Second Monday Music: Rila Music Exchange 2013

(L-R) Laura, Dessislava, Valeria, & Sofia
(at the American University in Bulgaria, April 2011)

How to put this without being overly dramatic?

By Geoffrey Dean

To say that it all began when Sofia introduced us to Myriam would be plausible enough. But the genesis of the Rila Music Exchange goes further back, back to when Laura introduced us to Sofia. When Laura, an American, had come to Plovdiv, Bulgaria in the fall of 2010 to study folk music at the Academy of Music and Dance Art, she ended up rooming with a young Swedish woman named Sofia who was there for the same reason.
    Both Laura and Sofia happened to be classically trained violinists with an abiding interest in folk music. So when I invited Laura to perform at the American University the following spring, she brought Sofia with her, and the two dazzled our academic audience with their spontaneous, energetic, and joyful playing. Several Bulgarian students later remarked how Laura and Sofia’s interpretations of Bulgarian folk tunes and the obvious love of this music that came across in their performance had made them feel proud to be Bulgarian, had caused them to reconsider the value of their own folk music, which obviously had the potential to inspire these foreign artists so strongly.
    So we were extra excited when Laura wrote earlier in the year of her plans to conclude a summer 2013 trip to Eastern Europe with a visit to Rila for the 2nd annual Rila Music Exchange (Rila ME). A Laura/Sofia reunion was in the making! Already at the first exchange, all the captivating qualities we remembered from Laura and Sofia’s duo performances had come through in the outdoor concerts given by the participants, led by Sofia and Myriam, a flute and accordion player from Belgium. These concerts are all about sharing the fruits of the participants’ own sharing during the festival week.

Myriam is second from right, singing

Myriam, center, playing flute, Sofia to the right playing violin

The “exchange” of folk tunes, as each member of the group teaches the others a tune by ear and together everyone adds something new to it, is a very intense, all-consuming process by which the group work together to transforms the musical material into unique new versions. These new versions, often combining tunes from diverse cultures as a kind of symbol of (or wish for) broader cross-cultural understanding, themselves become a special symbol of that sharing, because the process of transforming the music is also part of a process of social transformation, as individuals from many different cultures become a close-knit group that expresses that closeness through its music. This year the 23 Rila ME participants represented a dozen countries: Bulgaria, Sweden, Belgium, Chile, Australia, Austria, Czech Republic, England, Germany, Mexico, Spain, and the United States.

    Through its free concerts of “music under the Rila sky,” as the Bulgarian version of the project name suggestively—and very accurately—proclaims, the Rila ME participants “give back” to the communities that so generously host them, enlivening village squares in the region and performing together with local folk ensembles such as the female vocal group “Smochevo Springs” and the male instrumental ensemble “The Rabbit Gets Married” from the wind-swept, sloping village of Smochevo, with its panoramic view of the southwestern face of the Rila Mountain ascending to the east. These concerts—even at the American University—always include several Bulgarian ring dances, in which the musicians and local residents join hands and move to the music in traditional Bulgarian style. Although the Rila ME group is in the “youth” category (18-to-30 age range) and the residents are primarily past retirement age—nothing like a generation gap seems to affect the celebration.

Sky above Pastra, September 3

Smochevo Springs vocal ensemble

In this part of Bulgaria, all roads lead to the imposing, fortress-like Rila Monastery, a must-see for the Rila ME group. This year Sofia and Myriam were able to fit in several other excursions, including a hike up to the an intriguing wind-sculpted rock formation known here as the Stob Pyramids, and an evening gathering at the hillside gazebo built by the Rila tourist organization founded 115 years ago. I was appointed to lead the group up to the gazebo, but I ended up arriving at the top last to find the group sitting on the roof of the gazebo, admiring the impressive view of the town of Rila and the valley opening out to the west. We were also able to realize a modest version of the “Hermann’s Horses” initiative. Hermann, who came to the 2012 Rila ME from Austria, had the ecological vision of doing all Rila ME inter-village travel by horse cart, which in theory would be possible, given enough available horse-carts (local residents certainly do use them regularly for agricultural activities) and enough between-event time (ah, here’s the problem…). We settled for a brief trek from the Smochevo village square to the outlying St. Troitsa church, where a “little snack” prepared by members of the local vocal group was waiting. For a group consisting almost entirely of strict vegetarians—only Joachim from Belgium later admitted to being a “fake vegetarian”—these modest meals presented a special habit-breaking challenge.

This year Sofia and Myriam added a final performance at the tomato festival in the Rhodope mountain village of Kurtovo Konare, where several esteemed folk music mentors from the Plovdiv Academy led the music. This led us to incorporate a high-altitude narrow-gauge train ride through the Rhodope mountains into the Rila ME schedule. Unfortunately this required getting up painfully early on Saturday morning and traveling an hour and a half to get to the train. Due to the now infamous accordion debacle, involving a bit of mistaken accordion identity and the sleepy-eyed off-loading of the wrong instrument, the bus made it to the train with a mere seven minutes to spare. In the end everyone agreed it was worth the effort, but that next time we would definitely take the later train!

At the moment, Rila ME is in its own sort of identity crisis, to put it overly dramatically. Should it remain a small independent initiative, or should it join the ranks of the network of Ethno events that are organized under the auspices of the Brussels-based Jeunesses Musicales International (JMI)? So far we’ve been “keeping things small” and seem to be providing a different kind of Ethno experience from the larger (60-150 participants) JMI events organized each summer in Flanders, Slovenia, Estonia, and elsewhere in Europe. Word of mouth seems to be enough to keep us going on this “chamber” scale, in keeping with the Ardenza Foundation mission. Would joining the network mean “getting too commercial”? We are lucky to have the very enthusiastic support of the Rila municipality, with town officials taking a special interest in events like this that break from the traditional model of what public cultural celebrations are “supposed” to be. For now we are envisioning only modest expansion, perhaps by 10 or 12 participants in the coming year. That’s about the number we could accommodate in the unusual house the foundation recently saved from destruction (putting it overly dramatically again). But the house has its own story, and I’ll save that for another post.
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Copyright © 2013 by Geoffrey Dean

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