BALGARSHTITSI
"In fairs and chants we sifted through the best,
as the prospector sows the sand, always with hope
let the golden scale shine! ”
-Kosta Kolev
The song material from the archives of Kosta Kolev is a kind of sound picture / phonogram / of the song creativity of the Bulgarians in the second half of the 20th century. Kosta Kolev selects the samples not for scientific purposes, but on a functional and practical principle and regardless of the occasions and place where he receives information, he was guided by his own aesthetics in the selection of songs and a sense of duty to preserve knowledge and folk memory.
His collections are colossal in volume and purpose, but only the original and unknown samples from the live broadcasts of Radio Sofia in the 1950s found a place in Bulgartsitsi.
The other parts of the collection include the notated folk songs that Kosta Kolev recorded in the field throughout the country between 1947 and 1989 during the first singing fairs, planned folklore expeditions, separate business trips from Radio Sofia and from random informants. . According to Kosta Kolev's field scrolls, the material is also divided into relevant sections, subordinated to the character and style of the geographical and folklore regions to which they belong. The collection "Bulgarians" has no ambition to block the breakthroughs caused by the cultural and aesthetic transformations of recent times, there are no songs that have gained media popularity or multiplied in their variance patterns. Golden folk songs from the repertoire of Giurgiu Pindjirova, Radka Kushleva, Boris Mashalov, Masha Belmustakova, Zorka Baldzhiyska, Atanaska Todorova, Mita Stoycheva, Margarita Dimitrova, Raina Botsova, Georgi Chilingirov, Kostadin / Kocho / Molerov from Bansko. others have been patiently waiting for their modern interpreters for decades. Despite my active presence on the radio program, several of the singers lacked data, and only on Costa's notes in the field of the orchestral tunes and the style of the songs did I assign them to the appropriate section. For example, I will mention Atanas Velev - a legendary singer from whom Kostadin Gugov, Katya Taneva, one of the first six
singers set the stage for people on the radio and Siika Izmirlieva, provided a valuable repertoire to Radio Sofia.
In the collection "Bulgarians" for the first time is presented not only the singing color of Bulgaria, but also parts of the ethnic territory outside our state borders - the Western outskirts and the Aegean. In the section "Songs from Western Bulgaria" there are samples from Radomir, Samokov, Trans, Ihtiman, Godech, Kyustendil, Dupnitsa, Sofia, Elinpelin and Pernik, in "Songs from Eastern and Western Thrace" are included songs from Chirpan, Harmanli, Sta Sliven, Elhovo, Pazardzhik, Haskovo, Plovdiv, Asenovgrad, Malko Tarnovo, Tsarevo, Karnobat, Karlovo, Parvomaisko, Yambol and others. The specificity of the Kotel song or as Kosta Kolev himself defined the area for the "donor" and the "mother nest" of Thrace is separated into a separate section. Time is the worst ally of an archive, and thanks to Costa's ingenuity of wrapping music scrolls with newspapers, I in turn was able to pass them on as I found them in his archive.
"Give me a boy, give me, cold water,
on a horse with a young man's hand, mad in the mouth! ”
sang Mustafa Eminov from
The village of Dobrinishte
