Čalga-Kultur als bulgarische Elite-Kultur? Zur nationalen Bedeutsamkeit eines populären Phänomens im heutigen Bulgarien
Čalga-Culture a Bulgarian Elite Culture? The National Importance of a Popular Phenomenon in Contemporary Bulgaria

Summary/Abstract: Since the end of the 1990s the so-called Čalga-culture has dominated the public and private sector in Bulgaria. After the fall of communism, Čalga emerged from a popular music style, at that time without any presence in the media and typical of the lower classes. This has changed dramatically: Nowadays Čalga is a whole cultural complex with its own behavioral patterns, values, attitudes, attributes and aesthetics. The praised “Balkan way of life” enabled a broad public to compensate disorientation, lack of values and lacking national self-confidence. Within just a few years, mainly since 2000, Čalga has become an identitygenerating phenomenon with the status of an “authentic” Bulgarian culture rooted to the soil. Gradually it matured to a culture even of the power elite, who legitimizes itself in society by promoting and exposing Čalga in the public sphere. This strategy is leading Bulgaria further and further away from the proclaimed internalization of “European” values and standards.

• Details
• Contents