Harmony in Bulgarian Music: Village Style Accompaniment from the 1920s to the 1990s

Kalin Kirilov

Towson University, USA

The music of Bulgaria is an excellent example of a complex musical tradition that combines Middle Eastern makams, pentatonic scales, diatonic modes, microtonal structures, and major/minor collections. This presentation analyzes trend-setting pieces from the repertoire and traces the formation of a unique harmonic system found in Bulgarian village music. The Bulgarian harmonic system developed gradually, starting from integrating primary triads, through vertical displacements and chord substitutions, to borrowing progressions from modern jazz. At the beginning of the 20th century, Bulgarian musicians began adding chordal progressions to preexisting village style repertoires. Recordings from the 1940s-1950s illustrate harmonic preferences for primary triads. During the 1960s-1970s, tambura players further expanded village style harmony by adapting chord progressions from arranged ensemble folk music. In the 1980s Bulgarian wedding style had a strong influence on village style accompaniments. The two styles from this period are difficult to separate, since most tambura players also played guitars in wedding bands. Recordings from the 1990s illustrate far more advanced harmonic vocabularies in comparison to recordings from the previous decades. The tambura players in the 1990s had higher musical education and expertise in a variety of musical styles such as the wedding style, rock, and jazz.