Bulgarian Women's Choir

The Bulgarian women's choir tradition takes the unaccompanied two- and three-part singing of village women from the Shop, Pirin and Rhodope regions and arranges it for thirty- or forty-voice choirs. The vocal technique uses an open-throated, forward-projected production that is loud, bright and slightly nasal. Harmonies feature close-interval seconds and sevens — clusters that are dissonant by classical Western standards but resolve to bare octaves and unisons. Lyrics, in Bulgarian, treat agricultural cycles, marriage, mourning and historical events.

The choral version of village song was developed in the post-war Communist era by composer Filip Kutev, whose 1952 founding of the Bulgarian National Folk Ensemble systematised village singing into a stage-choir repertoire. Other arrangers — Krasimir Kyurkchiyski, Stefan Mutafchiev, Nikolay Kaufman — wrote pieces specifically for the format. Swiss producer Marcel Cellier's compilation Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (1975, expanded 1986) brought the choirs to international attention and won a Grammy in 1989.

Listen for the seconds — two notes a step apart, held simultaneously by different singers. The technique sounds painful to western ears at first but is the foundational harmonic move of the style. Throat shape is forward and the resonance is in the mask of the face, producing the bright cutting tone that distinguishes Bulgarian singing from western classical choral practice.

Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (1975/1986 expanded edition) is the canonical introduction. The Bulgarian National Television Female Vocal Choir's later recordings extend the repertoire.

Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album in 1990 — one of the very few non-English-language albums ever to win the category, and a moment widely cited as the start of the late-1980s world-music boom in Anglo markets.