Following the black spiral: Old voices, new life (Towards the history of the early commercial gramophone records in Bulgaria)

Abstract

The earliest surviving sound evidence of music and musicians from Bulgaria is on commercial gramophone records from the early XX century. Although unique sources for ethnomusicological and historical research, these commercial recordings are little known and almost unexplored. The proposed text sets out to collect and describe information on the first decade of commercial gramophone recordings in Bulgaria. The basis for the research is sound evidence from scholarly and museum archives and private collections; music company catalogues, labels on gramophone records, discographies; and supporting information - texts and advertising images from newspapers, memoirs and memoir literature as primary and secondary sources. The sought ethnomusicological approach is achieved through a combination of different research methods: ethnographic, historical, discographic, cultural, anthropological. The results of the research present the role of commercial recordings in musical and popular culture in Bulgaria in the years leading up to the First World War, cultural life, musical history, musicing, intercultural interactions, the cultural choices of Western and local, Slavic and Balkan, traditional music in non-traditional modern contexts, art music in popular contexts, and the role of professional musicians.