The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices – Women’s Choir

I heard about the women’s choir, The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices, from the news, as their fans from Belgium and other countries would come all the way to Sofia to attend their Christmas concert. I am already in Sofia, and I should definitely be there. Buying a ticket online was easy, and I just needed to pick it up using a pick-up code from the online ordering at any of the OMV gas stations (with only a few exceptions) or the Palace of Culture. I checked out the choir’s website, they did a tour in Oct including eight concerts at a different European city each day. This choir dates back to 1952 when it was founded at the Bulgarian National Radio. It is world-renowned having won a Grammy, etc. During the performance, we were not allowed to take photos or videos. At the end of the concert when the singers bowed to the audience, someone else took out their camera to take a photo, and I followed suit to get the photos in the top gallery. It was not the best moment, but at least it was a captured moment. I am also glad to find a news release about the concert, although the photo and video there were not from the actual concert this time, but similar. The choir’s own website provided quite many great videos of their performances and how the audience responded.

The voice and the songs were very unique, and I honestly don’t know how to describe them. I didn’t understand the words anyway, but the tunes and emotions were moving the audience beyond words. The very few pieces of music instruments and a voice impressionist kept the entire hall on fire. The lady playing the string instrument, “gadulka” (гадулка), at the concert this year was the same one in the video below when the choir performed at the ancient theater in Plovdiv. The guy playing the pipe instruments used a shorter one first and then a longer one later, which might be different kinds of “kaval” (кавал), and their sound was amazing. The other guy played guitar, but the music he made with it was unlike any other guitar tunes. I couldn’t see what kind of percussion instruments were used as the instruments were blocked from my view, but the sound was indispensable in the show. That voice impressionist in this concert was also in the concert video below. He himself could almost count as an entire band as he could make such a wide range of sounds from mimicking the nature to supplementing the beats.