Music in Bulgaria: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture, and: Embroidered with Gold, Strung with Pearls: The Traditional Ballads of Bosnian Women (review)

In 1396, the last independent remnant of Bulgaria was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, and sixty-seven years later the Kingdom of Bosnia suffered a similar fate. For the next several centuries, until 1878, these two states—along with the rest of the Balkan Peninsula—remained under Ottoman rule, each absorbing some aspects of Turkish culture while also maintaining many aspects of their distinctive cultural identities. Indeed, so distinct are the differing cultures in this region that the word Balkanization was created to characterize the existence of small, often mutually hostile states.

Because of its rich history and cultural influences, the folk music of the Balkans has been the subject of considerable scholarship during the past one hundred years. Two recently published books, intended for very different audiences, help shed additional light on the heritage and significance of the folk music and song from this region and will be of interest to ethnomusicologists and folklorists.

Music in Bulgaria is part of the Global Music Series, edited by Bonnie C. Wade and Patricia Shehan Campbell, which provides volumes of case studies—some devoted to countries (e.g., Bulgaria, Ireland, Japan), some examining multinational regions (e.g., East Africa, West Africa), and some focusing on more specific districts or cultures (e.g., Bali, North India, South India). The aim of the series is to provide in-depth examinations of world music for students and teachers in a new format. Instead of text-books that survey the subject broadly, these case studies, authored by experts in the field and usually accompanied by a music CD, allow for more detailed and illustrative explorations.

Having studied Bulgarian music since 1969, Timothy Rice, professor of ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles, is one such expert. He has numerous publications on the topic to his credit, and, perhaps of equal importance, he has passed muster within Bulgaria. While attending a village dance in 1973, Rice was interrogated by a Bulgarian who demanded to know what he was doing there. Rice described the research that he, as an American with no Slavic ancestry, was doing but then was contradicted by the villager, who insisted, "You speak Bulgarian and you dance Bulgarian. Therefore you are a Bulgarian" (p. 44).

Written in the first person, Music in Bulgaria offers a discerning tour of Bulgaria's musical landscape. Individual chapters are devoted to wedding music, the music of seasonal and religious rituals, the rise of professional folkloric troupes and ensembles in Bulgaria, the appropriation of Bulgarian music by foreigners (most notably illustrated by the melodies and choral music in the television show Xena, Warrior Princess), and the contemporary phenomenon of popfolk (a Bulgarian word for the new musical genre that combines elements of Greek, Macedonian, Rom, Serbian, and Turkish popular music with traces of Bulgarian traditional music).

Rice writes clearly and insightfully, and his text is aided immensely by the accompanying CD, which contains thirty-eight tracks and roughly seventy minutes of music that is cited in the volume. Each track is accompanied by at least one listening activity, some of which may require a familiarity with the music (e.g., to identify the different sounds of the Bulgarian instruments—gaida, kaval, gŭdulka, and tŭpan—and then to note the additive meter of 2+2+2+3). With the assistance of the instructor, these activities should be excellent learning tools.

For several of the tracks, Rice assists the reader by providing both musical notations and lyrics (including both the Bulgarian and the English translation), though unfortunately not for any examples of popfolk. Knowing the lyrics of these songs (which Rice only summarizes) would have helped the reader better understand...