Bulgarian Rhythms

Roger Bourland recently linked to a video of the Bulgarian State Women’s Chorus, which reminded me of my latent obsession with Bulgarian folk music. Check it out, (and read the comments for your daily dose of surrealism).

Years ago, during a very short stint as the vocal director of a folk ensemble, I had the pleasure of preparing that first song in the video, which is called “Ergen Deda”. The rhythm of the piece is a fast 7/8 Šopska dance (from the Šop region of Bulgaria; Šopska is also a tasty salad).

These 7/8 dances are so fast that the notion of “7/8″ fails to really capture it. It’s really just a matter of “short-short-long”. In Bulgarian (and Greek and other Balkan) music all kinds of interesting combinations of “short” and “long” are used, and we’re forced to notate them with awkward 11′s and 13′s.

See if you can figure this one out: