bulgaria.” Anthropological Quarterly 56(2):
55-61.
Slobin, Mark, ed. 1996. Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern
Europe. North Carolina: Duke University Press.
Smith, Anthony D. 2009. Ethno-Symbolism and Nationalism: A Cultural Approach. New York:
Routledge.
_______________. 2000. Myths and Memories of the Nation. New York: Oxford University
Press.
_______________.1998. Nationalism and Modernism. New York: Routledge.
_______________. 1995. Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era. Cambridge: Polity.
_______________. 1993. National Identity. Nevada: University of Nevada Press.
_______________.1991. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Massachusets: Blackwell Publishers,
Ltd..
195
Smith, Jeff. 1998. The Sound of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Statelova, Rosemary. 2003. Sedemte Griakha na Chalgata: Kŭm Antropologia na Etnopop
Muzikata. (The Seven Sins of Chalga: Toward an Anthropology of Ethnopop Music.)
Sofia: Prosveta.
Sternberg, Janet Lynne. 2001. "Misbehavior in Cyber Places: The Regulation of Online
Conduct in Virtual Communities on the Internet." New York: New York University.
Taussig, Michael. 1992. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York:
Routledge.
Tedlock, Dennis. 1983. Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press.
Thomas, Lyn. 2002. Fans, Feminism, and “Quality” Media. New York: Routledge.
Thornton, Thomas F. 2008. Being and Place Among the Tlingit. Seattle: The University of
Washington Press.
Trifonov, Slavi.1993. Rŭgai Chushki v Boba. CD, Sofia: Ku-Ku, Inc.
____________.1994. Shat na Patkata Glavata. CD, Sofia: Bulgarian Music Company.
____________.1994. Roma TV. CD, Sofia: Bulgarian Music Company.
____________.1995. Zŭlta Knizka. CD, Sofia: Bulgarian Music Company.
____________.1996. Khŭshove. CD, Sofia: Bulgarian Music Company.
___________. 1997. Edno Ferari s Tsviat Cherven. CD, Sofia: Bulgarian Music Company.
__________. 1998. Deveti Tragichen. CD, Sofia: Bulgarian Music Company.
__________. 1999. Niama ne Iskam. CD, Sofia: Bulgarian Music Company.
__________. 2001. Novite Varvari. CD, Sofia: Sedem-Osmi.
__________. 2002. Vox Populi. CD, Sofia: Sedem-Osmi.
__________. 2004. Prima Patriot. CD, Sofia: Sedem-Osmi.
Todorova, Maria. 2005. “The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality, and the Study of
Eastern-European Nationalism.” Slavic Review 64 (1): 140-164.
196
__________. 1997. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tulbure, Narcis. 2009. “Global Socialisms and Postsocialisms” Anthropology of East Europe
Review 27 (2): 2-18.
Turino, Thomas. 2008. Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
_____________. 2000. Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tylor, Timothy D. 1997. Global Pop: World Music, World Markets. New York: Routledge.
Uzendoski, Michael. 2005. The Napo Runa of Amazonian Ecuador. Illinois: University of
Illinois Press.
Veal, Michael. 2000. Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press.
Veleva, Valeria. “V Slavi Trifonov horata shte vizhdat litseto na diavola” (“People Will See the
Devil in Slavi Trifonov”) Trud, February 11, 1998.
Verdery, Katherine. 2002. “Whither Postsocialism?” In Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies, and
Practices in Eurasia. Chris Hann, ed.15-28. New York: Routledge.
Wallerstein, Emmanuel. 1980. The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the
Origin of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic
Press, Inc.
Watterman, Christopher Alan. 1990. JuJu: A Social History and Ethnography of an African
Popular Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Weber, Max. 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Charles
Scribner.
Weiner, Annette B. 1992. Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Werner, Cynthia and Duran Bell, eds. 2004. Values and Valuables: From the Sacred to the
Symbolic. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
197
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
A native of Bulgaria, Plamena Kourtova is a classically trained pianist and an ethnomusicologist.
She is a member of the Popular Culture Association, the International Association for the Study
of Popular Music, and the Society for Ethnomusicology and is a winner of the 2006 Ray Brown
Award for Best Student Paper at the Popular Culture Association in the South Annual
Conference. Her research interests include American popular culture, global media, the economy
of music, music and spiritual transcendence, archeoethnomusicology, and the popular culture and
music of the Balkan region.
198