Jazz in Bulgaria

The history and development of jazz in Bulgaria was significantly influenced by the cultural and political changes in the country during the 20th century, which led to the emergence of a genre blending western jazz styles with Bulgarian folk music influences.

After the bloody Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903 there was a wave of Bulgarian immigrants to the USA and Canada, mostly in the Eastern states, setting in communities that established their own social institutions - churches, political clubs, newspapers, and other societies, among which amateur orchestras had an important role. They were predominantly brass bands, though there were some string (guitar and mandolin) orchestras. Most of the musicians could not read music. Returning to Bulgaria as volunteers in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, they brought back the new music of America. One of the early first-hand experiences of music influenced by jazz was Wallace Hartley’s band concert in Varna in 1911. His success there acquired him a position at a club in the capital Sofia, where he played primarily dance music until being hired to play on the Titanic in 1912. His influence marks the beginning of the influx of western music, at that time predominantly ragtime, in Bulgaria. As early as the 1920s there was Bulgarian instrumental music that could be classified as jazz but was also influenced by folk traditions, often even in the choice of instrumentation.

In the years following the First World War there was an increased demand for entertainment, as well as a second big wave of returning emigrants from the Great Depression. Many of them decided to take up music as their profession, bringing to Bulgaria some experience and repertoire of American music. Those were years of increased industrialization and urbanization for Bulgaria, which also stimulated the growth of the entertainment industry. The first big jazz formations appeared at a time when public houses flourished and silent cinema provided work for orchestras. Jazz spread further with the import of notated western jazz music and records. There were several active jazz orchestras, performing mostly swing music, such as “Jazz Ovcharov” and “The Optimists”.

After the Second World War, as Bulgaria was under communist rule, music and all art was subjected to a set of criteria that was not compatible with the free nature of jazz, nor with the rawness of improvised instrumental folk music that could naturally fit within the jazz aesthetic. In the aesthetic set by the government, folklore was only acceptable as an inspiration that after undergoing the process of refinement in the European style could become part of creating the “national musical style.” The totalitarian rule resulted in a relative artistic stagnation in which amusement and musical experimentation were frowned upon. During that period emerged one of the first prominent figures in Bulgarian jazz, Milcho Leviev, a composer, conductor, arranger, and piano player, whose career started with directing and occasionally composing and arranging for the Bulgarian radio and television big band between 1962 and 1966. Due to his personal connections (most notably with his teacher from the conservatory, classical composer Pancho Vladigerov) and other fortunate circumstances, Leviev was able to overcome some of the aesthetic conservatism. He found folk music tradition, with the asymmetrical complex rhythms, distinctive melodic motifs, and emphasis on virtuosity and improvisation typical for Bulgarian music, to be a logical choice to translate into jazz. One of the first compositions exploring that direction is his piece Blues in 9, based on a Bulgarian folk dance rhythm pattern and turning the familiar structures from both folk and jazz into something completely different. For him using asymmetric Bulgarian meters and the unusual melodic intervals typical to Bulgarian folk music was not just an attempt to towards the unusual, but aiming to evoke specific associations of those popular metric structures. His style also marked the first steps towards blending extremities in musical classification - rough folk and refined classical, serious art music and entertainment music, composer’s and performer’s music. Leviev’s music was a criticism of the totalitarian regime and its conservative aesthetic and with that he attracted like-minded musicians and other artists that he collaborated with, including the famous poet Radoy Ralin, who encouraged him to form the Bulgarian Jazz Quartet. Also known as Jazz Focus ‘65, the quartet consisted of Milcho Leviev on piano, Simeon Shterev on flute, Lyubomir Mitsov on contrabass, and Petur Slavov on percussion. The group gained some international acclaim after winning the critics' award in the jazz festival in Montreux, Switzerland. Despite its success abroad, the music of the quartet was not in favour in Bulgaria, where on occasion it had been banned as “politically inappropriate.” In 1968 the quartet recorded an album beyond the Iron Curtain in FRG, free of the aesthetic restraints of communism. In the same year he contacted the American bandleader Don Ellis, sending him recordings of Bulgarian folk music, including Sadovsko horo, a folk dance tune in 33/16, which Ellis rearranged and released under the title “Bulgarian Bulge.” This resulted in a yearlong collaboration between Leviev and Ellis, during which Leviev moved to the US to compose, arrange, and play piano for Ellis’ band.

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