Together Again: Legends of Bulgarian Wedding Music
This concert features an historic
reunion of the superstars of Bulgarian "wedding music": Ivo Papasov,
Yuri Yunakov, Neshko Neshev, and Salif Ali. Wedding music, which was
created by these artists in the 1970s and catapulted them to international
fame, showcases virtuosic technique, inventive improvisation, rapid tempos,
daring key changes, and eclectic musical literacy. A multiplicity of
genres, such as jazz and rock, and a multiplicity of sources, such as Turkish
and Indian musics, are combined with Balkan rural and urban folk musics to form
a vibrant, dynamic texture.
Ivo, Yuri, Neshko, and Salif played with each other until the early 1990s in the legendary wedding band Trakiya, attracting thousands of fans and hundreds of imitators. The band toured many times in Europe, as well as North America and Australia, drawing enthusiastic crowds. In the West they were featured on two Ryko/Hannibal albums that are now out of print: Orpheus Ascending and Balkanology
For the first time in a decade, these
world-class musicians have recorded together again. As more mature
musicians, they display their expressiveness, rich tonal sensibility and
rhythmic intricacy, without sacrificing their edgy wild side. As they
interweave, it is clear that the sum is greater than its parts. While
each artist is a genius in his own right, together they form a seamless,
pulsating whole.
Yuri emigrated to New York in 1994
and formed his own group, the Yuri Yunakov Ensemble, which tours widely,
including recent concerts at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the National
Folk Festival, the Monterey World Music Festival, and Symphony Space in New
York, as well as in Italy, Germany, Denmark and Poland. Traditional Crossroads
has produced three CDs of the Yuri Yunakov Ensemble: New Colors in Bulgarian Wedding Music
(1997), Balada
(1999), and Roma
Variations (2001). Ivo, Neshko and Salif, meanwhile, continued their
phenomenal music careers in festival and concert settings. They tour
regularly in Bulgaria, Turkey, and Western Europe. In 2003, when Yuri
invited them to tour and record with him in the United States after a decade
apart, the excitement was palpable. Their reception during the tour was
overwhelming. The CD Together Again:
Legends of Bulgarian Wedding Music has recently been released in
conjunction with this 2005 national tour.
The Ensemble performs Bulgarian
music and Romani (Gypsy) music, which are renowned for their haunting melodies,
dense ornamentation, complex rhythms, and stunning improvisations. The
geographical position of the Balkans in Southeastern Europe and hundreds of
years of Ottoman Turkish rule have created a wealth of influences from both
East and West. The music on this album is typical of community
celebrations such as weddings, baptisms, and circumcisions where dancing is a
requirement. In Bulgaria during the 1970s and '80s, "wedding
music," while officially suppressed by the socialist government, thrived
in private settings as a means of countercultural expression. During the
socialist period, Ivo, Yuri, Neshko, and Salif were arrested numerous times for
playing wedding music. Their cars were confiscated, their heads were
shaved, and they served jail sentences with forced labor. But the
prohibition of wedding music only served to swell its popularity. Since
1989, wedding music is no longer prohibited, but Bulgaria's precarious economic
condition makes long weddings with live music an impossibility for ordinary
villagers. Today the artists earn their living mainly from international
tours.
The Ensemble's program weaves a texture of both instrumental and vocal music from contrasting regions of the Balkans, performed in the Bulgarian and Romani languages. Texts express the experiences of village and urban life and the joys and sorrows of life
The Romani repertoire highlights the
popular dance form "kyuchek"
(which is danced with torso movements), and the texts often reflect the
marginalization of Roma from mainstream society. Roma, an ethnic group
originally from India, have played a central role in the professional folk
music of every country of the Balkans. Persecuted throughout history,
Roma have recently become the target of numerous violent attacks in Eastern
Europe. In response, a pan-European Romani rights movement has been
mobilizing.
Artist Biographies
Ivo Papasov (clarinet) is a living legend in
his own country, Bulgaria, and a phenomenon in the West. Born in 1952 in
Kurdzhali, of Turkish Romani ancestry, he founded the band Trakiya in 1975 and
became the leading model of wedding music. Although his music is based on
tradition, it is squarely set in the present, with eclectic melodies
and dazzling technique.
Admired both for his technical and his creative talents, Papasov is known for
his masterful, wide-ranging improvisations, his stamina, his daringly fast
tempi, his forays into jazz, and his charisma. In 1987, a Bulgarian
journalist commented that "the concert hall literally exploded when Ivo
Papasov, the uncontested king, got on
stage. It was the
apotheosis." When jazz pianist Milcho Leviev played a tape of Ivo to
his musician friends, they said it must be a synthesizer. Leviev says
that he had never heard such integration of musical styles in his whole life:
"my temperature rose when I heard him.” Papasov is the subject of a
number of documentary films, and has recently collaborated with other Romani
musicians on joint projects in Budapest. In 2001 he was featured in the
Bang On a Can Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and this year he won the 2005 BBC Audience Award for best
Wprld Music artist of the year.
Yuri Yunakov (saxophone) was born in 1958 in
Haskovo, Bulgaria, of Turkish Romani ancestry and currently lives in the New
York City area. He hails from a long line of musicians in his extended
family, including his father and grandfather and his uncles and brother.
Yunakov's career began with his family's band, followed by the band Mladost;
interspersed were a boxing career and championship. He subsequently began
a ten-year collaboration with Ivo Papasov and Trakiya, playing at hundreds of
weddings in his native Bulgaria, and touring extensively in Europe and North
America. In 1989 Yunakov was featured on NBC TV with saxophonist David
Sanborn. In addition to the recordings of the Yuri Yunakov Ensemble, the
Traditional Crossroads catalog includes Yunakov's performance on Gypsy Fire,
a popular CD of Turkish music. Yunakov is in great demand among the
Bulgarian, Macedonian, Albanian, Turkish, Armenian and Romani communities in
the New York City area.
Neshko Neshev (accordion) has been playing with
Ivo Papasov (his cousin) for almost 30 years in the legendary band Trakiya,
which he helped found. He is a master of the Bulgarian, Macedonian,
Serbian, Romanian, and Romani repertoires and has won numerous prizes for his
virtuosic playing at festivals and international competitions. Of Turkish
Romani ancestry, Neshev was born in 1954 in the town of Kurdzhali and began
playing accordion at the age of nine, learning from his father, a well-known
clarinetist who accompanied the best singers of the time. He also
attended music school. Neshev is an accomplished composer and arranger as
well as performer, having created hundreds of compositions. He performed
with the Yuri Yunakov Ensemble as part of the 1999 Gypsy Caravan tour. He also
works for the House of Culture in Kurdzhali, teaching children, leading several
ensembles, and writing orchestrations. Several years ago he was honored
with a gala 25th anniversary concert, and a documentary film was
recently made about him.
Salif Ali (Sasho) (drum set) was born in
Kurdzhali in 1961 of Turkish Romani ancestry. He joined Ivo Papasov's
band Trakiya in 1983 and toured with the group in Europe, North America, and
Australia. He also performed in the United States with the Yuri Yunakov
Ensemble as part of the 1999 Gypsy Caravan tour, and in 2001 performed with
Papasov in the Bang On a Can Festival at the Brooklyn Aacademy of Music.
Ali comes from a musical family; his father played tupan (two-headed drum), his grandfather
played clarinet, and he learned to play drums from his brother. He is
known for his high energy, wild temperament, and brilliant solo improvisations.
Kalin Kirilov was born in the village of
Pokraina, near Vidin, in 1975 of Vlach ancestry and is presently a doctoral
student in music theory at the University of Oregon. In 2003 he received
an MA in Folklore, also from Oregon. He began to sing and play the
accordion at the age of four and received his first gold medal in 1981 at the
Koprivshtitsa festival, followed by a silver medal at the Sixth Republican
Festival, two gold medals at the Seventh Republican Festival, and a bronze
medal at the Koprivstica Festival in 1986. A master of multiple instruments,
including accordion, tambura,
keyboard, ocarina
and duduk
(flute), he graduated from the Academy of Music and Dance in Plovdiv in 1998
with a specialization in tambura
and music pedagogy. He has recorded with Bulgarian National Radio,
performed with the Danube Ensemble and the Folk Band Lyra, and currently plays
with Trio Slavej.
Carol Silverman has been involved with Balkan and
Romani music and culture for over 25 years as a researcher, teacher, performer,
and educational activist. An award-winning professor of cultural
anthropology at the University of Oregon, she teaches and writes about Balkan
folklore, ethnography, and human rights issues among Roma. Based on
fieldwork in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and New York, her research analyses the relationship
among music, politics, ritual, and gender. She has performed with Zhenska
Pesna and Trio Slavej and teaches Balkan singing nationally. She was the
educational coordinator for the 1999 Gyspy Caravan tour. Silverman met
Papasov, Yunakov, Neshev and Ali in the 1980s when she was researching folk
music in Bulgaria; she met Kirilov when he came to Oregon to study folklore.
notes by Carol Silverman