“It is difficult to find my native village on the map, because it is now under the waters of Ovcharitsa dam. It was called Turgovishte, Sliven region. I grew up in a family of folk musicians. My uncle used to play the shepherd’s flute, my mother and my father used to sing at night. I was brought up on folk music, so there was no chance of my not singing. All the more so that on both sides my great-grandfathers were priests. I remember we had a funnel phonograph. We had one record left… “I’ll be the best hunter, I’ll catch you, you’ll be mine again…” – goes the song Golden Girl. Later I heard it from a rebec player in the village of Korten, and later in Stara Zagora from an elderly singer and from these three versions I came up with my own Golden Girl.

Penka Pavlova married in Stara Zagora in 1953. Two years later at a New Year party she was invited to sing; there she was heard by accordion player Ivan Shibilev. Surprised by her beautiful voice he offered to accompany her and later invited her to record her songs at Radio Stara Zagora. Penka recorded her first two songs to the accompaniment of his accordion, and afterwards – with an orchestra. For one year she sang with the local ensemble Zagore, but that was not enough for her, she wanted to perform in front of an audience every night.  So, for twelve years she traveled the country with the group Our Song. “That was where the best singers of the day performed,” Penka Pavlova remembers. “Mita Stoycheva, Georgi Chilingirov, Radka Koushleva, Lalka Pavlova. All of them elite singers I have learnt a lot from. I was the first to buy a tape recorder and I used it to record songs sung by elderly women. I myself started singing other kinds of songs as well – Greek, Turkish, Gypsy songs, and for all of them I had different costumes. People called me “a wedding singer”. But you have to have been at a Thracian wedding to know how difficult it is to sing there. Weddings would start on Saturday night and end on Monday morning. We sang hundreds of songs.”

Penka Pavlova has close to five years of experience in wedding music with the group from Purvomay. She has worked with the Lenovo and Konoushan groups and 11 years with Avligite – Orioles orchestra from Stara Zagora.

As a traveling musician with Our Song since 1958, Penka Pavlova has taken every opportunity to add new melodies to her repertoire. Many of them she recorded at Radio Stara Zagora, Plovdiv and Sofia. Her song the Queen of Turnovo gained widespread popularity. She gave thousands of concerts. Her fame reached America and she was invited to lecture in Bulgarian folk music in Los Angeles, where interest in East European folklore grew. She considered this an honour – she lectured for seven months but then chose to return to Bulgaria.

“What I wanted was to record more and more songs at the radio, but time was short. In winter I would be on the road touring, in summer I would spend a whole week at army going away parties, at weddings, birthdays, christenings. For ten years I was Honoured Artist, a title I was deprived of after the changes in Bulgaria in 1989. I am holder of the Order of Cyril and Methodius, 1st class, the Golden Lyre of the Union of Bulgarian Musicians and Dancers… But there is one thing that pains me – in the years of democracy, we folk singers were forgotten, pop-folk became all the rage and we were left in the back seat. I still have songs I have not recorded. And I am a fountain of knowledge – I know the history of practically every song by every one Bulgaria’s prominent singers.”

Penka Pavlova continues to sing, but it is her ambition to try out something new. So, she went to an old-time city song contest in Petrich and won first prize four years running. On the advice of Academician Nikolay Kaufman who sat on the panel she collected her songs on lyrics by poets Yavorov, Debelyanov, Botev and Vazov in one CD called Revival.

“I have had an interesting and turbulent life!” she says. “And I still can’t believe I am just sitting at home. In Stara Zagora I was the first woman to have got a driver’s license. I drove a taxi through the narrow Rhodope streets. To me there is no job that is too small. With the only man in my life, accordion player Petko Dachev we had a burning passion for 60 long years. This relationship has given me so much, I felt I was flying, the stage was always too small for me. When he passed away I started writing poetry, and here I am twenty years later, still writing…”

English version: Milena Daynova