The Bulgarian Women’s Choir was locked behind the iron curtain until 1989. They were the official women’s choir for state sponsored radio and television in Bulgaria before a French music scholar discovered them and before Stevie Wonder and Frank Zappa and Linda Rondstadt popularized them in America. The music is exotic and strange, haunting and ethereal.
It shrills and shrieks and yodels. It’s quite literally ancient music that comes from the ancient home of music – the home of the mythological musician Orpheus and of the Thracian tribes that settled the east-central part of the Balkan peninsula. Geography, politics, religion and historical accident have preserved the choir’s music all these years. American pop culture has liberated it. Live music with the Bulgarian Women’s Choir is this hour on the Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
The Bulgarian Women’s Choir