From countercultural resistance to world music craze, Balkan music
captured the attention of global audiences. Balkanology, the 1991
quintessential album of Bulgarian music, highlights this moment of
unbridled creativity. Seasoned musicians all over the world are still in
awe of the technical abilities of the musicians in Ansambl Trakia-their
complex additive rhythms, breakneck speeds, stunning improvisations,
dense ornamentation, chromatic passages, and innovative modulations.
Bridging folk, jazz, and rock sensibilities, Trakia's music has set the
standard for Bulgarian music until today, and its members, especially
Ivo Papazov, are revered stars at home and abroad. The album reveals how
Romani (Gypsy) artists resisted the state's prohibition against Romani
music and fashioned a genre that became a youth movement in Bulgaria,
and then a world music phenomenon. Balkanology underscores the
political, economic and social roles of music during socialism and
postsocialism.