Democracy Performed—Setting the Record Straight: A Critical Response to "Performing Democracy—Bulgarian Music and Musicians in Transition" by Donna Buchanan

Democracy Performed? Setting the Record Straight: A Critical Response to Performing Democracy? B ulgarian Music and Musicians in Transition byDonna Buchanan Gregory Myers and Anna Levy The publication Performing Democracy?Bulgarian Music and Music ians in Transition byUniversity of Illinois ethnomusicologist Donna Buchanan should be awelcome occasion; not only does itdocument the musical lifeof a country that receives scant attention in Western schol arly circles, but its appearance coincided with Bulgaria's auspicious entry into the European Union along with Romania on January 1, 2007. 150 PerspectivesofNew Music Buchanan's ethnomusicological skills are superb, especially when describing folk instruments and their tunings, and her reportage of the rise of the professional folk music ensembles is first class. In this, her book makes a real contribution to the study of Bulgaria's music. But her ethnomusicological focus is, ironically, part of themuch larger and more serious problem with this book. For too long Bulgaria's musical heritage has been the sole purview of the ethnomusicologist, to the complete exclusion of any serious consideration of its long-standing and active role in the modernist musical movements of the twentieth century. Thus the country has been shrouded by myth?one perpetuated by the popularity in theWest of groups like Le mystere des voix Bulgares?as a mystical agrarian society bereft of any artmusic traditions. Bulgaria's musical reality is quite the opposite. Along with its former Eastern Bloc allies, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania, and to a much greater extent than the former Soviet Union, Bulgaria not only kept abreast of new musical trends following World War II, but was an active participant in these varied musical developments. Bulgaria's avant-garde produced music that, by any standard, should be considered to be on the cutting edge of Western musical thinking within the broader context of contemporary Europe. Buchanan's study ignores these developments. Instead of offering a substantive and comprehensive survey of Bulgarian music and musicians, as her title promises, Buchanan has produced a dated and lopsided study that only perpetuates the cozy myths about this small Balkan nation. She attempts to cover nearly every aspect of Bulgarian life: cultural, political, social, musical, and so forth, all set against the backdrop of the origins of Bulgaria's professional folkmusic ensembles. The result is a series of mistakes, discrepancies, and wrong conclusions, four hundred pages of unwieldy political diatribes, naive and gratuitous homilies, historical recollections, and personal travel log, all unevenly juxtaposed and mixed inwith unimpeachable ethnomusicology.1 While the daily chronicling of the author's trials and tribulations of field research in any of the former Eastern Bloc countries can only elicit empathy, even a certain nostalgia, for the 'bad old days' from those of us who have experienced it, a scholarly publication is hardly the place for such personal reminiscences, especially one that sports such an all-encompassing tide as Buchanan's. The University of Chicago Press must also share some of the criticism, for they do not have any Bulgarian scholars on the editorial board of this ethnomusicological series.2 Had there been such outside oversight, many of themonograph's inherent problems might have been avoided. The book's packaging is also unsatisfactory; there are no illustrations in Democracy Performed 151 the paperback edition, and too few musical examples. Instead of illustrations,we are presented with pages ofwordy descriptions. Buchanan's problems begin with the very title, Performing Demo cracy, and the accompanying mission statement: Indeed, more than in any other East European country, Bulgaria's professional ensemble musicians acted as vibrant, celebrated icons of their country's democratization, both at home and abroad. While the tides of recent political change were marked elsewhere by gov ernmental figures such as Havel, Gorbachev, and Walesa, in Bul garia the performance activities and styles of groups such as Balkana, Bulgari, Ivo Papazov and His Wedding Orchestra, and the State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir associated with the recordings and tours known as Le mystere des voix Bulgares func tioned not only as prominent harbingers, but as agents of political transition.3 To include Bulgaria's village musicians among the great political reformers of the 1980s and 1990s is not only...