Professor Rosemary Statelova, PhD, is a foremost Bulgarian musicologist, who made popular music an object of scientific interest. But she added a touch of fun to the profound wording of scholarly jargon.
“I love operating at different layers of mentality, bringing the language of the street to the hauteur of academic speech,” she says and adds that this results in a combination of specialist mumbo-jumbo and street slang, which is all so refreshing at times. And exactly that combination became key to the trust both listeners and readers credit her with, for she is not only one of the ‘foremost music scholars’ of international renown, but also a never tiring lecturer, university professor and columnist. Her parents were intellectuals, even in her extended family, doctors, teachers and the like. At one point all the sons of the Statelov family used to graduate abroad.
“But it so turned out that each of my forefathers used to bring home a bride who was a national of the country he had studied in,” Rosemary Statelova recalls. “And so, my Granny was a lady from St. Petersburg and my mother a Munich woman, so I feel rather privileged I must say. I define myself as some sort of cultural hybrid that has just exactly the same amount of Germanness and Russianness in her veins, as Bulgarianness. I was lucky to have the chance of growing up with these three cultures. And also fortunate enough to be born in a family whose greatest value was music. My parents were well versed on German, Russian and world classics. My mother used to play the piano and my father was a conductor… Little wonder then that I started playing and composing at the age of 5. But before I graduated the Music Academy I settled on a Musicology major. Back in my youth popular music was just starting in Bulgaria. And I happened to notice its active social life, its profound cultural influence. So I decided to dedicate myself to the study of popular music. The task was neither easy nor convenient. Back then the Bulgarian musicology school saw no point in working with pop music structures. Someone trained as an expert in larger music forms might find the three-minute pieces of pop songs rather tricky to deal with. But I used to tell myself that they might indeed be short-lived, but they were enriched by the personal experiences of the people who listened to them. So each song relives the recollections and the experiences of millions of listeners. Overall, the study of popular music is the study of its rich social life, and its undeniable significance.”
Rosemary Statelova became the pioneer in the study of pop and rock music in Bulgaria and dedicated a great deal of scientific papers and theses on that subject. She has authored nine books, and hundreds of articles, some of which have been translated and published in Germany, Hungary, Russia, France, Finland, Poland and Croatia.
“Pop music is permeated by a legion of personal experiences,” professor Rosemary Statelova goes on to say. “And we must always keep in mind the fact that at a certain age no one goes without pop music. In fact, they become adults by listening to it. The additional emotional colouring that each and every one of us brings to these songs is what should be the focus of research. I treasure in particular the so-called ‘song with a message’, the intelligent lyrics, ‘the clever song’ as I have put it myself. I drew largely on the German experience in the 1970s where the tradition of the so-called ‘bard songs’ was very rich. So in the 1970s I was looking in Bulgaria for people who might write songs on intelligent lyrics. It was very important that we encouraged that form of art. But I wish to stress once again that pop music absorbs the greatest amount of human material than any other kind of music. Pop culture opens widely its doors to liberties both on the part of the performer and the listener. That is why I insist that perception of pop music is creative, complementary and enriching.”
Although her scientific preferences tend to favour popular genres, Professor Rosemary Statelova has never ‘betrayed’ her classical upbringing, which later nurtured her versatile and striking personality. But she has another major contribution as musicologist. Ten years ago she was invited by a German institute to research the music culture of the Sorbs, a Slavic minority that lives in the German states of Brandenburg and Saxony along the Polish border. And in doing so, she became the first Bulgarian ethnomusicologist to carry out a large-scale study on a foreign music culture. The results of her findings are the volume “The foreign culture brought near”, and the high esteem of the specialists.
But Professor Rosemary Statelova has another successful book “The Seven Sins of Chalga”, an ironic look at contemporary Bulgarian pop folk music.
“I would urge for more caution in using the term ‘chalga’,” Professor Statelova explains. “The actual term is pop folk or ethno pop. Chalga used to be the 19th century urban popular music, but there were no lyrics to it. It failed to flourish in Bulgaria later on. The only similar kind of music that had a boom in the 1970s was the kind of music performed live at weddings which I tend to call ‘the luxury edition of chalga’. But the world trends in pop music reached Bulgaria and so the pop folk songs emerged, which were met gladly with those Bulgarians who tend to affiliate more with the Balkan and Oriental streak to them. But this genre made great hits and gave ‘food’ to a great many singers. However, the Bulgarian society is in two minds about it. There are inevitably ‘pros’ and ‘cons’. While some tend to call it vulgar and corrupting, others never tire to feel ecstatic about it. So as a musicologist I could not remain indifferent to that phenomenon.”
“As to my personal music preferences, let me tell you this. The musician does not feel the need to swim in sounds, to exist in sounds, because musicians carry the music inside themselves. So, the true musicians tend to appreciate silence best. Whenever I listen to music, I just sit down and listen, I can’t do anything else. Personally I treasure the most the works of Richard Wagner. I will never get enough of his music. But when I think of myself I feel somewhat I am a comedienne ratée. I find the comic to be a very important part of humans. That is why I treasure very much what the Russian philosopher and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, who introduced the carnival culture of the Renaissance to us, and who showed us that there is a funny side to the seriousness of life. The jester too has his own true take on life. And sometimes it is the only honestly spoken opinion,” musicologist Professor Rosemary Statelova says in conclusion.
English version by Radostin Zhelev
