Bulgarika: Tradition is not Canon!
Bulgarika played at the Caygua Vault tonight. If you're in California, follow the link and you too can be amazed by the astounding Ivan Malev, the most mind-boggling accordionist you'll ever see. You kind of have to see him as well as hear him, because he's all showmanship. He looks rather like the Good Soldier Schweik (in the illustrated version I read as a kid), ugly as a bulldog, but he lights up on the stage. He capers and grimaces and smiles and flirts with the audience while cavorting on the accordion keys and making the most incredible musical jokes as he goes. He even worked "This Old Man" into a piece. It says here he's a founding figure in "modern wedding bands." He has his own band. I'd link to an explanation of what a wedding band is but I can't find a good one. It's like ceilidh is to Irish music: folky, modern, exuberant, and integrated.
I bought a little book and CD about Thracian folk life, from which the title for this post comes -- the Kolevi (Nikolai Kolev, the gudulka player, and Donka Koleva, the singer)write about the changes in twentieth-century Bulgarian folk life with great gusto. And the translation-English is only hysterical in isolated moments. I can't figure out how "loan" becomes a word for a fire pit, for example, though I did figure out that it was a fire pit in question from the context (it was a recipe for beans in the Haiduk manner)
You can hear sound clips of each of Bulgarika at that first link at the beginning of the post.
on another front, we had a Gloria milestone of a sad sort today: she couldn't quite remember where or what the bathroom was. No, she didn't do something in an inappropriate place, but she had to get me to show her. How did I know that was the problem? She said, "I have to go, but I don't know where to go."
I bought a little book and CD about Thracian folk life, from which the title for this post comes -- the Kolevi (Nikolai Kolev, the gudulka player, and Donka Koleva, the singer)write about the changes in twentieth-century Bulgarian folk life with great gusto. And the translation-English is only hysterical in isolated moments. I can't figure out how "loan" becomes a word for a fire pit, for example, though I did figure out that it was a fire pit in question from the context (it was a recipe for beans in the Haiduk manner)
You can hear sound clips of each of Bulgarika at that first link at the beginning of the post.
on another front, we had a Gloria milestone of a sad sort today: she couldn't quite remember where or what the bathroom was. No, she didn't do something in an inappropriate place, but she had to get me to show her. How did I know that was the problem? She said, "I have to go, but I don't know where to go."