After Koprivshtitsa 2005 Cover Image
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След Копривщица 2005
After Koprivshtitsa 2005

Author(s): Deniza Popova
Subject(s): Music
Published by: Институт за изследване на изкуствата, Българска академия на науките

Summary/Abstract: The article combines musings born out of the Ninth Folklore Festival in the town of Koprivshtitsa (August 4-7, 2005) and mainly addresses the problem of the searching for and assessing of the authenticity of the cultural facts presented at the festival. What is praised by the jury as “authentic”? This is not something innate in the nature of folklore culture, but rather criteria relating to what is observed and perceived on the surface: a certain melody or rhythm, certain phrasing and ornamentation, the overall sound, the dialect, the costume, or the instruments, etc. Folklore “from the village source” or authentic village folklore performances are neither the same as they were in pre-modem times, nor can they be preserved and stored as data. Thus they cannot be judged by a jury of experts, unless - as is exactly the case in this festival - they are dramatized. However, in this case, it turns out that what is being judged is the relative merit of a stage simulation of an authentic ritual. Authentic folklore is not, in fact, the subject of the Koprivshtitsa gathering. What is performed there is that which has been preserved not as a spontaneous event, but as a result of the cultural activism of people who still wish to dance and sing and to preserve their own relicts from the past. Old definitions of authenticity and village sources are not relevant any more, having been replaced by the question of how to describe that which intrigues us academically without falling into a romantic nostalgia for the old clear definitions. The article also comments on the importance of the Koprivshtitsa gathering for national identity (since the event is funded and organized by the state), as well as addressing the paradoxical fact that no Bulgarian institution has undertaken to fully document the performances at the gathering.

  • Issue Year: 2006
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 119-125
  • Page Count: 7
  • Language: Bulgarian