Celebrating its 80th anniversary, Radio Bulgaria welcomes you to monthly voting for music from Bulgaria. Lots will be drawn to select the names of the winners – people who have guessed the winning song or tune - and three of them are going to win CDs with music in the respective genre. To vote, please send us an e-mail at english@bnr.bg.

Results will be announced on the 15th of every month.

The genres that open the chart correspond to the music streams in the upper right hand corner of Radio Bulgaria’s website. The selection of pieces is by the authors of the respective streams. So, we take this opportunity to present to you these colleagues. They answer questions about their earliest memories of music and radio, the ideas, principles and possible compromises that are all part of creating the streams.

Sasho Zaraliev is author of folklore music shows for the Bulgarian National Radio’s culture channel Hristo Botev and also of Radio Binar’s stream of folklore music. He was born in Straldja in the Thracian plain, the house where he lived was right next door to the house of renowned folk singer Vulkana Stoyanova but he says he has no memory of her. But what he will never forget are the village weddings when marquees were put up and inside there was singing and dancing all night long. One of the most famous kaval (wooden flute) players Matyu Dobrev is from these parts and he would often play at such parties. Then Sasho started playing the guitar, though his first “musical” memory is not from that instrument:

“I was perhaps five and I was still living in the village. There were two women standing talking under some trees and the sparrows were chirping above their heads. What I understood of the “sparrow language” was not so very different from what I understood of the things these women were saying.”

Sashos’s work at the Bulgarian National Radio involves folk music shows which invariably have a mythological angle, and he says it is never easy to match the legend to music and words. But his vast knowledge of authentic folklore has been attracting a great many listeners who click the “like” button for his stream. People – mostly from USA and Great Britain – have been asking how they can buy this music online. He has been getting queries from Peru, where traditional Bulgarian music is also very popular, but he says he will never forget the letter he received from a boy from Syria whose father worked in Bulgaria at one time, and the two things he gave his son were Bulgarian honey and Bulgarian music. Thankfully, neither has suffered any quality loss.

“When I was starting out it was my intention to highlight the music of the 1960s and 1970s, but as it turned out listeners were not very keen on folk music arrangements, they preferred the authentic sound, so I now play lots of instrumental music.”

Sasho says he realizes how important social media are in popularizing the Bulgarian National Radio’s folk music stream. When over the weekend he plays concerts by a living performer with a Facebook profile, the number of visits is much higher than when there are concerts by performers who are no longer among the living or whose names are not to be found in social media. To popularize his stream, Sasho is prepared to make compromises with “wedding music” concerts, though he never oversteps the bounds of good taste to enter pop-folk territory.

You can cast your vote for one of three songs from the folk music stream; the deadline is the end of January:

English version: Milena Daynova