Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares Vol. 1 got here packaged in minimalist designs, with summary paintings and simply its title on the jacket. Nonesuch’s naïve depiction of Bulgarian costume towards a star-filled sky instilled an astro-romantic sensibility. 4AD’s sleeve, with its imprecise suggestion of clouds, imposed an alliance with the heavenly. Neither album included translations of the lyrics, pictures of the ensemble, nor any reference to who they have been as individuals in any respect: no indication of age, location, or musical coaching. Other than the tracklist, the releases supplied scarcely any info in any respect.
With none historic element to orient these voices, their singing possesses a sort of magnificence that swells into terror, just like the vaguely unsettling feeling of setting foot in a cathedral. They’re pinched right into a shiny, nearly surgical nasality or burst unfastened into grand, sideways arcs, flaring out in a feral yelp. Collectively, their vocals are likely to rush larger and better; faster and faster; turning into an increasing number of triumphant. After which they fall. After which they devastate.
The roots of those songs, although, are extra prosaic. In Bulgaria, village music was sometimes sung by peasants whereas tending to agriculture and husbandry; at weddings; and to specific nationwide pleasure. Ladies who labored in retailers sang collectively in bellowing, polyphonic unison. Their singing was not conventionally melodic by Western requirements, however fairly summed up by the phrase “izvika”: to cry out. In addition they used the phrase “buchi” to explain their very own tonal high quality—the identical phrase Bulgarians use for the sound of cow’s lowing.
Most elementary to Bulgarian village music was its relationship between melody and drone. This layer endured properly into the twentieth century and have become probably the most distinguished function of the Le Mystère recordings. The singers’ buchi drone shaped the core of the music’s harmonic language, which relied totally on unisons, main seconds, and minor thirds. Inside this slender vary, the singers created an airless intimacy the place adjoining tones clanged sharply towards each other. Like notes crowded on a workers, the ensemble sat carefully collectively after they sang. When Kate Bush later sang with them, in 1989, they even held each other.
