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Bulgarian folk music is one of the most distinctive regional styles in Europe, set apart by its vocal sound and complex rhythms. Bulgaria also has lots of regional variation in musical and singing styles, largely due to the rugged terrain. While many styles involve solo unaccompanied singing, some regions have a highly developed tradition of polyphonic singing, quite rare in traditional music.
Bulgarian vocal music is dominated by women singers with athletic voices, and includes a wide range of vocal gymnastics such as whoops, yips and trills. It also makes use of a huge dynamic range, from a near-whisper to a loud, piercing style often referred to as ‘open throated’ by Western listeners, although ironically it involves an extreme tightening of the throat!
Balkan music in general favours complex time signatures, but the Bulgarians have taken this to the extreme. 7/8, 11/8 are common, and extreme time signatures like 25/8 are not unheard of! This attraction to complex rhythms can be found throughout Bulgaria, both in instrumental dance music and the vocal tradition.
In the Shopsko region near Sofia, where Silvia comes from, women sing in two- and three-part harmony. However, rather than using the thirds and fifths that are commonly found in Western harmony, they use tight dissonant harmonies and the sort of tone clusters otherwise only found in modern classical music.
As a teenager in Bulgaria, Silvia sang with Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, Bulgaria's most famous musical export. This choir sings contemporary arrangements of traditional songs, stretching the already complex harmonic structures of the traditional music into dense six-part arrangements.
The story of this choir is quite extraordinary. It was formed in 1951 during the Soviet era as the Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir. In 1986 Peter Murphy, lead singer of proto-goth band Bauhaus, played a tape of the choir to Ivo Watts-Russell, the manager of British alternative record label 4AD. Ivo loved the tape and thought its exotic sound would appeal to the label’s post-punk following. Amazingly, he was proved right, as 4AD went on to release several albums by the choir that became international hits, ultimately winning the choir a Grammy award in 1990.
Bulgarian vocal music has also found a strange commercial application in providing soundtrack material for the science fiction and fantasy genres, perhaps because it manages to sound quite alien but still beautiful to Western ears. Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares can be heard on the soundtrack of Xena Warrior Princess, and Silvia has kept this strange connection going by contributing to the soundtrack of Australian-made sci-fi show Farscape.
Other artists who have been influenced by Bulgarian vocal music include Kate Bush (who worked with Trio Bulgarka on her albums The Sensual Word and The Red Shoes), and Finnish band Värttinä, who have incorporated Bulgarian vocal harmonies into their sound.
