Radio Bulgaria

What are the role models of Bulgarian teenagers these days? Are they pop-folk or hip-hop artists or Bulgarian poets and revolutionaries like Hristo Botev? Pedagogues have been trying hard to find a way to make children more interested in their school lessons in a world of online entertainment and they say this can be done with the help pf music.
Trying to make a teenager read poetry may be a difficult task but now Bulgarian students will be able to listen to the poems of Botev or Geo Milev in the mp3 format and in the form of a reggae, hip-hop, or punk-rock song. A Bulgarian company working in the sphere of audio books has decided to present the works of great Bulgarian writers to students in a more attractive way to them. Botev’s works are collected under the logo “It’s cool to listen to Botev,” for example. Young actors from the theater in Dobrich take part in the project, as well as hip-hop artists Young BB Young and DRS. 12 CDs with poetry and prose have already been released on the market under this project.

The idea is to make classic literature sound contemporary to teenagers. Short promotion videos have been released too, showing poet Hristo Botev wearing a leather jacket. Writer Yordan Yovkov is seen as a reggae singer. Poet Geo Milev, executed without a trial in 1925 by the regime during that time is seen as a rebellious hip-hop artist with a microphone in his hand.

People who worked on the project say this is the path to make young people start reading books again. However, with the publishing of the videos in Youtube, a number of young users commented the idea was corny and that they did not need Botev presented as a rock star or Geo Milev as a rapper to read his poetry. Actually it is all a matter of taste and it is a fact that collecting prose and poetry in a digital audio format will make it easier to teenager to get to it.

Trying to attract the attention of teenagers companies working in the sphere of education have been trying a number of methods. The photos of famous pop folk stars can be seen on notebooks. Some notebooks are even sold with a CD. In this way students can learn about writers and poets, while listening to the latest hits.

However, it seems that young people in Bulgaria could still discern good taste from kitsch and have not lost interest in reading the works of the masters of Bulgarian literature.

English version: Alexander Markov