Bulgarian tracks: the road to the Koprivshtitsa Festival (and back again, and again)

Liz Mellish

Abstract The Koprivshtitsa, National Festival of Bulgarian Folklore, has been held (around) every five years since 1965, and throughout its fifty-year history has drawn an ever-increasing audience of Bulgarian music and dance enthusiasts from all corners of the globe. This paper asks why many participants travel to this festival for every successive edition. It traces what I am terming the ‘tracks’ of the Koprivshtitsa festival and its audience on three interrelated trajectories; the first follows the historical track of this festival; the second explores interrelations with the landscape and place in the notion of this festival; and the third is linked to memory, real and imagined, exploring how the changes in the world beyond Koprivshtitsa and the festival have had implications on the ‘festival experience’. It concludes that the reasons that participants continue to return to the festival can be found in a conflation of the second two trajectories, the (relatively) unchanging tracks linked to the festival location and organisation, and the changing tracks as this festival has adapted to new technology and travel possibilities, and has expanded its market to include Bulgarian urbanites and diaspora Bulgarians.

Keywords: , festival, Koprivshtitsa, performers, spectators.

Introduction In August 2015 the 11th edition of the Koprivshtitsa, National Festival of Bulgarian Folklore (Natsionalen Sabor Koprivshtitsa / национален Събор Копривщица) took place.1 This festival has been held (around) every five years since 1965 and throughout its fifty-year history it has drawn an ever-increasing audience of Bulgarian music and dance enthusiasts from all corners of the globe. This paper asks why these individuals chose to make the journey to the Koprivshtitsa festival, and why many of them return (whenever possible) for every successive edition. The theme of the conference where this paper was first presented was ‘tracks’ and ‘travelling’.2 Following this theme, I trace the tracks of the Koprivshtitsa Festival (as it is referred to by both Bulgarians and by those from ‘outside’) and its audience on three interrelated trajectories: first, the historical track of the National Folklore Festival that was founded during the communist period and continued after 1990 partly due to the influence of ‘outsiders’ thus suggesting that this historical trajectory provides some clues as to why the festival has retained its popularity with foreign audiences. The second trajectory explores interrelations with the landscape and the significance of place in the notion of this festival, proposing that the Koprivshtitsa festival has maintained its status within the agendas of these enthusiasts partly due to its links to the surrounding landscape, the town and the festival site in the hills. The third trajectory is linked to memory, real and imagined, and explores how the changes in the world beyond Koprivshtitsa and the Festival have had implications on the ‘festival experience’ for those who have travelled there thus revealing how these changes have led to increased audiences at this Festival. When following these tracks, I draw on my experiences of attending all editions of the Koprivshtitsa festival since

1986, together with many informal interviews and email exchanges with other enthusiasts who have attended this festival that I have undertaken over a period of around ten years. These enthusiasts include personal contacts from the UK and beyond whom I have met either at the festival or else during other folk dance courses or trips, and also members of the East European Folklore Centre (EEFC) mailing list that connects members of the global “cultural cohort” (Turino 2008: 235) of Balkan dance, music and song enthusiasts.3 When writing a previous chapter about the Koprivshtitsa festival (Mellish 2013b), I made an analysis of entries on the EEFC mailing list that discuss the Koprivshtitsa festival and I followed this up with email exchanges with specific individuals who posted on this subject.4 Over the past eight years, I continued this analysis and also widened the geographical scope of my interviews and informal discussions. This body of data has allowed me to contextualise my own participant observation during the seven editions of the festival that I have attended, and to provide some answers to the key question that I raise in this paper as to why Bulgarian music and dance enthusiasts are drawn back to retrace their tracks to Koprivshtitsa. Theoretically I view the festival through an ‘anthropological gaze’ reflecting on my own participation and changing reflections.5 This was informed by my transition from cultural tourist to anthropologist and dance ethnographer.6 Over the editions I made this move parallel to the changing relations of others who have returned festival after festival. Their trajectories were not necessarily the same as mine, but they too moved from being cultural tourists to establishing more permanent and durable connections with Bulgaria and its culture and people through their ongoing involvement in Bulgarian dance, music and song. In my previous paper on this festival I use the term ‘folk tourists’, to refer to the foreigners who travelled to the festival as cultural tourists (Mellish 2013b: 155). Almost ten years have passed since the conference presentation on which this paper was based and the accompanying changes in the relationships and links between the east and the west have become increasingly blurred. People who initially went to the Festival as cultural tourists now return as: practitioners, academics musicians, singers, dancers who take part in the festival performances, or ethnographers. Some now have family connections with Bulgarians living in Bulgaria or outside, others have helped Bulgarians to immigrate to their home country, or else are now active among the expanding Bulgarian communities in their home countries.7 These individuals also form part of global Balkan dance cohort and have lasting (renewable) connections with others who have the same passion and meet each year in various locations for courses and dance holidays that take place mostly in the Balkans but also in US, Netherlands, UK, France etc.8 Thus I would argue that what started as cultural tourism has moved beyond that for those that have returned festival after festival, who have established ongoing, permanent connections with their host country that form an integral part of their ongoing lives.9 Of course, this does not include all of the visitors; there are also many cultural tourists who join an organised trip to the festival as a one off experience. These individuals are mostly involved in Bulgarian dance, music or song activities in

their own countries and enjoy travelling, often with their spouses in their leisure time, but this only forms a part of their lives.10 The foreign tourists’ first experiences of the Koprivshtitsa festival are through what Urry terms as the “tourist gaze” (Urry and Larsen 2011: 4). Urry holds that the “tourist gaze is constructed through difference”, and is “short term, linked to leisure activities” as the tourist has the “intention to return home in a short space of time”. However those that have established ongoing connections with Bulgaria music dance and song are often professionals in their field (dance teachers, musicians, academics), and many of these researchers spend a longer time in their research locations whenever this is possible. Through my own participation in successive editions of the festival (together with ongoing participation in academic and song and dance activities in the UK) I have made this transfer from a tourist gaze to my anthropological gaze as I began to question realities that I experienced. This transfer has brought about parallel changes in my views on the relative authenticities in the festival experience. During my first visit in 1986, similar to others whom I have interviewed, I was overwhelmed by the landscape, the sounds of music drifting across the hills, the sight of thousands of local dressed in beautiful colourful, local clothing. As a ‘cultural tourist’ I was subconsciously seeking what MacCannell terms as “staged authenticity” (MacCannell, 1973). I wanted to “share in the real life of the places visited, or at least to see that life as it is really lived” (MacCannell 1973: 594). At this time through my tourist gaze I believed (as did my colleagues on the trip) that we were seeking what we regarded as the ‘real thing’.11 Later through applying my ‘anthropological gaze’ I was able to contextualise the festival within a wider framework and I identified layers of ‘authenticities’ through my festival experiences. I came to acknowledge that as Handler and Linnekin commented “authenticity is always defined in the present” (Handler and Linnekin 1984: 285-6), and these contemporary authenticities are closely associated with the continuation of the specific local ways of singing, dancing, music costumes that can be seen juxtaposed during three days in early August every five years.

Historical trajectory of the Koprivshtitsa festival and its ‘folk tourists’ The Bulgarian National Festival of Folklore was established in the middle of the communist period in Bulgaria, with the first edition taking place in 1965. Similar national festivals of folklore were also set up around the same time in Albania and Romania.12 These festivals were comparable in that they were all state sponsored competitive festivals that involved groups of amateurs from all areas of the country in question, who presented their local dance, music, song or customs. They all involved a series of rounds, first at local level, then at district level and finally the winners of the regional rounds performed and were judged during the national festival. However those responsible for the organisation of the Koprivshtitsa festival cannot have envisaged in 1990 that it would survive the change from the Bulgarian communist regime, and changing circumstances in the world around, and become a meeting point, and almost a place of pilgrimage, for members of

the global cultural cohort of Bulgarian music and dance enthusiasts introduced above. So what circumstances enabled the Koprivshtitsa festival to continue, thus bridging the communist to post- communist gap that was experienced in other similar festival situations?13 The answer to this is closely linked to the key question raised in this paper and appears to lie in the extent of foreign interest and participation in Bulgarian folk dance, music and song that can be traced back to the early 1950s, coupled with an increasing awareness of Bulgarian identity and participation in Bulgarian dance and song activities by Bulgarians within and outside Bulgaria since around 2000 (see Ivanova, 2009). The Koprivshtitsa festival holds a prestigious place among the members of the global Balkan dance and music cohort as well as world music enthusiasts.14 Conversation about the festival is seldom missing for long on the social media sites that link these enthusiasts with discussions on the EEFC mailing list concerning the timing of the next festival starting around twelve months before the next edition is due to take place.15 By the winter holiday period this has moved on to postings listing the various organized tours that will include visiting Koprivshtitsa.16 Nearer the time more detailed discussions are posted, such as where there are vacancies for accommodation, which trips still have spaces, and finally on the availability of a detailed programme.17 The issues raised and the potential for international conversations has changed over time, but ever since the first festival in 1965 there has been foreign interest in experiencing this event. Maria Todorova describes the Balkans as “[g]eographically inextricable from Europe, yet culturally constructed as ‘the other’” (Todorova 1994: 455), and this image of the Balkans and in particular Bulgaria as the mysterious other has caught the attention of ‘outsiders’ from at least the early 1950s on both sides of the Atlantic where many with no family connections to Bulgaria became intrigued by the complex musical rhythms found in Bulgarian music and the open throated style of singing that were unusual and challenging to the ‘western’ ear and feet. The history of the Balkan dance and music scene in the US has been covered in details other publications.18 In this section, I concentrate on the history of the UK scene by drawing on my personal dance history and UK contacts, although, in the following two sections I also refer to my discussions with key individuals from outside the UK where useful for my text.19 In London a Bulgarian from the Bulgarian legation set up a dance group around 1950 and by 1952 two Englishmen had joined the group (Baldwin 1994), and after visiting Bulgaria in the mid-1950s they founded the Dunav band in London, whose repertoire focussed on Bulgarian music. Dunav has continued to exist recently celebrating its 50th anniversary.20 The foreign presence at the first four editions of the festival (1965, 1971, 1976 and 1981 was mostly from the US. These early visitors to Bulgaria were either adventurous travellers or else wished to deepen their knowledge of Bulgarian ethnography, widen their dance repertoire, learn to sing Bulgarian songs or play Bulgarian music on traditional instruments. Ethel Raim, who became

interested in Bulgarian song in the mid-1950s spent time at the first Koprivshtitsa festival during her first trip to Bulgaria (Laušević 2007: 210); the following year, (1966) Tim Rice, the UCLA Ethnomusicologist, and Yves Moreau, folk dance teacher from Canada (1966) first visited Bulgaria, followed by the Dutch folk dance teacher Jaap Leegwater in 1969.21 By the second festival in 1971, tours to the festival were organized for Balkan dancers and music enthusiasts from the US and this continued for the 1976 and 1981 festivals, but despite the existing interest in Bulgarian dance and music in the UK, the 1986 festival was the first time that tours were organised from the UK. 1986 coincided with a major expansions of interest in Balkan (and in particular Bulgarian) dance and music in the UK, and beyond, that arose parallel to the fascination with the Bulgarian singing of ‘Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares’ (see Boyd 1986), in the ‘World Music Scene’ where the image of the mysterious Balkans ‘other’ was played out through marketing. In May 1986 Jaap Leegwater first visited the UK to teach Bulgarian dancing. These workshops were as Stokes reminds us, similar to “much of the Western experience of ‘other’ music, song and dance as the sounds and moves were ‘out of context’” (Stokes 1994: 98), but following this experience several UK dancers, including myself were inspired to travel to Bulgaria to find out more about the country and its culture on a tour organised by the British Bulgarian Friendship Society to the Koprivshtitsa festival that included the three days at the festival, a short dance course in and a sightseeing tour visiting and . 22 The global interest in Bulgarian dance, music and songs continued to grow over the following five years, hence the change in regime in Bulgaria in 1990 brought about a great deal of uncertainty among these participants as to whether the Koprivshtitsa festival scheduled for 1991 would take place. As in much of Eastern Europe the withdrawal of government funding for the arts means that the larger national events such as Koprivshtitsa were under threat of cancellation (see Buchanan 2006: 315). Data from posts on the EEFC mailing list after its establishment in 1993 that reflected on the 1991 edition of the festival, as well as my informal interviews with members of the Balkan dance cohort, revealed that early in 1991 extensive discussion took place ‘behind the scenes’ between the Bulgarian organisers and certain key figures in the Balkan dance and music cohorts regarding funding although a later message on the EEFC mailing list said that “it was barely two weeks before the festival that funding was actually secured, and it became certain” (MF, EEFC archives, 17 June 2004). 1991 was around the peak of UK interest in Balkan dance so the thirty ‘participants from the UK in 1986 became closer to one hundred, spread between several tours, who joined the vastly increased number of ‘foreign enthusiasts’ travelling to the festival from US, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, as well as from all over Europe. Messages posted to the EEFC mailing list between late 1994 and spring 1995 highlighted that this uncertainly continued for the 1995 festival. Finally the news was posted in March 1995 that that a decision had been reached that there was sufficient funding to go ahead. Funding and sponsorship problems have continued over the subsequent editions. Funds to cover the overall

organisation now come from the Municipality of Koprivshtitsa and the Ministry of Culture, although the performers have to fund their own travel to the festival through local sponsorship.23 Prior to 1991 each group of performers came with many hangers-on as the costs of their transportation were covered by the State. More recently, many groups have difficulty in raising sufficient funds to cover travel costs so the number of performers (and hangers-on) has been more variable (see Figure 1), and groups that have been successful in the regional rounds of the competition were often uncertain as to whether they would be able to travel to the festival until the last minute (LW, EEFC archives, May 2005). In contrast to this the number of spectators, steadily increased until the 2015 festival. An EEFC member commented that 1991 the foreign visitors “were still in the minority” (RS, EEFC archives, October 1994), but by 1995 the number of foreigners and Bulgarian urbanites almost seemed to equal the number of performers, so much that, I commented in my diary that it was impossible to move across the festival site during the main opening ceremony due to the crowds. Over the four subsequent festivals there has been a gradual reduction in numbers of performers, although the spectator numbers have stayed at higher levels.24

Year 1965 1971 1976 1981 1986 1991 1995 2000 2005 2010

Performers 4000 3000 3000 12,000 18,500 18000 15800 16160 18000 13000

Figure 1. Numbers of performers (source of information Gergova, 2015).

The importance in foreign involvement and interest in the festival is reflected in the recent nomination of the Koprivshtitsa festival for UNESCO's ‘Register of Best Practices in Safeguarding the Intangible Cultural Heritage’.25 The formal application states that:

[t]he nomination of Koprivshtitsa festival [...] is supported by [...] declarations from Community centres and their representatives from different towns and villages [...], local communities and institutions in Koprivshtitsa and the area [...] educational and research institutions [...] foreign experts [including] folk dance teachers, leaders of folklore groups and choirs, musicians, scholars, etc. All of them have been guests and participants (individually or with their folklore groups) at several festival editions, and have contributed to the popularization of Koprivshtitsa festival beyond the borders of Bulgaria (Gergova 2015:1).26

I would comment that the short list of names of foreign participants who endorsed this application is only a small sample of those who have returned festival after festival and would have willingly made such declarations. This application endorses the importance of the Koprivshtitsa festival and it long history for both the Bulgarian organisers and those who have attended. The paragraphs above have followed the festival’s historical trajectory that provides some clues as to why the

festival has retained its popularity with foreign audiences. The following section moves on to explore my second and third trajectories in order to provide further answers to the question raised in this paper as to why many participants travel to Koprivshtitsa for successive editions of this festival.

Unchanging tracks - Festival landscape and tracks to and through Koprivshtitsa27 My second trajectory moves on to explore notions of landscape and place in connection with the Koprivshtitsa festival as these form a recurring theme during discussions with my informants who talk about the town and its surrounding landscape by using metaphors such as tranquil, picturesque, peaceful, timeless, and also comment on the (relatively) unchanging aspects of the festival, the arrangements of the venue, the structure of the festival programme, and the performances, of Bulgarian music, dance and song that takes place on and off stage. Thus I suggest that one of the reasons that the Koprivshtitsa festival has stayed on the agendas for foreign visitors is due to these place-related images that are retained in the travellers’ minds. By this I am not implying purely a static notion of place as reflected in earlier theories of the anthropology of tourism, that treated places as “relatively fixed entitles” that could be juxtaposed “in analytical terms with more dynamic flows of tourists, images and cultures” (Coleman and Crang 2002: 1) rather a more dynamic vision of place that is constantly changing and created through multiple intersecting performances by performances and spectators (Coleman and Crang 2002: 1). Urry commented that this changing theoretical orientation led to criticism of his notion of the ‘tourist gaze’ as focussing only the visual aspects of the tourist experience thus failing to take into account the tourists’ full sensual experiences that include not only visual stimuli but also the senses of smell, touch, taste, and hearing (Urry and Larsen 2011: 14). The Koprivshtitsa festival takes place in a landscape that is usually quiet and peaceful, with only the sounds of the wind and the occasional animal. However during the days before and during the festival the overall scene is fluid and changing, during which all the senses are engaged and this is the image held in the visitors’ minds, and recounted during interviews. The Bulgarian national festival has always taken place in the museum town of Koprivshtitsa, and its title is synonymous with the name of the town.28 Koprivshtitsa is situated approximately one hundred kilometres east of the capital city, Sofia in the central Bulgarian Mountains. The town is reached by a two hour, journey by car, bus or coach (or a slow train to the nearest station at the end of the valley), first passing across the flat plain area in which Sofia is situated, then the incline gradually increases as the road follows the wide valley that dissects the Balkan Mountains (Stara Planina) from the Sredna Gora mountains. The final part of the journey follows a windy road beside the course of the river Topolnitza, until finally it turns a corner and the sign board that marks the entry into the town becomes visible. In the nineteenth century Koprivshtitsa was a flourishing centre for trade and crafts. In this period many houses were built in

a characteristic architectural style referred to as Bulgarian ‘national revival architecture’. Following an uprising against the Ottomans in 1876, the town fell into decline as the established trading links were broken. However this decline allowed the preservation of the outstanding architectural heritage, which resulted in Koprivshtitsa being designed as a museum town in 1952 (see Ditchev 2004: 3). The outsider arriving in Koprivshtitsa on non-festival days will find a sleepy, rural location, with a river running through the centre, the majority of the houses are wooden and the streets are cobbled. The locals live mainly from farming or summer tourism, so it is usual to find horse drawn carts piled high with hay in the main street and locals walking through the centre carrying agricultural implements. However at weekends, and during the summer season the town becomes a tourist destination for foreign tourists and the noveaux rich from Sofia, and for one weekend in early August every five years the atmosphere changes as the town is taken over by a multitude of Bulgarian performers, Bulgarian and non-Bulgarian spectators, and traders who set up temporary restaurants, and stalls selling drinks and snacks, CDs and folk related memorabilia for the three day duration of the festival.

Figure 2. One of the stages above the town of Koprivshtitsa (2015).

The format of the core aspects of the Koprivshtitsa festival have remained more or less the same through all the editions. Every morning of the festival, performers and spectators make the twenty minute steep walk up a tarmac road from the town centre to the festival site situated in the hills above the town (see figure 2), stopping to catch their breath and admire the scenery. The foreign

visitors mostly stay for the three day duration of the festival, whereas the Bulgarian performers either arrive in coaches early in the morning that they are scheduled to perform and leave the same evening, or else they stay for just one night in the large army tents set up in the campsite designated for performers. They are all members of amateur izvorni folklore groups (see figure 3) that perform music, dances and customs from their locality and have been awarded the top places in the local and district rounds in the months leading up to the national festival.29

Figure 3. Izvorni group dancing a winter custom from Thracian region (2010).

On reaching the festival site the participants are met by the sounds of music and song echoing across the hills, and smells wafting from the BBQ, sweet doughnuts or popcorn stalls. The site covers an area approximately two kilometres from one side to the other with the two extremities being linked by a winding track across the meadows (see figure 4). On non-festival days the track across the festival site can be walked in thirty minutes, but on festival days it can take all day. The Bulgarian performers tend to stay close to the stage where they will perform whereas the spectators can take a leisurely walk, across the site weaving between other spectators and performers. They can choose to stop at any one of the seven or eight stages (depending on the year) set up close to the track across the site, and sit and watch for twenty minutes, an hour or all day, apart from breaks to buy drinks or food at some of the many stalls and temporary cafes that fill the gaps between the stages, or they can divide their time between stages. Those that have come before follow their five yearly habitual pathways, they stop to watch a group rehearsing their performances away from the immediate area around the stages, ask the performers to pose for pictures in their costume, join in with impromptu dancing or spend time socialising and talking with friends, when their conversations are temporarily halted by the loud almost deafening sounds

of bells announcing that the kukeri (masked men) are coming, and everyone in the vicinity stops to look.

Figure 4. Festival site in the meadows (2015).

In Bulgarian the Koprivshtitsa festival is termed a sŭbor (събор), a term originally used for Saint’s day fairs held in towns and villages until the early twentieth century, that was adopted during the communist period and used for State funded folk music and dance regional and national competitions (Buchanan 2006: 171).30 However the function of these and similar festivals in the performers’ lives continued to be that of a fair, in that they come in their family and friendship groupings. They can be seen each morning climbing up the road to the festival site with their baskets full of food and drink supplies for the day out. Once they reach the festival site they find a place in the shade nearby the stage that they are scheduled to perform on and lay out their blankets and cloths spreading out their food to share with their family and friends, and make themselves comfortable for the day. For them this is a social gathering that also involves the preparation for, and participation at the time allotted for their performance. Around an hour before they are scheduled to perform they get up from their picnics and put on the pieces of their local costumes, the women arranging their hair or headscarves and aprons and the men winding their long fabric belts round their waists. They then line up beside the stage to wait until their turn is called. There is a wide variety among the performances as Joe Boyd described from his 1986 experiences:

Each stage represents a geographical area and each area has its particular style. The hypnotic harmonies of the women, those intervals which ought to be unbearably dissonant but somehow aren’t, tend to come from Rhodope and Pirin in the south

and south-west. The women from Thrace in the central area sing beautifully but in unison. All areas love the gaida, the Bulgarian bagpipe. Men rarely sing, but when they do it is sometimes quite spectacular and often completely different from the women’s styles. There are dance bands and groups of dancers. The women sing alone and in groups. They link arms with each other, or hold onto each other’s belts, and often divide into two groups of three or more. The two groups sing in rounds, each verse overlapping the preceding one from the other group, Women singers from the south-east, near the Turkish border, sing accompanied by a kaval, a flute- like instrument which looks almost impossible to play. […]. Interspersed with the music are pageants, representing folk traditions acted out by village groups (Boyd 1986: 1).

A panel of three or four judges, who are specialists in Bulgarian song, music, dance and customs sit under umbrellas facing the stage (see figure 5). Each group is allocated a time slot and each stage has an announcer who introduces each group in turn, with their name, village or town of origin and details of what they will perform (in Bulgarian). Once the judges have made their awards then the winners from each region perform on a central (larger) stage from which the performances are broadcast on Bulgarian national TV.

Figure 5. Judges at stage 1 (2015).

At the end of each of the three days, as the sun is setting the numbers traversing the track across the festival site falls as all retrace their steps down to the town centre, where the focus of activity shifts for the hours of darkness during which impromptu dancing takes place at many locations in the town and at the participant’s camp site. On the Sunday lunch time after the closing performance of the festival, the locals set off to their homes and the coaches with the foreign visitors depart from the town on to the next stage of their tours and finally back to the airport for their flights home taking their memories and souvenirs with them, and meanwhile the town returns to a quiet, peaceful location waiting for the next arrival of tourists.

Changing tracks: the Festival in 21st century Although the format of the Koprivshtitsa festival has not changed significantly since 1990, over the various editions the developments in the atmosphere during the festival can be seen as providing a mirror into changing relationships between the Balkans and the ‘other’ in the wider world in which the Koprivshtitsa festival is situated. Alongside the relatively constant aspects of the festival, the location, venue, setting, and arrangement of performances discussed above, there is always an array of changes between editions. In my third trajectory I explore some of the modifications that have taken place between the editions of the festival that I have attended, and consider ways in which changes elsewhere in Bulgaria and the world in general have had implications on the ‘festival experience’ for the participants. Guss in his anthropology of festivals in Venezuela observed that, surprisingly, “evidence demonstrates that traditional production did not collapse in the face of widespread social and economic change but instead inserted itself into new market and communication systems” (Guss 2000: 5). He suggests that in fact these events take on “new and even more complex lives” with an “expanded audience and contexts [...] created by such forces as urbanization, tourism, and new technology” (Guss 2000: 4). Drawing from Guss I consider that, in the case of the Koprivshtitsa festival, the expanded audience has come firstly with the larger foreign audience due to the ease of travel from all areas of the world both on tours and more recently independently, and secondly following the increasing interest of Bulgarians in the festival as attitudes to folklore have changed among those who have remained living in Bulgaria and those that have moved abroad as economic migrants. I would suggest that this change in attitudes can be partially attributed to an increasing desire to re-assert local identity as a response to feelings of “cultural dislocation brought about by rapid structural change, social mobility and globalization processes” (Picard and Mike 2006: 2) in particular, following Bulgarian’s entry to the European Union in 2007.31 The changing and “expanded contexts” (Guss 2000: 4), between editions include the use of new technology for the dissemination of information about the festival through websites, in particular the festival website (http://saboribg.com/koprivshtica) and mailing lists such as the

EEFC and the facilities for making on-line travel reservations with the potential for independent travel. It also incorporates the expansion of tourist facilities in the town, with a wider range of accommodation options, cash points and the arrival of commercialisation during the festival, with an array of stalls selling a wide range of items that all fit into the changing visitor expectations of facilities at the venue, and the use of digital technology to record the festival experience of the participants. The tourist facilities have moved forward from festival to festival to meet present day expectations, especially for the foreign visitors. Until the last ten years, accommodation in the town during the festival was very limited and oversubscribed and was mostly rooms in old style private ‘traditional’ houses.32 More recently many of the larger traditional houses in the town have been renovated and converted into guesthouses, mostly with rooms with private facilities and Wi-Fi. The majority of the commercial accommodation is booked by tour operators up to a year in advance of the festival, although in 2015 many regular attendees made independent arrangements booking hire cars and accommodation on-line.33 In 1986, there were only around three BBQ stalls and drink stands on the festival site, one caravan selling official state label (Balkanton) records and one stall selling plastic souvenirs, and in the town only a handful of state-run restaurants. The food stands had endless long queues and by the third day had run out of food and drink. Bottled water was almost impossible to buy in Bulgaria at this time. The 1991 festival marked the introduction of what one EEFC-er called “crash commercialisation”, a “huge, unorganized rummage sale”.34 Along the path between the stages on the festival site and beside the road running through the town, stalls were set up by a mass of traders selling many types of food, drinks, craft items, CDs, musical instruments, folk costumes and textiles, antiques, modern clothing and cheap plastic toys. During the 1991 and 1995 festivals this mass of stalls appeared to be totally unregulated, but subsequently the pitches have been carefully marked out (see figure 6). For the Bulgarian performers and spectators this festival falls within the expectations of any saint’s day fair so stalls selling food and drink, circus rides and stalls selling plastic trinkets are normal. However the foreign visitor’s interest lies in the stalls selling Bulgarian crafts or antiques, and some see the cheap plastic souvenirs as detracting from the atmosphere. As one member of the EEFC list commented by 2005 the vendors on the hill seemed to be limited to those who sold CDs, crafts, or folk costumes so “it felt like the festival organizers were making some attempt to develop a cultural festival”.35 This clash of expectations brought about by differing expectations of the commercial aspects of the festival has been evident in the changing balance between craft fair and local fair between festivals, and most recently in 2015 in response to this the local mayor declared that restrictions had been placed on the number stalls selling plastic toys and other inappropriate items when issuing permits.36

Figure 6. Market stalls through the town (2010).

Blurring of roles Over the last three festivals many Bulgarians both from Bulgarian towns and those living outside Bulgaria also attended the festival. This is closely linked to an increasing interest among Bulgarians in their own dance and music following the popularity of ‘horo clubs’ where Bulgarian dances are taught as a recreational activity (see Ivanova 2009) similar to the Balkan dance scene outside Bulgaria where the members are predominately non-Bulgarians. The ‘horo club’ phenomenon has also spread to the Bulgarian diaspora with clubs being set up during the last five years in the majority of cities in the world where a sizable Bulgarian diaspora is living. In London alone in 2015 there were around twelve Bulgarian dance clubs, classes or ensembles.37 The previous paper that I wrote (Mellish 2013b) conveyed a dichotomy between the Bulgarian performers and spectators from abroad. As the tracks to the festival have become more complex the blurring between the non-Bulgarian visitors and locals has increased. As one of my informants, who has also attended all the festivals since 1986, commented during the 2015 festival, as foreign visitors, we used to stand out from the locals because of the way we dressed, our rucksacks and cameras, but now it is mostly not possible to distinguish between foreign visitors, Bulgarian spectators or even the performers unless they are wearing their local costumes.38 This is partly due to global changes in life styles as modern technology has reached those living in rural areas but also is influenced by the increased number of Bulgarian urbanites and diaspora, who make the journey to the festival. Together with many (but not all) of the foreign visitors they see their festival experience as not only being passive observers, but as active participants either in their own official

performances on the stages that, since 1986 have been reserved for performances of Bulgarian song, dance and music by foreign guest groups of Bulgarians and non-Bulgarians from outside Bulgaria, and or whilst joining in with spontaneous social dancing that takes place on the festival site between stages throughout the day and in the town during the evening , in the central square and inside restaurants, or in the performers camp site on the outskirts of the town. Since 1995 the foreign group performances take place on one of the two stages situated in the town centre, strategically separated from the daytime performances so that the visitors do not have to miss any of the main festival.39 When performances by foreign groups were first introduced in 1986, this was not met with outright approval by the visitors, some of whom have told me that they had come to see performances by Bulgarians (as they viewed these as ‘the real thing’) and not groups from the Netherlands or the US who similar to them danced Bulgarian dances at home.40 Others commented on enjoying seeing friends that had met five, ten or more years ago during other dance camps performing Bulgarian song and dance for the Bulgarians.41 From my discussions with contacts, it is apparent that over time these mixed reactions to the performance of foreign groups has reduced as the number of these groups have increased. These performances are now an established part of the festival and are watched by a large audience of Bulgarians and foreign spectators, who give the performers a warm reception, and those that take part in them feel a pride in being part of the proceedings. 42

Tracks re-travelled – photographs and memorabilia Recording of ethnographic material for future use, or to relive memories after return home, is one aspect of the festival experience that has evolved from festival to festival. In 1986 and for several subsequent festivals the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences was making extensive ethnographic documentation during the festival. Despite only limited skills one attendee said it was made clear to her when she took advantage of photographic opportunities set up by the researchers, that the academics did not appreciate tourists getting in the way of their professional duties.43 When reflecting on my own photographic endeavours, I see that my choice of subject matter for photographs changed over time as I moved from a folk dancer to an anthropologist. In 1986, 1991, 1995, my photos were either of Bulgarian in local costumes or the old houses in the town, and all photographs were aimed (with limited success) at clean idyllic representations. More recently using my ‘anthropologist gaze’, I have tried to capture the atmosphere of the festival with views of the site, the stalls, the flows of people across the site, I seek out clashes of traditional and modern, rather than avoiding these, such as the common sight of performers in costume using their mobile phones. This has become more possible using digital technology when multiple shots can be taken and discarded, or edited to focus on the selected view. Every festival the performances on the central stage by the winners from each region are recorded by Bulgarian TV. In 1986 Japanese visitors prominently placed their large video cameras

on tripods close to the judging table on each stage to ensure that they recorded all of the proceedings. This created tensions between Bulgarians some of whom commented that the outsiders appeared to place a greater value on Bulgarian folklore than the Bulgarians (Buchanan, 2006:393) and others who felt threatened that their music, dance and song might be recorded by others and used for commercial purposes. One EEFC-er recounted to me that after the 1986 festival, she heard a rumour that ‘a group from Japan had done lots of videotaping and had broadcast and sold the tapes. The Bulgarians got nothing for that and never asked permission and felt “betrayed”’. She said that she understood that this was the reason that a charge was introduced for both video and still photography in 1991.44 Whether this was the only reason or if this was a commercial decision in order to raise funds to cover the organisational costs of the festival born by the local municipality is not clear. The charges and precise regulations set by the local organising committee have varied from festival to festival (depending on whether the photographer was Bulgarian or non-Bulgarian, an amateur, or a professional making recordings for commercial purposes) as has the success in implementing them by the festival officials. In 1995 according to one EEFC-er, it was easy to monitor as video cameras were still “pretty big”.45 But by 2010 policing these permits had become almost impossible due to the use of mobile phones, although, as my contacts told me, many of them continued to pay for permits as they saw this as a way of contributing to the running costs of the festival.46 Prior to the wider availability of digital recording devices and access to the internet there was an underlying fear both among local Bulgarians and some recreational folk dance teachers of their material being ‘stolen’ and ‘exploited’ by others (possibly not unfounded judging if the above comment regarding the Japanese was true). It is interesting that this fear has vanished since communities have been able to upload their own performances and videos of local social events onto YouTube, Facebook or other internet media channels and thus make their own implicit claims for ownership. After each edition of the festival the participants ‘tracks’ follow them home where they retrace their paths whilst watching their videos, listening to their own audio recordings, or the vinyl records47 or CDs that they bought at the festival, or scroll through their photos either alone in with their friends. Although the experience of being at the festival is intangible, the taking of photographs and videos provides the visitor with “tangible memories to be cherished and consumed” after their return home (Urry and Larsen 2011: 3). These tangible memories can be shared with others who were there and those who might decide to go in five years time. This reliving of their festival experiences through what Anderson terms as “intentional remembering” (Anderson 2004: 13) or Urry refers to as ‘memory travel’ (Urry and Larsen 2011: 156) transports those that were there through virtual space back to the soundscape of the meadows above Koprivshtitsa through the medium of their recordings made with the intention of taking such “future nostalgia trips” (Cooley 2005:219) back to Koprivshtitsa. This allows them to reinforce their

memories of their time in Koprivshtitsa, and even begin to dream of making plans to travel to the next festival in five years’ time.

Conclusion This paper asked why many Bulgarian music and dance enthusiasts from countries outside Bulgaria chose to make the journey to the Koprivshtitsa festival, and why many of them make this journey regularly every five years. It reveals that the answer to these questions can be found within the possibly unique conflation of the second two trajectories set out above, the (relatively) unchanging tracks to the town of Koprivshtitsa and across the festival site during the festival, watching performances of folklore by local izvorni groups, meeting friends and participating in spontaneous social dancing; with the changing tracks as this festival found a new market among Bulgarian urbanites and diaspora Bulgarians, who are members of ‘horo clubs’, and took advantage of the expanding communication systems created by new global technology flows. These complex and interlinked ‘tracks well-travelled’ are interwoven with a romantic view of the location and festival performances but also to a contemporary view of the festival as a party and a meeting place for friends from all corners of the world. I would hold that the physical setting holds a strong attraction for the visitors who travel to the festival; those that return from edition to edition, traverse already well-trodden physical tracks; the road to the museum town of Koprivshtitsa situated in the central Bulgarian mountains; the winding road to the festival site that is located in the Voivodenets (Войводенец) meadows that overlook the town and the dusty track that links the seven or eight acoustically separated stages that are nestled into the hillside. The first trajectory in this paper focused on looking back to the continuing history of the festival from the communist period to the present. Contrary to the expectations of many in 1990 cultural production did not cease when the division between west and east became blurred. As migration from east to west has increased so has the number of individuals who follow or re-follow their tracks to their own or ‘others’ culture has increased and for this generation of Bulgarians in particular at least their culture continues to be part of their (social) lives either within Bulgaria or in the diaspora.

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1 In this paper, for brevity, I mainly refer to the Koprivshtitsa festival as ‘the festival’ 2 This paper is based on the author’s presentation at the 2015 ICTM Ireland Annual Conference, Dundalk Institute of Technology. 3 Turinodefines a cultural cohort as a “cultural / identity unit based on a restricted number of shared habits and parts of the self” (2008: 235). This does not preclude the individuals involved from spending much of their time involved in activities of the cultural cohort 4 See ‘www.eefc.org’. The archives of this mailing list can be accessed at: http://archive.iecc.com/search.phtml/eefc/ [last accessed 10 February 2016]. 5 Urry suggests that an anthropological gaze allows the researcher to describe “how individual visitors scan a variety of sights/sites and are able to locate them interpretatively within a historical array of meanings and symbols” (Urry and Larsen 2011: 20). 6 In 2004 I returned to academia to undertaken a master’s degree in central and east European studies followed by a PhD based on anthropological research of the lives of folk ensemble dancers in Southwest Romania. 7 I do not list individual names that fit these categories; the majority of those to whom I refer are subscribers to the EEFC mailing list. 8 Source: informal discussions with dancers I have met during dance courses regarding their social networks, and attendance at the Koprivshtitsa festival. 9 Greg Richards defines cultural tourism as “The movement of persons to cultural attractions away from their normal place of residence, with the intention to gather new information and experiences to satisfy their cultural needs” (Richards, 1996: 24). 10 Source: informal discussions with UK dancers and their spouses during organised tours to the Koprivshtitsa festival. 11 Interview with JS, April 2008-04. 12 The Albanian Festivali Folklorik Kombëtar Gjirokastër was founded in 1968. The first Romanian National festival for amateur groups took place in 1952. These festivals continued biennially until 1974, after which they were replaced by the better known, ‘Song to Romania’ festival (Cântarea României) that continued biennially until 1989 and incorporated many genres of performance and arts.

13 In Albanian there was a six year gap between the last festival of the communist period in 1988 and the next one in 1995, whereas in Romanian Cântarea României, the flagship festival of the Ceaușescu regime ceased after 1989 and since this date no equivalent national festival has been set up in Romania although there is a plethora of regional and local folk festivals. 14 Note there is little overlap between these two groups of people. 15 For example EEFC mailing list entries: LW on 04 August 2009, JH on 31 July 2014. 16 For example EEFC mailing list entries MF and LS on 8 February 2010, JH on 2 January 2015, SP on 18 Jan 2015, and GM on 19 February 2015. 17 See EEFC archive for postings during July 2015. 18 Although the history of the US Balkan scene has been covered in several publications (Cohen 2014; Laušević 2007; Shay 2008b; Shay 2008a), so far there have been no works published that deal with the UK scene. The author of this paper is currently working on an independent post-doctoral project that will re- dress this situation. 19 The reader should note that there are large Balkan dance communities in other European countries in particular, the Netherlands and Germany and also in Australia and New Zealand and the Far East including Japan and Hong Kong. 20 See www.dunav.org.uk . 21 See Rice (1994), http://www.bourque-moreau.com/YMbio.html (last accessed 4 October 2012), and http://www.jaapleegwater.com/biography.html (last accessed 4 October 2012). 22 The British Bulgarian Friendship Society (recently renamed as British Bulgarian Society) was founded in 1952, and organises a range of tours to Bulgaria each year (see http://bulgariatours.co.uk/index.html ). 23 See www.standardnews.com (2015) and Gergova (2015: 1). 24 Note that the only figures available for performers and spectators at the 2015 festival were announced during the opening ceremony. From my observations these figures were based on the numbers expected rather than those who actually attended. 25 The application mentioned above was the focus of the opening ceremony to the 2015 festival. This application raises many new and evolving questions about how the festival is viewed such as: what implications does this listing have for the future of the festival? Does this preclude any changes to meet current day expectations? What exactly is the intangible heritage that is being listed as the performances and the performers change from festival to festival? These debates will be the subject of future works. 26 The formal application is available at www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?lg=en&pg=00774 . 27 A series of short films showing a taster of some of the music, dance and customs that can be seen at the Koprivshtitsa festival that was shown during the conference presentation can be viewed at: Video 1. Koprivshtitsa town https://youtu.be/tp2wk4pCTfY Video 2. Festival fair https://youtu.be/uxCuhS87ZHA Video 3. Festival site https://youtu.be/IFWRDxne9VM Video 4. Festival performances https://youtu.be/3_zb-UKLbFI 28 The UNESCO-ICH application states that Koprivshtitsa was selected to host the first festival in 1965 following the proposal of the prominent Bulgarian ethnomusicologist Rayna Katsarova,. Three state institutions were the main organizers: Radio Sofia (nowadays – the Bulgarian National Radio), Institute of Music (nowadays – Institute of Art Studies) at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and Centre for Folk Arts. 29 Izvorni literally means spring, or source, with the implication that these groups perform music, dance and customs from where they originated. 30 These Saint’s day celebrations or fairs take place throughout southeast Europe. In Bulgaria there are known as sŭbor, in Serbia as slava, in southwest Romania as ruga or negei, in Transylvania as nedeia, in Greece as panagyiri. In Bulgaria and Romania the communist regime took over the larger of these celebrations and re-branded them as national or regional events. In Bulgarian the national sŭbor took place in Koprivshtitsa at five yearly intervals, whilst smaller regional subor took place more often in other regional locations. 31 See Mellish (2013a: 13) regarding similar renewed interest in regional music and dance, and identity in Romania. 32 As an amusing aside to this, a visiting Romanian choreographer, brought up in a Romanian village, commented to us that the accommodation in Koprivshtitsa in 1995 was very basic as “we stayed in village house” (TF interview, July 2015).

33 Source: discussions on the EEFC mailing list between April and July 2015, and informal discussions with contacts from the UK who attended Koprivshtitsa 2015. 34 Personal communication by email with SS, 18 April 2008. 35 Personal communication by email with SS, 18 April 2008. 36 See http://saboribg.com/koprivshtica. 37 See the Facebook group ‘Български Народни танци в Лондон’ (www.facebook.com/groups/167324666729198/) for links to many of these groups. 38 Informal discussion with JS August 2015. 39 See the EEFC mailing list, July 2015 for a discussion on this topic. 40 Source: email from JL March 2015, and interview with JS April 2008. 41 Source: EEFC RW April 2005, and interview CS April 2008. 42 Source: informal discussion with Bulgarian members of the London Tanec dance group. 43 Source: interview with JS, April 2008. 44 Source: email from JH, April 2008. 45 Source: email from SS, April 2008. 46 Source: informal discussions JH, and JW and EEFC postings, August 2015. 47 The Bulgarian state record label, Balkanton produced recordings of the festivals from 1971 to 1986 (eight records in total): Koprivshtitsa 1965 - BHA 00457, Koprivshtitsa ’71 - BHA 01293, Koprivshtitsa ’76 - BHA 02067, BHA 1300/501, Koprivshtitsa’81 - BHA 10887/8, BHA 10931, Koprivshtitsa’86 - BHA 11902/3, BHA 12058.