May it fill your soul : experiencing Bulgarian music
In this vivid musical ethnography, Timothy Rice documents and interprets the history of folk music, song, and dance in Bulgaria over a seventy-year period of dramatic change. From 1920 to 1989, Bulgaria changed from a nearly medieval village society to a Stalinist planned industrial economy to a chaotic mix of capitalist and socialist markets and cultures. In the context of this history, Rice brings Bulgarian folk music to life by focusing on the biography of the Varimezov family, including the musician Kostadin and his wife Todora, a singer. Combining interviews with his own experiences of learning how to play, sing and dance Bulgarian folk music, Rice presents one of the most detailed accounts of traditional, aural learning processes in the ethnomusicological literature. Using a combination of traditionally dichotomous musicological and ethnographic approaches, Rice tells the story of how individual musicians learned their tradition, how they lived it during the pre-Communist era of family farming, how the tradition changed with industrialization brought under Communism, and finally, how it flourished and evolved in the recent, unstable political climate. This work--complete with a compact disc and numerous illustrations and musical examples--contributes not only to ethnomusicological theory and method, but also to our understanding of Slavic folklore, Eastern European anthropology, and cultural processes in Socialist states [Publisher description]
sound recordings
xxv, 370 pages : illustrations, 2 maps, music ; 24 cm + 1 audio disc (digital ; 4 3/4 in.)
9780226711218, 9780226711225, 0226711218, 0226711226
28799339
Part One: Encountering the tradition. Dancing in the scholar's world
On individuals
On dialogue in monologic form
On tradition
First impressions
Bulgaria's history in music
Maintaining music in society
Individual musical experience. Part Two: Acquiring the tradition. Social processes of music learning
Social constraints on music learning
boys learn to play instruments
Girls learn to sing
Cognitive processes in music learning
First lessons
Pre-understandings of the tradition
The mystery of ornamentation
Reflections on learning the tradition. Part Three: Living the tradition. Five perspectives on musical experience
The economics and ideology of music in the 1930s
Nodes of musical cognition and understanding
Aesthetics and creativity in performance
Metaphors of bodily experience
Songs and dances in a women's experience
Music, song, and dance as seasonal experience
Koleda
Winter dance songs
Kukerovden
Lenten games: Na Filek
Easter
Spring dances
Dances at summer fairs
Harvest songs
Autumn sedyankas
Weddings
Review of the year
Reflections on the social maintenance of music. Part Four: Changing the tradition. The new society and its music
The new society comes to Gergebunar
The state and its new music institutions
Command and control of music
A new life in Sofia
Kostadin changes
Reception and teaching of the new tradition
Reception of the new tradition
Kostadin forms Strandzhanskata Grupa
Todora confronts new values
Teaching the tradition
Reflections on musical change. Part Five: Continuing the tradition. Challenging the tradition
The rise of wedding music
Wedding music in 1988
The interpretation and control of wedding music
Stambolovo: a festival of control
The state's response to the challenge
Gaidari: the next generation
Advancing the tradition
Ivan Varimezov inherits the tradition
Kostadin and Todora at home
Life in the country
Music at family gatherings
Concerts and banquets
- New contexts for singing
Reflections on individual music experience. Part Six: Interpreting the tradition. Truth and music