People who are fond of traditional Bulgarian culture will remember 2016 as a year replete with all kinds of events, festivals and concerts.

For the 16th time, the pretty little town of Apriltsi in the heart of the Central Balkan Range played host to the Balkan Festival of Bulgarian Songs. The event, organized by Budeshte-1894 chitalishte (culture community club) includes a competition in three categories and two age groups. The festival takes place on and around Enyovden or Midsummer’s Day, June 24 – a major traditional feast day in Bulgaria, dedicated to the gathering of herbs and their curative properties. The grand prix this year went to the amateur groups and soloists from Nadezhda-1925 chitalishte in Tourkincha village near Dryanovo, with artistic director Mitko Dimitrov.

In 2016 we marked the 90th birth anniversary of Magdalena Morarova. The singer who performs the emblematic song Petruno, pile shareno (Petruna, pretty lass) was born in Bansko. The Bulgarian National Radio’s audio library features a great many recordings of original songs from the town where she was born and its environs. Over dozens of years, Morarova toured Bulgaria, performing alongside renowned singers of the age like Boris Mashalov, Ivan Panovski and others.

One of the first chamber folklore formations is the Slavey (Nightingale) women’s vocal quartet, founded in 1991 by Nadka Karadjova and her daughter Svetla Karadjova, Stoyana Lalova and Lilyana Galevska. The quartet has spread the fame of Bulgarian folklore far and wide in Europe and across different continents. Alongside Svetla and Lilyana, the formation has now been joined by two young singers – Kristina Karamfilova and Vanya Vaccari and they are still going strong.

The Gold Dust folklore festival is one of the youngest such events held in this country. It takes place in Chelopech, a village 100 kilometers from Sofia. The third edition of the festival featured dance groups from Russia, Georgia, Argentina, Spain, Serbia. For the second year running a national competition for folklore groups and soloists was held as part of the festival. The participants this time were mostly from the region around Sofia, known as the Shoppe folklore region. The festival awards two grand prix – for best dance group and for best vocal group and this year they went to Sofia 6 folk dance ensemble at the Vitosha-1951 chitalisht inSofia and the Gornopolska Pesen folklore ensemble at the Probuda-1923 chitalishte in Ovchartsi village near Kyustendil.

The Folk Music Orchestra of the Bulgarian National Radio performed to a full house at the BNR’s concert studio, Studio No. 1 many times throughout 2016. Over the past few years, the orchestra with conductor Dimitar Hristov has been offering its fans intriguing sequences of concerts – the Rhythm of the Balkans, The Classics of Bulgarian Wedding Music, Paintings in Voice and Instruments, Music in Portraits, presenting different strata of Bulgarian folklore, the bonds between traditional Bulgarian music and the national cultures of other countries, as well as all generations of singers and instrumentalists in this genre.

The 90th birth anniversary of renowned singer Radka Kushleva from the Rhodope folklore region was marked at the end of 2016 in Smolyan and in Sofia. At the initiative of Constantin Lazarov – founder and organizer of the Annual Folklore Awards, an exhibition dedicated to the acclaimed singer was organized at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences’ Ethnographic Museum. As a token of appreciation, the prizes awarded by the professional panel of judges at the third edition of the Annual Folklore Awards were also in her name.

English version: Milena Daynova